Update 3.4:

1. The Kushan are balanced up with the other races. They’re strong at rushing at the beginning, then get weaker as the other races start getting their dreadnaughts and upgrades. There’s a lot of interesting strategies that you can try with all of the fast units and sub-space ships.

2. Sub-Space Dynamo upgrade for the Kushan corvettes: Science division has developed a generator which taps into the stellar winds found in sub-space. This allows small sturdy ships to enter sub-space without being individually equipped with a dimensional scalpel. Unlocks stealth corvettes.

3. The Taiidan have totally cool looking green ion beams now! It takes a little getting used to, but they grow on you. =D Besides, the Taiidan and the Hiigarans can’t have the same ion beams. That doesn’t make any damn sense.

4. The Multi-Beam Dreadnaught now has stylish purple ion beams and a neato new muzzle flash.

5. Some more AI and balancing tweaks, but it seems to be working really well.

6. Got the Taiidan AI shipyard out of the build menu.

7. Might not have noticed, but there was a bug where ships would try to shoot the drones of the drone frigate, which was making the Kushan too butch. Fixed it.

If anybody notices any problems, please let us know – enjoy!

08.09.2019:
poop - I just saw that Makaan's Revenge's missiles aren't going for new targets like they used to. A fix is on the way. Gonna to get the Vaygr Destroyer and BC to shoot to the side while changing positions while I'm at it because they're too easy to flank.

Update 3.3:

Fixed the problem with the Taidan AI Shipard. It was causing a repeating error message on some computers, but not for everybody.

If anybody has techincal problems, please let us know! Thanks!

26.08.2019:

The Kushan are totally OP! Working on balancing them right now ;-)

Update 3.2:

The retailation times sucked in that last one. This one seems to work well in skirmish, but just like before, we'll have to try it a couple of times in MP to see if it causes problems.

Let me know if anybody runs into trouble with it - thanks!

23.08.2019:
Just saw that there's a repeating error message on some computers because of a file that doesn't work that pretty much makes the game unplayable. Sorry! Will update ASAP!

Update 2.9 - 3.1:

So, I’ll write a real description for the last couple of updates, some things kind of got changed in between anyway:

1. The AI has been improved some more. Sorry about all the changes, but it really takes a long time to do the test games to see which version of the AI works better. I have to say though, it’s kind of fun just to set some CPU players up to fight each other, then blow yourself up as soon as the game starts and watch them duke it out! It’s a lot more relaxing than playing a real game because you don’t care who wins and you really have time to take a close look at everything.

2. The Taiidan CPU players are on par with the Hiigarans and the Vaygr now. The AI was balanced on Bishop difficulty setting with no research or unit bonuses, 3 vs 3 on Return to Sarum Light, with. So, on a different map or with different settings one might be a little better than the other, but it’s definitely not like it was before, that the HW1 guys would pretty much always lose in the end against the HW2 guys.

We’ll do the Kushan next, but then everybody should be evened up! I haven’t really tested them in this update, but they got the same bonuses as the Taiidan, so they shouldn’t be as crappy as before anyway, but the CPU controller isn’t completely tailored to use their strengths yet like the other ones are.

3. The HW1 guys have a 40% build speed upgrade for human players. We got rid of all of the build speed upgrades for the CPU players, because the bonuses for the difficulty settings should totally be enough. If you guys think they're too easy now, let us know and if enough people want them, we'll put them back in.

4. The CPU HW1 players have a shipyard that only they can build with two build slots. It should actually be too much, but testing shows that they needed it to keep up with the HW2 guys. Anyway, it’s shown in the build tree, but you can never build it. We’ll get it out of there once we figure out how to do it.

5. The range on weapons for Makaan’s Revenge have been reduced slightly. It could hang back behind the rest of the fleet and snipe its opponents down to smoldering space junk. Now it has to get all up in your face to kick your butt. Still not 100% satisfied with it’s controller, but it’s kind of fun because it makes it a little bit easier to outmaneuver it.

6. The Taiidan Heavy Corvette has the Mine Cannon now: Far too unstable to be mounted on a more valuable vessel, the Mine Cannon has proven itself to most effective in tipping the balance of large scale battles in our glorious emperor’s favor.

The AI also really starts cranking them out when they start losing the battle on frigates! But now everybody has a totally dangerous corvette except for the Kushan, so they probably need something good too.

7. The Hiigaran dreadnaught’s main gun beam gets dropped from being drawn a lot when the game starts getting too full. So there’s a smaller beam inside of it now then usually gets drawn, and if you look really close, a blue targeting beam has been added as well so that you know which ship it’s gonna blast into the next dimension (and becasue it looks cool).

8. I’ve noticed that the AI does more stupid stuff if there are a lot of ships in the game at once. So, if the AI is acting like a freaking moron, try using the next smaller unit cap setting. I don’t think we can make the ship controllers act too much better than they already are. And it seems like the AI gets stupid before the game starts to really slow down because it can’t draw fast enough.

9. The Multi-Beam Dreadnaught will turn broadside to let corvettes have it. In combination with Particle Lance Defenses – deadly!

10. The Heavy Corvettes for both HW1 races are much more effective against other corvettes. Before they were kind of set up to kill fighters, but the Multi-gun Corvettes take care of that already.

