[Raapys]

If you're going to be playing stock, at least try to get a hold of the "Visbility Bug", "Finance Wraparound Bug" and "Tech Stuck Bug " exe-patches, as each one of these bugs are just about game-breaking.

Not sure why the duplicate race fix doesn't work. It's working fine here, but it's been so long since I installed the stuff that I can't remember if you have to manually apply some of those exe patches that follows or whatnot. And while many of the changes are 'opinionated', as you say, that's mostly just in strawberry and tropical. Vanilla is pretty much how the stock game 'should have been', so that's what I'd recommend if you didn't care for Tropical.

For the positive features, I'd have to go with, as I mentioned already, the whole planet/economy/development-plans system. It's just lightyears ahead of all other 4x's. And while I'm sure alot of people will disagree, I think the technology system also does its job very well( technologies spread over 5 research areas ); I think it gets sort of tedious and strange to select every single tech to research, in other 4x games. I also like the rather original 'Council Room' feature, although it could perhaps have been utilized better. Leaders are definitely cool, too. The game also got an epic feeling to it that no other 4x game I've played has had, except possibly MoO2 to a lesser degree( because of the superb MoO2 soundtrack and *the stellar converter miniclip* ).

As for the negative, I'd have to say that just about everything related to combat and ship management is rather poorly thought-out, and there's tons of stuff to be desired regarding task force management, tactics/strategies, etc. I mean, the only options available for task forces( and thus ships ) is to either Move them, or Disband them, that's it. Espionage is also something that's not nearly good enough.
I also miss the space monster/antaran events from MoO2.