Here's something that IMHO would help SE5 appeal to a broader audience...
Since the combat's going to be realtime anyway, wouldn't it be cool to have
multiplayer realtime combat in LAN and TCP/IP games?
Imagine the kinds of things you could do with the Furball games - a constant slugfest where
you actually control the ships! Don't you think that would attract at least a bit of the RTS crowd? (And since SE5 will be fully moddable, those of us who prefer a more strategic game can always slow down the speeds of ships in combat or something so it doesn't turn into a clickfest!
)