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Ive gone over what i'd do on irc but i'll post it here.
1 Race (you say its too much work to do for 1 round, but you can simply make each races stats/ships the same)
Shipstats need to be aggressive, possible ST.. to enable solo play rather than requiring people to teamup all the time.
30 minute ticks = 8 week round in 4 weeks, plus 2 attacks a day which means afternoon attacking is now not only viable but necessary.
Minimum Attacking ETA: 10 = 4 hours 30mins for an attack from launch to land.
Minimum Defending ETA: 8 = Attacks show at eta 9, so it will give alliances the standard one hour to find defence.
Galaxy ETA: 4 = Gives galaxys an additional 2 hours to find defence.

With these ETA's, it will keep the traditional time to find defence but also enable the 2 attacks a day.

Prelaunch stays in the game, as attacks are slightly shortend, it will allow people to set there attacks to launch while they're sleeping and they can come online when they wake up, rather than with no prelaunch, if they launch an attack when they're off to bed.. they'll have to wake up 5hours later to check for defence.

Maximum Roid Capture = 15%
Minimum Roid Capture = 5%

With shortend attacks and more aggresive ST style attacks, the cap rate should be lowered to slow the growth of the top planets.

Roid-init formula changed so that the first 300-400 roids are INCREDIBLY cheap but rising sharply after that, to ensure that anyone who gets roided down.. can regrow instantly.

Alliances in the game, at whatever the tag limit is now. Cant expect alliances to restructure for a mini-round but the amount of planets contributing to score is lowered to 40.

An interesting variation would be to return to metal = the resource to init any type of roid (i presume its a easy thing to change) and then lower the init costs by 3rd. Keep the startup resources as they are but have the starting ships cost crystal/eonium (with no metal) and a ship which counters them which costs metal (so those that init less roids, will have more of the counter ship to go roiding).

With this, Finance Centres commented out of the game and only mines. This is due to shipstats having a massive variety in the amount of resources they require (one ship might not even need metal, while some might not need crystal) etc. So you have to compensate what ships you intend to build with the mines you build. Increase the amount of resources mines bring in by 100%.

Galaxy setup is roughly the same as now. Buddy Packs increased to 6 players and random is the same as usual. (ideally, id love to remove the galaxy exile option, so that only planets can exile themselves but presume that would be too much coding).

Free round with no upgrades.

No defined length except a 'Maximum length (if need be). So that if the round turns out to be dominated and crappy, you have the option to end it and do something else. With 30 minute ticks and two attacks a day, it will allow alliances which are alot more active to pull away quicker if they are organised properly.. So you'll want the option to cut the round short if an alliance pulls away. However, with aggressive shipstats and fast ticks, it should be easier for the lower alliances to successfully block against them.

No Christmas themes except the ship names, anything else would be far too tacky. DEFINATLY NO SNOW FALLING OVERLAY GRAPHICS. the name of the round should be something which clearly states this is a fun/mini/christmas round rather than a proper round and the portal page should clearly express that this is not the normal game.

Multihunters get the round off as a break they deserve. No warnings or closures for anything other than blatent multying/farming/abuse. As knowing what they're like, they will likely rename or close any planet which is christmas themed as it can be offensive to those who dont celebrate it.