wuffles

Get a meg extractor and you can view the xml etc that are inside them. The fact the game engine recognises the mod should be a clue that they are in the same format as the game makers used.

The movement logic is a pain as I think someone mentioned in the propulsion thread by default if you tell a unit to move somewhere it tries to reach full speed before turning which usually means it runs full speed into the middle of an enemy fleet and gets slaughtered. I seem to spend more time fighting the brain dead movment of ships by trying to use the face move drag action since they seem to turn first then accelerate if do it that way but it is still far from perfect. I wish we had formations so something like the carrack cruisers could be nicely lined for a wall of fire.
Instead the ships seem to want to space out a lot which is another reason I prefer fighter/transports and the capitals. The fighters dont seem to care about overlapping each other and the capitals at least you only usually have a few of in a fight so the firepower is more concentrated.

For killing ground heroes I find AT-AT or freerunners can usually do it given time otherwise countering with another hero seems to be the best. Most heroes seem to chew up infantry too fast to make them effective vs them. Was pleasantly suprised during one of my longer games that the enemy was using some upgraded ground forces which were doing some damage to me.

Scariest AI forces so far have been some of the special pirate ones such as the base with advanced turbolasers or capships with turbodisruptors. Dont spot the turbodisruptor ships soon enough and it gets painful.

Other thing is infantry such as vanguards can be used in raids whereas the at-at requires space supremacy. Late on when you are just cleaning up this makes little difference but early on the ability for infantry to raid especially some of the stronger pirate worlds is a big advantage. I do agree that some of the infantry should be building faster and that the AT-AT is a bit too cheap, it should be more like the freerunner price.

One thing I have noticed as well is that quite a few hero upgrades seem totally not worth it. I mean the empire has a few different heroes who can be upgraded for ~45k and will get a nice ISD but a new ISD is only 15k anyway. Even allowing for the fact the hero one will be stronger due to the boosts from the hero, the problem is they are based on ISD 1 which is pretty poor with a large part of its fire power in the light turbolaser range. I would use the money to upgrade a ISD or even better a tector and buy one of them since they have better long range weaponry due to the fantastic upgrades ISD/Tectors get.

If I am reading the XML files right a tector 4 has 11 heavy octuple turbolasers, 120 normal turbolasers, 40 light double lasers and 6 heavy advanced plasma torpedos. So overall it has about 252 turbo lasers in firepower which is like a praetor vs hulls, nice upgrade.

Quick question, is it due to canon or something that the E-Wing has a worse hyperdrive than the X-Wing despite being a much more modern fighter?

Thing I noticed was now that the AI doesnt seem to just get entire fleets magically for free it tends to fall by the wayside as you expand especially if you hit it early. Give it enough time without attacking it and it can be nasty but if you do an early offense it really struggles to recover after losing its initial fleet bonus it tends to be given over you. I think maybe boosting its cash multiplier and if possible its build speed modifier could help.

On my core worlds campaigns I have gone from struggling on easy to finding it trivial on hard. Now I just combine some of the best ships from a couple of fleets and straight away hit the AI worlds and pretty much ignore neutral unless they have a really nice bonus or are needed to reach an AI world. While often I like the fact that the AI will retreat to bases so you have to face extra firepower, it unfortunately still does this even if its fleet outmatches your own. I would like it to be much more agressive if it has an advantage. While not easy it needs to also do much more focus firing especially at the weaker defensive ships.

If it has the choice of attacking a carrack or a mon cal, unless the mon cal shields are down it would really be better to target that carrack as they have high damage but frankly are lousy at taking damage unlike a mon cal. Still been great fun learning the mod though.

What I dislike is the way everyone seems to have to say well this ship was even stronger than the executor. The executor was total overkill in itself and you think how long they had to make such ships and it really is not likely they made many of them. But as the expanded universe expanded, they became more and more common. Yet at the time the plain ISD was really considered an awesome vessel with very few things being able to stand up against one. Guess this is one of the reasons I like the earlier stuff since things were not quite so overboard. The cost of these star dreadnaughts really makes them impractical though although Vader having one as a command ship at least gives some reason for it.