3.8 is a bit of a shift in Tactical mod in an attempt to address a lack of CP scarcity. Outside of some blueprint and weapon tweaks around drones, my primary task is three pieces:
1. Reduce the total number of CP available
2. Adjust ship CP costs to better align with the new CP values
3. Adjust Monsters battles to be winnable earlier in the game.

My rationale for this is that under the 3.7 CP values, it's too easy to build enough ships to adequately defend entry points from hostile empires when combined with planetary defenses. This makes the game more static, creates less interesting strategic choices, and generates battles that are tactically less interesting because there are too many ships present. To that end I'm drastically reducing CP and adjusting CP costs.

My results so far are that Outposts become less automatic and more strategic as you need the CP to continue expansion or mobile defense against pirates or other empires. Fewer CP means fewer combat ships and a few less exploratory wars by the AI. Battles are more interesting because you care more about each ship since losses are more readily felt. Last of all it means that not every access point can have a fleet sitting on it which opens up more options for you to attack enemy systems and for enemy empires to attack you.

I'll be continuing to test this to get the monster battles honed a bit more but so far I think the shift has been beneficial.

Deathray damaged reudced 45 -> 34

This should be a good change. Will try out 3.8 as soon as it is available.

Just a quick update. I'm liking the feel of the CP changes. I haven't felt as compelled to just rush and plonk down a blocking outpost. Battles are smaller easier to manage and fleet composition feels like it has more impact. I'm taking a small break to reset my perspective before I do a last pass for release.

Liking the look of most of these changes so far. I can definitely agree with the adjustments to space monsters, as they often sit in place for dozens of turns until you wreck them, vs gearing up specialized ships to acquire any strategic planet they might be blocking.

In my recent gameplay, I have also had an interesting thought considering fighters & small crafts:
Since fighters/heavy fighters only use cannon types which can be mounted as point defense, this tends to lead to pretty drastic jumps in damage (As new point defense options are often every other cannon). Fighters can often go from being nearly obsolete to having massive burst damage. This "jump" can be even more massively exasperated if you choose to miss out on a point defense cannon when researching.

I would love to know your opinion on this.

On a side note, I think the changes to CP should be pretty good overall, but have some concerns for how it may effect games with low planet density per system (Especially so if gaining a new planet with a starbase is unable to support a single frigate before upgrades/research).

Thanks! I'm still testing on the CP changes. I actually just finished a few games with low planet density to see how it would play out. It's definitely more tight on a smaller galaxy. The changes listed above are keyed to the Bomb Ketch as the "frigate". It's never really performed quite as well as the normal Frigate so I gave it a slight discount. However, I did shift the last game to test keying it to the frigate, so giving you 4,6,8. Basically each starbase gets one frigate, and each battlestation one destroyer. I need a few more runs but I think it might be a bit better setting. I've also thought of making it fall off, so star fortresses only give 7, but that happens so late that it's relatively immaterial.

As to the drones. That is a very difficult problem I've circled around a few times. I'm mostly happy with where it's at for now because I found out that I could let drones take specials. Fighters will mount Structural Analyzers and Battle Scanners while Bombers will take inertial dampers. That gives them a bit of a boost even when you don't get new weapons for them. I also do not see fighters as primary damage dealers. They can work well at intervals but their role is to absorb enemy PD that would otherwise target missiles or bombers.

I say that because I spent several months going in circles trying to even out their progression via updates to their HP, weapon numbers and types, and tweaks to PD mods. The results was almost always some form of the drones being too hard to kill and wiping the board or too easy to kill and doing very little. When in the game that happened would shift depending on factors like enemy armor, PD numbers, computer level, PD weapon etc. that made it very difficult to adjust in any meaningful way. I also realized that bombers were more the damage dealers because they actually get their damage based on the best bomb you have unlocked.

That's when I shifted the role for the drones. Fighters are tankier as you get better armor but also don't do as much damage most of the time. Their flight patterns will orbit targets and hang out for a long time giving you a way to counter high PD. You can, of course plan your progression to maximize drones damage. Getting the SA, Battle Scanner, good computers, and definitely taking Mass Drivers to ignore shields will help boost the impact fighters have in battles, especially with the high numbers you can get from the basic fighter bays. Pairing that with missiles early on and later bombers can be pretty devastating. Upgrading to some heavy fighters will also boost damage output and drastically increase the longevity as PD sponges too. You really can't make it a half measure either. You need to specialize or you end up with too little impact.

Further testing on the CP changes makes me feel confident with the updates. I tweaked the Orion Guardian to use CVII shields instead of CX shields. With the return of the subspace teleporter it made him stronger than I wanted for gameplay purposes even though several AI factions went for it with fairly adequate fleets.

I'm also exploring shifting troop transport CP costs to see how it impacts AI transport numbers. I've seem them using 1/3 of their available CP on them. I thought increasing the CP costs would reduce their numbers but it seems controlled in other ways so it may not matter too much since it won't actually free up any CP for combat ships.

All in all I think this is on track to release.

3.8 has now been released! Let me know if you run into any bugs and I'll see if I can get them fixed.