It's not the stock settings that people won't play so much as some of the old school settings. Some of these problem areas are:
1) Cits take WAY too long to develop considering the modern ways to cash and map the universe.
2) Planet production is just not right for todays style of play. (Need at least 1 planet that produces equipment = to how the O type planet produces organics)
3) If you up planets you also must up ships slightly. (at least the moth ship)
4) Time limits and turn limits are almost a must in anything close to stock settings. (Hopefully the time thing will be fixed soon)

It would be really nice if the sysops were able to introduce new ships and planets on a time basis.

Examples:
1 tpw Grid ship = Available on day 2
Twarp Colt = Available on day 3
Red Starship = Available on day 7
Large Moth Ship = Available on day 14

Would also be nice if maybe we had these options to provide longer games and longer building time:
Photons = N/A until day 3
Eprobes = N/A until day 6

There is currently no way to disable eprobes, is there?

Another way to discourage probes is to make them very expensive. Not sure what is the cap for the max price, but I heard it was low enough that players would buy them anyways. I also heard for the beta that JP raised the max price for a single probe. So if a sysop can edit a probe cost to be like $100K, that can get expensive to fire several hundred probes.

This seems like a new school edit. None of those options have ever been available. Just bang a default game, thats old school.

And have it sit pretty much vacant with 2 players in the game and both get deleted because of inactivity after 30 days. LOL

It's not the stock settings that people won't play so much as some of the old school settings.

Planets should never move faster than ships, period.

I must be ready to pass out from heat exhaustion but I tend to agree with Cruncher, I never understood the planet faster than ship thing... telepad YES entire planet NO.