IMT Host Coding Change Requests

Minor Changes

No natives except Chups will willingly join IMT Bases.
Immune to Boarding Lasers. That's the personnel-killing effects, not the damage to the hull, and it does not stop enemies boarding.
IMT colonist guests count as crew when IMT ships are boarded. (ie, in the boarding code).
Can breed in space, including ships. (Like CoM, race 111)
Mech type 3 (Driller Killer) mines ore like a Bird (race 103) Plasmatron (i.e. Bird type 2 mech.)
Master.exe needs to be tweaked so that Chupanoids are definitely not found on the IMT homeworld. (Just like Insects don't appear on UEA homeworld at startup.)

Chupanoid mercenaries

Chupanoids join IMT bases and become troops according to a supplied VB algorithm
Troops may mutiny and become free troops according to a supplied VB algorithm

IMT Assault Pods appear to be Wreckage Pods to other players!

The purpose of this is so you can set the pod to "Board Enemy Ship" to capture it. Enemies collecting pods for fuel, etc find a horde of Chup Mercenaries boarding and eating the crew - much like the film "Alien".
The best thing about this is that it will only burn greedy players. They could quite easily blow the pods away. This is a semi defense against parasite races. Suggest that the "Wreckage Pods" apear to be filled with:

Int(RND*200) fuel
Mod(Int(RND*1000)-200) ord
Int(RND*50) Duranium
Int(RND*75)Repair

Spindizzy device and moving planets

The Spindizzy ship pulls co-located vessels and planets using the Spindizzy at any speed, including with Gravitonic Accelerators. This includes neutral and enemy ships, Wings, asteroid belts (ie some IMT bases), defensive assault pod clouds round the planet etc. Basically, the Spindizzy allows you to to anything which is normally towable plus Wings and planets with bases on them. (So not Jumpgates, stars, etc.)
Only IMT can use Spindizzies. (Makes planet moving a rare and wondrous thing.)
The Spindizzy device can be thought of as a moving gravity well which moves with the spindizzy ship. As it moves along, anything at the same x,y co-ords falls along with it. This simulates "multi-tow" or the fact that a planet could have other ships in orbit, etc. Thus a single Spindizzy ship can tow an entire fleet and planet.
Considering combat, we have to be careful that mobile planetlike objects can still be attacked, e.g. by long range World Crushers. And simply treating the planets as Objects may be awkward if people try to ground assault them en route. These issues are probably best resolved by Beta Testing to find out if they really are problems.
Suggest that spindizzies stop working when planet is within 4 LY of another, or a star. Reason: in densely packed star regions, like say planets within 3LY of each other (transporter range), pods and stuff often land on the wrong planet. Also, it avoids the issue of smashing planets into each other, which would be an unstoppable weapon. So we say the gravitational fields interact with the spindizzy field and it conks out, needs resetting next turn.
Mobile planets and minefields: mobile planets are massive enough that it is probably best to say they, and the bases on them, are not affected by mine hits. However, the ship doing the towing is vulnerable, and so are normal ships being towed, and Web minefields will bring an IMT fleet to a stop.