Any propsed Expansion Pack would have to have a lot more than pre-existing community Shipsets, modding tools, and scripting for me to shell out any money for it. Something major to double the lifespan of SEIV would have to be offered...
...Such as Multiple Galaxy generation & intergration. What could be cooler than to have an inter-spacial rupture appear a couple Systems out from your Homesystem that would lead to an entirely new Galaxy with entirely different Races than what you've already encoutered. It could be your gateway to a whole new territory of Colonization, or the pre-cursor to an invasion from another Galaxy (ala Speices 8472 in ST:Voyager).
For something like this Aaron would have to code the game to generate an additional Galaxy that would be completely AI managed. Multiple Galaxies could be generated to simulate popular scenarios, such as a Mirror Galaxy that duplicates everything in your Galaxy but with huge Evil Empire twists, an Organic Galaxy, and whatever else Aaron could concieve, and entirely new Tech Trees could be explored by entering these new Galaxies aswell.
This is something that could realisticly be accomplished, but time would be the crux. As Fyron says SE5 is next on the agenda, and I don't think any of us want to wait too long to get our hands on it, especially with the new graphics engine. Plus you'd have to think that Aaron would want to move onto something new aswell.
Now if Aaron would be open to taking an established programer or 3 under his wing and allow them access to the SEIV code (under a strict NDA-like agreement) for the purpose of developing the SEIV engine out further for commercial Expansion while Aaron works his magic on SEV, then...
This probably won't happen, but we can all daydream
