But I still think it's a bad idea to allow level designers to use any bitmap as a background.
Well, since currently you can create custom objects with the style editor anyway, and since you can also use any bitmap as part of the terrain, seems to me there's already plenty of other ways to create confusion that it hardly matters whether the background can be an arbitrary bitmap. Also, isn't there currently already an option to mark objects as fake?
I also don't like the idea of other skills, at least not initially. If people want to program their own skills, fine, but I don't think it should feel too much like Tribes or even Clones.
Well, for the record I'm more in league with Dragonslover over additional skills. After all, you don't have to use them in your levels if you don't like them.
Though Essman already mentioned here sometime ago that, the plan is to provide support for additional skills, but he won't be programming any himself.