*peeks at topic*  Maybe we'll see some of those ideas (including starting research) in one of those micro expansions.  If the rumors about a campaign are true, perhaps we'll see scriptable goodies, events, and other things, with maybe a new bundled editor.  I doubt the devs would want to limit the modding community, so here's hoping some of our ideas makes it into future micro expansions.

Hope you don't have issues with abilities and buffs in your templates.  Since starting research doesn't exist yet (it can, research can be toggled using the developer exe, it's only matter of a dev coding research options in a future patch), you'll probably have to be more choosy about what ships you'll add.  I've not tried adding a nova cannon to any of my maps, cause it relies on an ability that may or may not  be available without necessary research, though I wouldn't put one of those end game cannons at the start of a map anyway.