While I could write a parser/formatter/simple object model for this lot easy enough, as the game already has it built in (and perhaps your build tool chain does too), can I suggest that it be made available in some form - source, .NET assembly, mono dll or whatever works for you? I am guessing you have implemented it as a standard deserializer judging from errors I get when I provoke a fault. I am hoping you might have a companion serializer as well. Anyone else implementing this would have to spend time reverse engineering format, debugging etc, possibly screwing up someones game etc and this seems to be the current most common method of modding, then if such an API were to be made available, then I am sure the payback to you would be a bunch of useful community tools built around it that would help everyone and thus be worth your time and effort in making it available. Im sure everyone would be happy knowing mods/tools were all using the same well tested parser and formatters for this I am of course assuminig such is not already available and I havnt just missed it when poking around.
I haven't made a nuget package out of it yet, but maybe you'll take a look https://github.com/GitHub-TC/EmpyrionScripting/tree/master/EcfParser
