[Baron Munchausen]

Perhaps you don't understand... there's no qualitative difference between "regular" empires and neutrals. You could setup any of the standard empires as a neutral by putting it in the neutrals directory instead of in the races directory. Some of the 'simpler' empires would make good neutrals. The ones with monochrome ship sets, few or no AI files (just copy another neutrals and edit), etc. It would be cool to have neutrals with complete unique ship sets, no? I've considered using some add-on races to give even the existing neutrals their own ship sets.