What would it be like to play a game of GalCiv 2 with no beam weapons in the game? No? How about one with only basic engines? Maybe play with no ship defenses of any kind?

My idea:
Add some attributes to the tech tree items that can be used to create simple "custom game type" rules. For instance, a Type IV Phaser may have some attributes like this:
Major Tech Type: weapon
Minor Tech Type: beam
Tech Refinement Level: 4

Or a Research Complex may have attributes like this:
Major Tech Type: building
Minor Tech Type: research
Tech Refinement Level: 3

You get the idea. The more detailed the attributes you provide, the more we could customize our "game type" selection. Don't want any research buildings with a refinement level above level 1 in your game? No problem. Everyone will be stuck with Basic Labs for the whole game, and research will crawl. Think Star Trek is lame? You can ditch all the beam weapons in the game and allow only ballistics and missiles.

I don't know if it is too late to put something like this in, because I don't know if your AI could handle this type of change intelligently. If it can, however, I'm sure the modders would love you for this.

-PC