11. The HW1 resource collection has been increased slightly.

12. The number of Heavy Destroyers in the Kushan starting fleets has been reduced a little bit.

13. Carriers, Shipyards and the Mothership get targeted later than in the last update. The AI was just running past your fleet to kill them sometimes, and although that strategy can be effective sometimes, it’s pretty lame.

14. Dreadnaughts get targeted a lot sooner by the ship controllers. So, ships concentrate fire on them to get rid of them sooner, especially Makaan’s Revenge.

15. The look of the Explosive Ammunition had been updated so that you can see when the Gunships have been updated more easily.

16. Added a note asking people to like the mod in the start up screen because apparently gamers are totally like-cheap! =D

I kind of think everything else from other updates is clear from the short descriptions. Have fun!

Same thing, I'll write a real description in a little bit:
- AI is working better, finally got big stuff to ignore the crap out of little stuff
- build speed upgrades for the HW1 races

I'll write a real description in a little bit, but:
-better AI
-mine cannon for the Taiidan Heavy corvette
-speed upgrades for the Kushan frigates
- no resources option in game setup
- HW1 heavy corvettes do miore damage against corvettes

Crud - a fix is on the way ;-D

Update 2.8:

1. Finally happy with the AI! Had to redo all the ship controllers and targeting logic, but this one plays really well in skirmish. We’ll have to see how it works in Multiplayer, but I bet it’ll be pretty good.

a. The automatic targeting is different now to get better distribution of fires, so frigates shoot frigates first, destroyers shoot destroyers first, etc.

b. It was a grade-A pain in the butt to make battleships not get distracted by fighters and corvettes, but it works pretty well now. In the original game you could just keep sending little crap at a battlecruiser that was by itself, and the dumbbell would just sit there trying to shoot stuff that he can’t really kill anyway. You can still do it a little bit, but they scan for better targets a lot more often and much further out.

c. Big ships will sometimes try to make a rush for enemy shipyards and the mothership now if they’re gonna die anyway.

d. The AI breaks off sections of a fleet to go find a different target sometimes during a big battle instead of throwing everything he has at one location.

e. The AI compares targets that are further away than in the normal game, so no more screening battlecruisers with a bunch of stupid expendable frigates!

f. The retaliation times might be a little bit longer than before sometimes, but I haven’t seen a ship get completely forgotten by both sides in this version like the original game did sometimes. I think there’s a list of which ship thinks at what time, and the list could get too long before, so that the timer would start over again before it went through every single ship. If a ship got pushed to the bottom, where the time would always reset the order to the top, sometimes it would never get readded and it was like it wasn’t in the game anymore. (is what I think) Anyway, that timer is longer now so sometimes the ships take longer than I would like to realize that they’re being flanked in a really big game, but the game still plays well, and it’s better than having some totally expensive ship just sitting there like a total loser. This was tested in fleet size MP+, so it might still happen if you’re playing a really big game.

2. Fixed the upgrade for the Taiidan Dreadnaught.

3. Racing Engines cost 3000 space bucks instead of 4500 because, come on man, they’re just corvettes.

Update 2.7:

1. Particle Lance Defenses for the Taiidan Dreadnaught! A gift from the Vaygr to The Emperor in honor of his most royal highness’s 550th year of rule, the Particle Lance Beams were fitted to the flanks of the Taiidan Dreadnaught in order to clear battlefields of attacking corvettes.

2. Still trying to get the AI to fight better, but after doing some more testing, I see that this one is pretty dumb. I’ll try to get a fix done over the next couple days.

Update 2.6:

1. The Targeting Beams on the upgraded Laser Corvettes go really far now, so you can see which ship is being targeted long in advance. (AND it looks totally cool).

2. The Racing Engine upgrade for the Laser Corvettes doesn’t reduce their health anymore. They’re kind of brittle as it is, and you could only use them after the upgrade if you were playing alone and pausing all the time to dock them. In MP the upgrade was useless. Therefore, it costs 4500 space bucks now.

Update 2.5:

1. Explosive Ammunition upgrade for the Hiigaran Gunship: In order to counteract the increasing threat by Singularity Bombers and Sub-Space Fighter-Bombers, Science Division has developed a high-volume autocannon capable of firing highly explosive ammunition.

2. Composite Amor upgrade for the Vaygr Missile Corvette: Lightweight alloys of metallic polymers and high performance ceramics allow the damage resistance of the Missile Corvette to be increased by 100%.

3. Racing Engine upgrade for the Vaygr Laser Corvette: Engines confiscated from raids against illegal asteroid races allows the Laser Corvette to achieve speeds comparable to those of a fighter, however this instable technology reduces damage capacity by 20%.

4. Targeting Beam upgrade for the Vaygr Laser Corvette: With the addition of the Targeting Beam Ballistic Calculator, the full power of the Laser Corvette can be brought to bear with pinpoint accuracy against any ship larger than a frigate.

5. Bombers do less damage against corvettes.

6. I forgot to mention that Makaan’s Revenge got a cool fade-out death in the last update. Like it was slipping back into the nether. We’re also working on some totally cool sounding undead-Makaan voices for the ship! =D

7. The explosion damage has been reduced to that of a battlecruiser for all big ships because you couldn’t really rush with little stuff without having to worry about pulling them out in time when they blew up somebody’s mothership. The self-destruct damage is unchanged. (I don’t know if you guys noticed it, but you the self-destruct damage is REALLY high in this mod so you can totally ‘spit you last breath at thee.’ Kahn-style right before you die. Or if you prefer, you can stab at thee from hell’s heart.)