I took the reduced nebula mod and reduced it to about 1/4 of what that was.  I now have nice dark galactic backgrounds where most of the map colors show very nicely and I have a hint of nebulae off in the visual distance.  Very evocative.

Unfortunately, none of this works in MP, because you can't have mods. Every session of MP is a crapshoot as to whether I will actually be able to read the map without moving it back and forth to get some of the darker spaces behind the ships I am moving at the moment.  It is indeed a great pain in the eyeballs.

Really good thought, but no.  I am already using more mods and modding than I have for any other game ever.  I am also remembering why I did more interviewing of network programmers than actual programming. I hate debugging!  I am not ready to take on core game files for a cosmetic enhancement just yet.