Yay more stuff! 
1) Yes. Yes please.
2) I'd love that, but through my recent thread it seems people without DLCs have the parts stripped away, which sucks, and people might not be willing to see too many gaps in a shipset. Silly system which restricts modding creativity.
3) Definitely! The Fulgar had such a cool style in the way there was this old-timey edge to their otherwise high-tech ships, to have that sort of style gone full retro would be epic. Even if that was one of my shipset ideas 
4) Awesome, I had started to presume they got recycled between the Tiamat and Zerhan, glad they're not.
5) Cool. Little fix updates are subtle but useful. Mixed in with a whole new version is especially good.
I am hoping they don't totally redo the starbase system, but at least the xml side of things might change. At any rate I've noticed more and more 'cargo stations' sneaking in, and I'd suggest keeping up making those models or something like them, so you won't need to make them all in one go when your idea has the go-ahead.
Two things I would highly recommend are tweaking the starbase sound (just choose between what's there. I already have the sounds memorised so I can put them on a faction without loading up the game to check; Iridium is liquidy and reminds me of a laboratory, Krynn is spooky, Yor is digital and so on) and secondly the shipyards.
Shipyards are a great thing to change because they're more simplistic than ships, you don't need to animate to make it fit, they require just one model to be added to the shipset, and they're also a huge factor on how different the faction feels. After all you start the game with a shipyard right there.
Edit: When I made my personal race, the Talix Supremacy, I spent like 5 minutes on a huge ship template and set it as shipyard. It's quick and gives a permanent boost to uniqueness.
Anyway, good luck with the new stuff, I have nothing else to say so yeah x3