xREL.v3

New Content:

Added more than 1500 bad-ass ship designs to the AI's arsenal.
The AI routines responsible for building fleets have been upgraded to provide a more substantial challenge heading into the late game. Experienced players may very well find themselves out-gunned!
New Race Customization Options! These are "Game-Changers" to provide some more unique challenges for you.
- Titan Quest: You begin the game with Titan Construction technology but can ONLY build Titan class military vessels
- Total War: You cannot build colony ships. This should be a fun challenge.
- Newcomer: Your empire was late to the StarDrive party. Other empires start with two additional colonies in nearby systems
Added a number of new technologies and ship modules that will be available through a new in-game event
New Galaxy Shape Added: Ring
Added Broadside Weapon Mounts for the following weapons
- Heavy Torpedo
- Plasma Torpedo
- Anti-Matter Torpedo
- EMP Torpedo
- Photon Torpedo
- Quantum Torpdo

Tweaks & Balance

Changed some of the Strategic AI behaviors to research technologies that you may not have seen the AI research before
The Tactical AI now has a new play in its playbook to try and bring down those destroyers lurking on the edge of combat
The AI will now engage in some limited technology trading between themselves. I had previously decided as a matter of design to restrict this behavior to prevent the AI from appearing to have an overwhelming advantage, but there are some techs that are just too important for the AI to go without. Therefore the AI will now trade with Known races to acquire certain techs that are important to it
The Shipyard Checklist will now produce a red "Ammo" error if you attempt to build a ship with a weapon equipped while not having the energy or ordnance storage necessary to fire the weapon; previously this would have only produced a yellow "Ammo" warning. This will prevent players from being able to create a design with a weapon mount that is unable to fire
The cost of future tech research increases the further down the tree that you go. This should prevent you from ever running out of future tech, which can break the game if you get that far, and it will slow down tech progression in the late game
The 2x5 mass driver has its range reduced to 800, with a large damage fall-off occuring past 600.
If your approval level ever hits 0, then your people will simply refuse to work or perform research because literally no one likes you enough to do anything for you.
The AI will only demand tribute if it believes that its fleet is stronger than yours
My mouse wheel broke and so I realized that for people without good mouse scroll wheels, the +/- buttons on the minimap needed some more fine-grained control. So that's in there now.
Added support for Corvette-only weapons to compliment the new technologies available
The game's initial load up time is reduced by a fair margin
Future Tech can no longer be assimilated or stolen by spies, which kills a few wonky birds with one stone
The maximum population of a planet is now determined by the citizens living on the planet - not the owner of a planet. For instance, if you conquer an aquatic world, the aquatic species that lives there will be able to continue to breed and grow into their planetary population cap. You will not be able to place more non-aquatic citizens there than your own cap would ever allow. If the Population cap of a planet is increased relative to your own species' cap due to a trait like aquatic or subterranean, then the population readout will reflect this in parenthesis: i.e. a world might read as 7/5 (14). Meaning 7 citizens live there - your cap is 5, but due to the bonuses of the citizens, the real cap is 14.

Bug Fixes:

Fixed a bug with the AI sometimes colonizing in your space still; added some extra safety nets for scenarios where space BECOMES your core space when the AI colony ship is already en route
Capturing a blockaded planet in ground combat will no longer cause the planet to be blockaded for the immediate turn thereafter; this bug may have been the cause of some very edge case scenarios where you might find a mirror of your own blockading fleet invading your colony. I'm not declaring that issue fully resolved but I'm still working towards isolating the cause and I suspect that this now-dead bug may be the culprit
Fixed a few achivements that were not unlocking properly
Fixed an issue where the AI could still potentially colonize in Player space; this was caused by the AI aborting its attempt to colonize a valid planet due to a hostile presence in the vicinity, and picking a second choice without the same territorial considerations it usually employs to choose a colonization target
Fixed an issue with the new Approval penalty that is incurred when exceeding tolerance when also having a leader that improves your tolerance levels
The Gauss cannon should no longer punch through shields
Fixed a bug (it was a typo) that was causing the expansionism penalty to diplomatic relations to remain constant, when the desired effect was to have it diminish over time
The Hire Hero window will no longer be overridden by pop-ups from quests or diplomatic interactions