I am wondering why the Designer Mode was not a fundamental part of the game like Spacemaster Mode? The argument that you can screw up the game really does not wash. If you did make a mistake, all you would lose is the current game your playing or worse , you would have to reinstall the game. This is no big deal. On other games like CIV IV, HOI2, RTW, Space Empires IV, you have direct access to the game data files in if you make changes that shut the game down, it is no big deal.