Hex editing the executable will most likely make your game not work in multiplayer, and will prevent you from installing patches. Though I do fondly remember doing what you suggest with SE2, renaming the Capital Ship Missles (sic) to Hydrofusion Missiles - I would have called them Thermonuclear Missiles, but I didn't have enough bytes to type out Thermonuclear without overwriting any vital binary data
Ah, the days where you could put a colony module, spaceyard, or CSM on an escort, but then you only had room for one engine (yes they were all the same size

)... I'd love to make an SE2-ism mod for SE4, but unfortunately I don't have the full Version so I don't know what the tech tree (uh, bamboo shoot

) looks like past level 5... anyone have the full Version so they can give me the tech tree and maybe I'll actually get a simple mod done? (yah right

)