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.)

Update 2.4:

1. The updated AI is fixed.

2. The Reflex Pulsar Cannon is a lot more powerful.

Update 2.3:

1. Lots of changes to the collision and ship controllers to make the big ships fight better. Tired of seeing an expensive Battlecruiser collecting dust deep behind enemy lines? Me too! There should also be a lot less traffic jams with the AI players, and they should do less stupid stuff. You’d best beware, human… =D

2. Debris and salvage have been changed to speed the game up. Every ship only creates one chunk of space-crap when it dies because the computer was having trouble getting around that steaming pile of… ‘stuff’ during huge battles and it was slowing the game down after a while. That one piece of space-crap is worth a lot more though, because if you’ve got time to do savaging in this mod, then you should be rewarded, yo!. ;-)

3. The turret of the Higaaran and Taiidan Dreadnaught cleans house now because the ship was too directional for the AI to really use effectively. The cost of the ships has been increased to reflect this.

4. The Taiidan Dreadnaught can also now solve your ‘corvette problem’. Cost is increased.

5. Battlecruisers can no longer target fighters and corvettes directly, but they still kill them as they’re flying by. It should be harder to distract an approaching armada-of-death with a bull-crap suicide-squad of expendable losers now.

Update 2.2:

Thanks to some help from the guys at the gearbox forum, especially Spoonfrog from the Taiidan Republic Mod https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1107659760&searchtext=, we can upgrade turrets now! Woot Woot!

1. The Pulsar Gunships can now be equipped with a Reflex Pulsar Cannon to slice frigates and cap ships up into tiny bits of smoking scrap! Every race is gonna get a corvette that’s dangerous to big stuff. If you’re playing for realsies, better turn the advanced corvette upgrades off until they’re all finished, or the races might not be totally fair. For normal games is should be fine.

2. The defenders were too wimpy compared to the upgraded interceptors, so they do 30% more damage, but therefore cost 10 space bucks more. If this still isn’t enough, we might give them a firepower upgrade.

3. The Vaygr Laser Corvettes do twice as much damage, but their accuracy is down to 40%. This should make fire control towers and the command corvette a lot more useful to the Vaygr. It’s also in preparation for the Laser Corvette’s upgrades: one is going to be a targeting system.

4. The Sub-Space Scout build time has been reduced to about that of a normal scout.

5. The Heavy Destroyer has a higher priority for getting targeted now.

Update 2.1:

1. There was a bug that was counting bomber squadrons as one fighter for the HW1 guys, so they could build HUNDREDS of them. Can’t believe we didn’t notice it before, but now it’s fixed. The balancing is still ok.

2. The MP+ unit caps has 8 more corvettes, the old one was working fine on the internet for us, so maybe this will be ok too. Will switch it back if it starts getting laggy, but I think now that the bomber bug is fixed there should be A LOT more bandwidth available. So we can maybe start ticking MP+ up a little bit.

3. The Kushan get 24 more fighters in MP+ to keep the balancing right. They’re probably gonna get some more firepower in their corvettes as well now though.

Update 2.0:

1. Addressed the issues brought up by San_Fran_Dan with Makaan’s Revenge:

a. it’s a little more butch

b. it can maneuver through other ships better, or better said, bat them right the F out of the way =)

c. more asozial (google it ;D)

d. but more importantly, the fleet defends it better

2. Some new corvette upgrades:

a. The Gatling Laser: An upgrade for the Taiidan Multi-gun Corvette, it can tear fighter craft to shreds, and given enough time, even penetrate corvette and frigate armor. It also looks TOTALLY ULTRA !!

b. The Kushan get a speed upgrade for ALL of their corvettes to go with the whole ‘fast attack at the beginning – I‘ve got Heavy Destroyers and you’ve got jack plop’ thing they’ve got going on. But also, no weapon upgrades are planned to go with their whole, ‘I’m running out of steam in my end-game’ thing that they’ve got going on. According to the AI-fights we’ve been running, they don’t need any more firepower. ;-)

c. More corvette and frigate upgrades on the way! (Have to figure out how to upgrade turrets first, so it might take a while to get them all done.) San_Fran_Dan is totally right though, everybody needs at least one totally dangerous corvette.

