I'll definitely check it out. The idea of an EFS that can be patched and improved over time (rather than just modded) is very appealing. I've always wished for things like sect and Church elections to matter but there's just no way to do that in EFS1.4. Is there any intention of implementing AI for this down the road?
I implemented the first prototype symbiot AI last january. Symbiot AI is the easiest since their prime directive is just breed and conquer. That did not fly far, I cut too many corners when I made it, but then again the intent is to build the AI's incrementally, gathering experimental data as you go. The things I concentrated on with the first generation AI were how to recon enemy positions (the Phoenix AI obeys the same visibility rules as the human players, or at least that's the plan ...) and how to organize raiding parties from continent to continent and planet to planet. The second generation AI needs to know how to concentrate forces and how to better deal with PTS among other things. Air forces, navies and space battles were also not considered yet. Orbital traffic jams are a nuisance when moving large fleets around with the AI.
One of the reasons I agreed to join this game was that I'd finally get some PBEM experience, I mean it would be preposterous to try implement PBEM without playing any real PBEM games (although it takes me too much time do my turns), I just was not sure if I'd fancy slow turnaround and PvP, but it's been fun so far (well, no one's kicked my ass yet) ... and most of the old strategies which did work against the EFS1.4 AI didn't work against my dear cousins
the new strategies will be considered when implementing Phoenix AI ... and some features of the game which I had not used much were suddenly important (and have been subsequently given greater implementation priority) such as "Archives"->"City Info" which is now under construction for Phoenix-0.52, and it should be possible to set build queues and goto city from there so it should be more useful.
Also, for vertab nukks, more stuff than in EFS1.4 should be moddable via ini-files.