Hmm I wouldn't make it too much like a "treasure hunt"... Just a track without an actual road with simple start and finish. Otherwise, people would start to randomly fly around to find things and give it a second try to win the race and it also somehow has that GTA feeling in my opinion^^ You know... Driving around & looking for easter eggs and other interesting stuff.

About the number of opponents... Well the good thing about lots of opponents is that there is much more going on on the road, maybe resulting in more action. But the other hand is that if you have just about 7 opponents and they will always keep the same name, same ship etc. it's much more "personal". Like in career you will always know "Opponent random name here is always a hard nut to crack..."

@Xpand: Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about^^ I hope the programmers in this forum can help you out