I'm glad you enjoyed it! Hacking colosseum was quite challenging considering the mechanics and pokemon availability are so different from other games. Also, there is the fact that nobody else had ever made a colo hack (at least not publicly) so there wasn't much to compare to. There is definitely a lot to learn from where mausoleum lacked slightly.
In terms of the shadow pokemon distribution, it's actually something I struggled with a lot since there are so few slots available and so many legendaries that they just ended up getting piled up at the end. It's hard putting them earlier (especially legendaries without preevolutions) because they tend to tear through cpu teams and make the game far too easy. They also don't encourage diversity in player teams. Every time anyone played through the games they would be far more likely to use the same few pokemon. At least from my experience of the game, I often found myself torn between different team compositions. On the flip side of things, if high BST pokemon appear earlier, that pushes some of the lower BST pokemon later in the game. For a lot of pokemon, if they are encountered near the end they become really irrelevant and are too late to be considered.
I really liked the idea of being to change your team constantly through the playthrough, rather than sticking to the same few pokemon because they're already high levelled. This is why I put a particular emphasis on mt.battle as that is the best way to grind. It means that the player should be able to enjoy grinding a little bit more and be able to update their team through the playthrough without fear of being under levelled. It's really great to see that people are responding well to the updated mt. battle.
The AI problem is something I hadn't foreseen and hadn't done much research on the different AIs available. It's quite a shame because some of the trainers have really innovative move sets but just spam one move.
The items is a result of a lack of research atm. The only way I was able to introduce new/different items was through giving held items to shadow pokemon. I still haven't even found where the poke mart data is stored but I should probably take another look now that more research has been done.
These are all things I'll be hoping to improve in !
Thanks for the feedback. )