Fallout

since i usually load up hundreds of mods.

If I could get a handful of engine improvements from Bethesda -- and maybe they've already done this somewhere on the path to Starfield -- one ask would be improvements in mod loading time. Like, do whatever computation or sanity-checking or index-building the engine needs to do, and then cache it on disk and only regenerate it if the list of active mods changes or the version of the game has changed since last launch. Just check whether file size/modification types have changed; that should be pretty fast.

Maybe provide some hook for content that has to run immediately for mods that modify game mechanics, maybe provide time-profiling on that to mod creators.