I think it would be a neat idea to allow sysops to use the internet to join universes
you could have sects compeating, you would get a bigger player base per board for example, take the idea of the jumpgate 1 step farther. have a centeral place where data files are shared and all universies are joined you could say jump to jane doe's server attack and capture ships from john doe's and when the game cycled for the night the ships captured with all modifications would become part of the new server.

the reaon for this idea is the sysop is the "overlord" of his own universe some cheat some dont some are good some are not, this i think would provide a good balance.