3. AI Upgrades:

a. The Hiigarans do an Ion Cannon Frigate rush sometimes now and usually builds more of them than before.

b. The Taiidan are a lot smarter than before and build some unit combinations like lots of Bombers with Multi-Gun Corvettes or Battlecruisers with Multi-Beam Dreadnaughts.

c. The Vaygr defend Makaan’s revenge better. Once it’s built they start cranking out fighters and Missile Corvettes to defend it. The AI can decide whether or not it needs Assault or Heavy Missile Frigates to back it up pretty well.

d. The HW2 guys prioritize building Hyperspace Inhibitors now. If you got lucky, sometimes they would forget, and you could hyperspace a battlecruiser up their captain’s quarters. Now you’re gonna have to organize an attack run to blow up the gravwell if you want to do that. ;-)

4. The Imperial Legion costs less to research and build to make it more of an advantage. They’re also a little bit slower so they’re harder to dock and keep them alive forever without providing some deliberate covering fire.

5. Singularity Bombers do a lot less damage to corvettes now. They also can’t attack fighters anymore because the AI bombers were getting distracted trying to attack stuff they couldn’t really hurt sometimes.

Update 1.9:

1. Lance Fighters can take out subsystems now. Therefore, they cost 50 space bucks more - like a bomber. After the Lance Particle Beam upgrade, they can take out the subsystems of upgraded ships and even groups of frigates if you have enough of them.

2. AI 2.0!! A lot of people have been telling us that the AI is too weak, and they can’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag. (or maybe it was the opposite... can't really remember.) ;-b So, we made them even SMARTER! =D They can REALLY use the dreadnaughts to wreck your day now. Yay! Prepare to feel the soul-crushing despair of seeing a vast swarm of Singularity Bombers swoop in to destroy your precious production facilities once your pathetic defenses have been rendered ineffective. Yipee! Do you need a moment to pray to your false non-robotic God, you puny human? (…or something like that…)

3. Lots of tweaks to get the balancing right. Stuff like: The armor upgrades for the Heavy Destroyers take a lot longer now to slow down their rush. The Multi-Beam Dreadnaught is cheaper and faster to build, etc. The most important one is:

4. The Vaygr can still build frigates when Makaan’s Revenge is out! Okay, Makaan’s Revenge is butch… but it’s not as butch as someone else’s whole fleet. The AI for each race was balanced against each other in the virtual Thunderdome, and adding this did the trick to have the Vaygr keep up now that they really build their dreadnaught. (It’s totally fun, sometimes you really think you’re about to win and then… crud. You see it start hyperspacing in…) We’ll have to see if this is too OP in the hands of a ‘real’ human.

a. Yes, we know that Makaan’s Revenge is a giant lumbering POS. But it’s a lot more effective than before, and a lot harder to distract. I also think it’s too damn big, but it works out well to try to trap it in some other ships or asteroids while you’re trying to flank it. Kind of a ‘Sink the Bismark’ kind of thing. Or you have to sacrifice your capital ships to take out it’s anti-fighter escorts before you send in another fleet of deadly Singularity Bombers to finally bring it down. Don’t get frustrated, after two games you’re gonna LOVE having that thing around, and if not, you can always turn it off in the game set up. ;-)

5. My wife was making fun of me because of the Lance Particle Beam. Okay, it was pretty freaking pink, but damn it, that doesn’t mean you have to sing that Scissor Sisters Dancing-Danz-Ing song while I’m testing my AI. Homeworld is SERIOUS. And it’s not for silly disco moves. Total bullcrap, man. Anyway, I made them look more cool and sinister. (and less pink to stop the merciless teasing :b)

Update 1.81:

The Vaygr AI was messed up in Update 1.8. This one fixes it.