Steve,
I'm thrilled that you love it so far! It is definitely a labor of love, and we are doing our best to keep things as close to the feel of the source material (real life robot combat) as we can. Three members of our team try to compete in robot combat competitions when we can, so we all have tremendous respect for the people who do it at the highest level.
We would like to get more bots in the game, but this is, of course, time dependent. We are still working on the core game, and will add robots when we are satisfied with it.
I am pretty confident that we can do 4 robots. 6 robots should be doable too. I have a "magic mobility" physics system in testing that can handle up to 12 robots, but I would prefer to not use it, as it sacrifices fidelity and flexibility.
Timers are coming -- probably in the first closed Beta. Having timed matches is kind of key. Cosmetics will fall under the category of "last minute polish", once the rest of the game is working well. Hopefully there will be a LOT of polishing before launch.
We are working on the GDD document right now to flesh out the types of matches, and having different match types is definitely something we are thinking about.
Our audio guy perked right up when you mentioned having an in-game commentator. I'll let him run with that. :)
Thank you for all of the great feedback, and we will do our best to make you proud!
-Chris