nice to hear you like it!
well, the late-game control aspects aren't optimised yet, the grouping idea is quite cool, don't know however if MFC classes allow for that but again, I'm not really an experienced programmer in that respect. The BotE code btw. can be downloaded at bote.codeplex.com (it is done in cpp with MS VS 2008 and MFC 8). Maybe if you want to have a look at it and suggest changes or even better change the code directly
.That way one could also group all systems currently on auto-build (if you don't know already, just clicking on a system in the view there and pressing A on the keyboard activates system auto-governor). Don't know if it would also be a good idea to allow to switch through grouped systems in system build menu view with keyboard cursor buttons respectively xtra mouse buttons. Currently you can only switch through all systems you have without further differentiation.
Intel is quite like botf, we just improved it by adding depots for your intel points generated on your databanks / intel buildings. So you can save up points to coordinate for a larger attack / espionage attempt. There are also special sabotage attempts to be conducted on previously espionaged items in the espionage report list. One thing botf also missed.