I am hoping there is an edit out there that lends itself to a long running game, but is fairly balanced for blues and reds. Meaning reds can make more money for all of the setup they have to do to cash, etc (like in a stock game).

Aliens - sure why not.
Ships - stock - or only very slight gold tweaks
Corp size 3-5

Now, if that exists, is there a host willing to start one up fresh for me and my work buddies?

Thanks

you can try the half-stock game on my server (stock mbbs with half cit times) - or even revstock is pretty well balanced (if i do say so myself) and tends to go long running depending on the quality spread among the active players (i.e. elite corp vs. noob corp = short game i don't care what the edit is, assuming >250 turns per day). also, i'm not entirely sure, but you might check out cherokee's epoch4 edit. i might have it up on my server right now, but i'm not sure.

Quality spread... lol. Not bad. Skill spread? Keytime spread? hrm

The two Ice9 building games tend to last a very long time... 10 months or so.

eeh. 10 months. well if you want that kind of duration, go for truce blue games. however, i did read "balanced" which implies at least some combat.

Oh there is combat rev... I get tons of email from noobs complaining about it, so I know it is there

hehe