[dogscoff]

b) More varity on mines like; Mine damage only
weapons or engines on enemy ships.

This is moddable. I think Pirates & nomads might include it. S_J?

Discovered ruins should give the the ability to research a new tech area that leads to reproducing and modifying any artifacts recovered.

Also moddable. Check out Proportions mod.

Analysing enemy ships would give a bonus to researching technology the ship uses.

Ummm... it does. Or do you mean that the analyse button should be less powerful, and give you a bonus rather than a full tech level for each tech?

Resources. I found this a bit deeper it the thread and I would also like to see limited resoruce production, though probably based on a per turn basis rather than a mineral conVersion basis.

Population immigration. Another idea deeper in the thread that would make sense. Given that alliances between races, particularly trade alliances, would involve these races mingling, it would make sense to see more than one race on a border planet near an ally.

Agreed.

Partial retention of captured race stats. The idea is that a captured race would probably be enslaved for purposes of the owning empire. Certain aspects of the race might not apply under enslavement, and revolts might turn the planet into an independant or back to the hands of the empire the race belonged.

No one (except MM) is quite sure about this, but it is rumoured that captured races have a happiness modifier that makes them prone to rioting and therefore revolt. Still doesn't happen very often though.

The problem with using mounts is that it would not apply infinitely. That is, someone would have to create each individual level, and probably even different modes of miniaturization,

True, but as far as I'm concerned this is just fine. It wouldn't take too long for one of us to mod in a few dozen levels of miniaturisation, but it would probably take up many hours of Aaron's time to hardcode it. The tech tree doesn't have to be infinite, just big enough that no sane person could usefully research it in a real game. That can be modded.

Is there a patch still coming before SEV? I was told by shrapnel that SEV was due mid next year...

I think there probably will be more se4 patches. We certainly haven't heard that there won't be, and patch suggestions to Malfador are still being accepted with a "we'll add it to the to-do list". As for SEV, the release is a long way off yet and is probably subject to a lot of other factors, including (but not limited to=-) the success/ failure of the impending 3D combat thing.