Hey KlausD, welcome
I'll try to answer at least some of your points... maybe some of the other team members can fill in the gaps...
Modern screen resolutions: Yeah, I'm doing development on a 1600x900 screen, and we're trying to keep the game playable on as wide a variety of resolutions as possible, by using self-scaling UI elements, as opposed to fixed-size ones like in SE4 and SE5.
Big universe: I'm not sure what direction Ken has in mind for this, but my personal opinion is big universes lead to long, drawn-out games that get boring after a while due to the insane amounts of empire management required... Not to say we can't support them for folks who do like that sort of thing, but I really don't know what the plans are at the moment
Several FTL methods: Yes, we're planning on having warp or jump "zones" in each system (enter the zone and engage the jump drive, and you start zipping off to another system with no way to command the ship until it arrives), but we also plan on having some sort of hyperdrive which allows ships to travel faster than light without being restricted by jump zones.
Turn-based tactical combat: Whether tactical combat will be turn-based or real-time is still up in the air, but if it is real-time then it's likely that it will be pausable with the option to auto-pause every so often so you get the best of both worlds.
Ground combat: I'm not sure about that really...
Carriers: Seems pretty likely; carriers and fighters can really be thought of as an extension of the fleeting system, after all - fighters would just have coordinates in space relative to their carrier, just like a ship in a fleet would have coordinates relative to the fleet's coordinates in the universe.
Economic rules: Again, not really sure
Moddability: Oh, yeah, you're gonna love this
We're defining mods as sets of XML files, and we've even got Python (well, IronPython) integrated for scripting! No arcane SE5-style script language... and I created a "script debugging console" which you'll be able to pop up in-game if your scripts are acting up
Simple graphics: Yeah, graphics are definitely going to be 2D sprites... no 3D required