A man can dream... I enjoy watching the game as much as I do playing it.
You gave me an idea too. I remember there were xp-locked buildings and features of the game to help with entry level. That was the wrong approach to narrow the complexity of the game for beginners. Now we have a campaign to help with introduction.
Looking at Dota2 (another very complex game) there is a game mode where you're limited to much fewer ~12(?) easy to use champions. I wonder if similar gamemode queue for zero-k would be useful where a lot of complex/gameending stuff is disabled and like 4 factories are left.
I'd say the factories being: Rovers, Cloakies, Planes, Hovercrafts and Spiders.
Most of special buildings tab disabled leaving Radar and Cornea.
From economy disabled: Fusion and Singu (maybe pylon as well).
From defense disabled: Faraday, Gauss, Aegis, Artemis, Thresher, Lucifer, Desolator, Urchin, Newton.
From listed factories disabled: Dominatrix, Claymore, Widow, maybe Scythe.
It could be called lob... lobs... lobotomized zero-k!