MayorOfSmashville63

Probably too late now but yeah, stopping or destroying the aurora veil helps a lot.

I've played waaay too much Pokémon, so I like to think I have a good idea of which ones need a little help, and what they need to stand out more (or at least be useful a little longer; can't make Mightyena on par with Garchomp without breaking things). Generally I try to make changes that make some sense, or fit in with the mon's theme - no Flamethrower Butterfrees or Multiscale on things that don't have scales.
As a general rule I don't nerf things unless they're something I buffed too much, so everything will be at least as good as it is in vanilla games. There's a lot of stuff that should be nerfed in vanilla, but I won't do it in IE.
Yep lots of gen 8 mons will be getting buffed. Eldegoss, Boltund and Grapploct to name a few.

There are lots of sets that Altaria and Golurk can run, the best set for each depends on what your team needs.

Either Giga Drain or Energy Ball for Vileplume IMO; I'd prefer Giga Drain most of the time. Yep IE will work on real hardware! The Pokémon sprites might look a bit dull or washed out on it though, they're intended for modern screens.

Shift is probably a better introduction; it definitely makes things a lot easier, but you do get slightly less exp as a trade off (a mon switched out by a shift mode switch won't "see" the opponent, so it misses out on exp it would have earned on set mode). For caps you can choose whatever sounds good to you, but trainer levels scale based on your strongest mon, so you might want more caps to make it easier to keep your team trained evenly.

Togekiss and Mega Beedrill! Not a big fan of the Gigantamax designs but Grimmsnarl and Hatterene are alright.

Yep, I've got Swanna, Zebstrika and Parasect megas in the works so gen 5 won't miss out so much. Gen 6 and 7 don't have any yet though.

I'm not planning to add any more megas for starters; most of them were given significant buffs instead, so they don't really need them. And yep! Terrain backgrounds are temporarily disabled due to a bug, but they'll be back for the next release.

No worries!

You can check the docs for that, there's no point in me repeating myself over and over when that information is readily available. Yep Strength Sap is a very good move on almost everything that learns it!

Nope, not something I'm interested in adding.

Changing a nature affects existing stats, no need to level up. Generally you want IVS to be 31 on everything except special attackers and slow trick room mons - those want zero attack and speed respectively. As for EVs, pick two stats and max them out. Generally you choose which stats based on what you want the mon to do; just be sure to prioritise speed for fast attackers and HP for most defensive or slow Pokémon. As for Oddish you'll just have to play the game to find out! Enemy trainers can't use items, but their Pokémon can still have held items.

I don't have an answer for anything to do with release dates beyond what's in the FAQ - it's there for a reason! Normal mode should be fine; if you find yourself struggling you can always slap some basic EV spreads on your team and they'll have a much easier time against the AI's untrained mons. I'd suggest having a few type advantages against the early gyms to make things a little easier, or grab the in game trade mons - they're there just to help out against the gyms. G-max Cinderace won't be included because the base form is so strong and the design doesn't translate well into a gba sprite.

Thanks! Yep some of them will be. I don't have any plans to add an easy mode at this time.