So I have been playing this darn game for a while now and I thought I'd share a little common wisdom to maybe keep things interesting for you that are bored with either playing metaverse (snooze) or spending hours remaking the whole game that you WILL NEVER FINISH.
-Increase the logisitics tree to unholy numbers. I found that having immense fleets makes space battle so much more fun to watch.
-Increase HP to counter balance a high logistics level. I usually do 1000% of the standard hp. This will also make the random variable of weapons and defense come out a little more even.
-Add defense bonuses and weapon bonuses to the tech tree. This way one doesn't spend hours going through componet list trying to balance what is already pretty well done. I like to have a few jihaad races like the rebel alliance and brotherhood of nod, that get really nice weapon buff but less overall HP and defense (high logistics means that even laser five can own an entire enemy fleet, tenatively. The borg usually get nearly innumerable HP and an instant repair rate (usually +600% to repair spread along their Yor energy stalks techs).
-Delete Doom Rays and blackhole weapons entirely, almost. Its really fun to just have one race allotted the doom ray and do away with the others. Also, you can delete as far back as you want to make it more trekkie or starwarsy or avatary to your discretion. I prefer trekkie because its at the end of the trees and allows for steady weapons buffs for offense driven races.
-Economy is just annoying to me in this game so I generally give myslef a significant economy boost to get through the begining. This is CHEATING only if you dont tke it away by adding an equal and opposite subtraction, I figure that extreme colonization or governments are the best things to bring the economy back down to "historic" levels. (Use a negative sign and then the amount you originally added.)
-MAKE TRADE MATTER. I am so tired of hearing people whine in astonishment that trade isn't a bigger part of the economy and game. Add maybe 1000% to trade and you dont even need an econ boost. Also add a unique strategy to defending your routes or facing economic doom at the hands of pirates. (300% usually does the trick but adding more routes can slow turns loading time so I would only double or triple those.)
-Use TA's ship style editor to make enemies like the jihaading rebellion use smaller ships in the endgame. This is a little complicated to some. One must make a normal ship style for them (see a post some is doing about how to do that) and then go in the .xml and switch some of the fighter/attacker names with the frigates and battleships. AI planets building late game ships will think an X-wing is a light destroyer, or Calamarian Battleship if have that much time on your hands to make one, and produce hundreds of them in massive and agressive fleets. This can work in reverse if you are inlcined to want a massive ship only race but you'd better make sure they get the tech early or they wont survive the early game militarization.
-With all of these new upgrades it becomes necessary to up the AI advantage to full stats of econ and inteligence, just to keep up with you. Since you can colony rush as fast as them, assuming you are not a troll and get trade early on.
I have been making little adjustments like these since I started playing and everytime its gets more and more fun, both to play the next time and to think of a new modification.
Let me know how you guys have been adjusting things or if you have questions on how I implement these additons.
