This patch really does produce much of the HW1 feel. I'd say all the changes are logical and sensible. Amazingly, you've implemented nearly everything I could ask for. I just noticed that even proximity sensors have guard mode restored!

Reading through the change logs I've noticed you've experimented with passive tactics being the default. The way I see it, on production passive tactics should be applied, but only to repair and salvage ships. Those are the ships you definitely don't want running off in some misguided suicide mission. I can't tell you how many times I say "what the ♥♥♥♥ are you doing" when this happens. No one ever wants these ships to attack, unless there's like 1 enemy scout around. So that's something you might want to consider.

There is only one issue I have with this patch (Oct 8 @ 2:58pm), and that's how it alters the music on a couple of maps. I'd rather this patch leave the music in the game as is, or do it in a separate patch, or make it optional. The maps may also be a tad RU heavy, not sure. I've had a lot good skirmishes that involved limited resources, and limited ships - but don't really experience that on your tweaked maps, even when using the low resource setting.

I love what you've done though fundamentally. Great work.