I believe one of the major lacks in GC is a solid scenario editor. GC is a truly epic game and, though is always a pleasure to play it, you always play the same story. Sometimes i really feel i would like not only different major/minor events (and i am not talking about ethical choices) but also the possibility to control them and create my own story or reproduce an existing one. Personally i don't like modding the basic mechanisms of the game, there are a lot of people doing this very well and i always find something that suite my tastes but, if i could, i would be glad to prove myself in creating scenarios. So, my ideas are about events but the discussion is open to everything comes in your mind:

1) Moddable major and minor events.

I can imagine to divide the events in categories (like planetary events, cosmic events, racial events, etc.) and allow modders to choose the quality and effect of a particular event. For example, about planetary events:

a) the planet quality is raised (existing event)
a particular bonus appears on a tile
c) a plague/famine starts on and only on that particular planet (you need to search the cure for the plague/technology to deafeat the famine)
d) the govern of the planet is overthrown by rebels (and all the other possible events similar to the jaggled knives event)
e) the planet gets bonuses/maluses from ancient artifacts
f) the planet explodes/a new habitable planet appears
g) etc...

or cosmic events:

a) birthrate growth, economic growth, pirates etc. (existing events). But, if you think at them like moddable events, for example pirates could become an alien race coming from a far galaxy or a different dimension to destroy and conquer (does it remind you anything?...). The habitable planets event could be a bit more under control and you could choose how many sectors/parsecs it influences etc.
a star explodes and destroys an entire planetary system
c) anomalies appears randomly or in particular places. Anomalies like wormholes could also be stable and allow you to travel many sectors in one move
d) etc...

2) Modders should have the choice to make the events random or make them appear in a particular moment in time. For example a star trek scenario could have fixed events like the occurence of a stable wormhole close to a planet named bejor or the arrival of a very powerful enemy (the borg) in the galaxy.

ok, i'm done. Any ideas?

richard