I was thinking the other day about research and how it doesnt seem to require any research outside of the science station. I thought it would be interesting to have research ships equiped with a "sensor scan" special weapon to scan nebulas, asteroids, planets, enemy ships etc... the scan would say take 2 mins or so and that then would allow you to research something special, so scanning a nebula that dissables sensors might allow you to research a sensor jamming weapon, or a nebula that cloaks might allow you to research a new cloaking device. I was also thinking it would be nice if perhaps the science ship had to return to a station first to complete the research

It sounds sort of similar to the borgs tech assim beam and their dissasembler station but on a more wide scale, I guess any modder using the patch project would have to be able to specify which ship gets the upgrade and what the upgrades are for each thing scanned.

Sounds really cool! I think it is implementable as well 

Kind of like a shield enhancement of sorts..or a weapon that alters the nebula so that it no longer kills crew...your enemy wouldn't know about it...and therefore would avoid it if he thought it was too dangerous. would make a good place to hide.