Some of those can be modded in:
Weapon system rework - See mods like P&N and Adamant, which have torpedoes with a to-hit bonus.
New unique technology - See Adamant, which has techs like Megafluxer (super powerful shield generator), and Devnull, which has an entire racial tech tree for space monsters!
Faster escorts - Devnull features "corvettes" which do just what you say.
And some mods even feature "quasi-newtonian propulsion", which means that the speed of a ship is proportional not to the NUMBER of engines on it but instead to the RATIO of engines to hull size... so you could theoretically make a speed-24 baseship
but it wouldn't have much firepower due since the engines take up most of the hull; only on smaller ships would it really be practical to fill up the hull with engines (since they're so expensive ton for ton compared to, say, shields)
Re: Requested new features for SE:IV
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