Hi, let me preface this are my extremely opinionated takes, take them with a gain of salt :P

I think the patch overall is a great overall improvement, I will go into thinks that stood out for me, I am being picky, please don't take it in a bad way.

Wording:

- The population traits with "where Empire" are weird.

- I miss the endless legend tooltips "on City", here would be "on System". You do get them on hero skills, but not on buildings, and leads to a little confusion.

- Buildings that can only be built with a citadel in the system should have a disclaimer in their description (Scientific Military Complex is a good example of possible confusion).

- Unspecialized behemoths, not sure what it really means.

Ships and combat:

- Something that always bothered me... You get no experience when ships are destroyed on retreat.

- The EMP weapons damage is too low, I understand you trade damage with the powerful EMP ability, but 5 damage per shot? I would recommend 25% of the damage of their normal strategic counterparts.

- Overall support modules are in a great place, if anything, cloaking and anti-cloaking devices cost too much strategics (the L3 versions).

- Fleet movement drives could be taken back into also support ships (now is only hero) but only the strongest Fleet movement effect takes effect. The thing is, you over-rely on either Ramscoop or heroes to move fleets.

- Ark ultimate modules... oh boy, 5 strategics, that are 20 with the 4x modules. I believe that one was an oversight. 2 even 1 strategic before module multiplication should be enough. As it is now, better to just pick the previous versions and not bother with the strategic ones.

- Shields are a bit OP in this version, a single shield defense module gives you more shield HP than the ship's native HP plus a few hull modules. Just for reference, a carrier class has 14k HP by default, and a single white shield T5 module gives 30.4k shield capacity to a carrier.

While I think the change is headed in the right direction, we are talking up to 5x or 6x the previous values as you get better versions. Shield depletion should be a thing, while on original values were minuscule and was easily depleted by energy weapons, such huge values make a single shield a better option than a single hull plate, no questions asked. Also shield reload, flotilla shield... all these special effects, while now in a good place in a vacuum, are mostly useless, you have plenty shields built in the shield modules themselves.

General:

- Deep Space Personnel into Deniable operations tech link? I find no logic into it.

- Military III to Military IV with only three tech unlock is an easy upgrade, I personally consider it should be 4 techs... Each military stage is a big upgrade.

- Maybe food sent to colonies doesn't kill your pop? I always felt the extra 100% sent into colony was a waste of an option. Same with Hishho's Ancestral Reverence. I always felt food mechanics as a whole should be reviewed, you get ups and downs with too much ease, many effects should be over positive food and not all food production.

- I was wondering, you always start with Titanium AND Hyperium on the initial system? Seems a bit over the top, specially considering Riftborn has traits just for that.

- Riftborn two initial singularities cost too much, I would at least lower the strategic cost to 10 and nerf them a little (maybe many of those +100% should be +50% instead). Stasis Singularity is OP, and only for 1 Quadrinix and 1 Orichalcix.

- Essence management is a bit tedious, the 200 buffer means nothing at mid and late game, leading to horrible micro-managements to not waste essence (de-attaching leechers from the fleet to stop wasting essence drain, using the essence into Holy Proliferation, etc).

- Keii resource is quite tedious to manage, even worse than essence management of Volyani. Would be nice to have some buffer after 100 (it's hardcoded), or slightly lower thresholds of approval for the Keii version. Instead of the 15/30/70/85 I would go with 20/40/60/80.

- Divine Sentry action button should have a different icon? I didn't recognize it, as is the same as Sleep button.

- I feel Academy reparation costs are usually too low. Is tied to dust inflation?

- The spear (academy fleet) has 5 movement, 4 with Riftborn... Give them some movement, please! slot them those volyani 5 movement engines :)

- The Bastion ship reward... would be nice to be able to add it to other fleets, maybe unlock it with carrier designs?

- The other ship quest rewards (Nakalim ship, Trial ship), those are insta-sell. I would consider outfitting them nicely.

- Uncapped approval on systems, while is a small QoL to control your approval with all the events going, leads to a approval buffer for empire approval, you may not longer lose empire happiness while conquering new systems, because you have a few systems with 300% approval...

- If uncapped approval remains, consider changing joy the initiative to add 85 approval instead of forcing 100, with high priority (as it is now) so overcomes ownership penalty.

Buildings:

- I would check out the upkeeps that match some kind of logic (80% are fine). I feel bad the trade buildings cost gold, should be reduced or nothing, dust traficking center, 96 gold on a dust building, some approval buildings with higher upkeep, others not, National Museum 4 gold.

- Of course the worst building in the game: Body language Institute. Give it at least 20% instead of 5%, for god's sake, or something. Now is just a meme building.

- The T4 faction-specific unique buildings, never worth spending a tech into.

- Most T5 buildings should be reviewed. The only T5 buildings worth their tier: Mechsuit Quarters and Super Biofuel Factory.

- Also the reward Stim City is Luxuries lottery again, but with the industry cost Lottery should have (I would change it for 5 approval per temperate, or something else).

- Denarque University maybe costs too little industry for their tech stage position and being an unique one? (I miss 50% industry cost)

Planet Inconsistencies:

- Terran Forest have one less total yield than Atoll and Ocean. I believe long time ago those had 5 approval before an approval rework.

- Arid and Snow lack one population, there's a jump in pop between these and the next one more habitable of 2 pop, and right now they are inferior versions of artic/desert with same population. I believe is a little oversight.

- Gas Hot gives science despite not being cold (an anomalous gas planet could be a Temperate one instead)

Hey! Thank you for the feedback! I'll respond to the combat-related feedback you have provided:

The shield caps are reduced by ~20-35% of their current values. The initial high cap was a test to figure out the borders for the optimal shield cap values combined with my earlier knowledge from ESG. With the final pushes, they sit neatly between the pre-patch values and ESG values. On top of that, energy weapon damages are slightly buffed, all in all, I believe they will be at a better place than pre-patch & ESG and a much better place than Vanilla. I'm hesitant to empower energy weapon play style since EMPs and crit play a big role in circumventing all shields, creating uncounterable fleets. I believe with shield cap nerf and energy weapon buff, flotilla shields and shield reloads (and their counter Temporal Drag tactic) sit at a better place.

Cloak modules were out of scope, unfortunately, and without a comprehensive solution we didn't want to touch them. Glad you enjoyed the support module changes.

Ark module strategic costs are reduced.

All in all, thank you for the insights. Finding the perfect/balanced values takes iterations which we unfortunately lack, but combined with the collective feedback of the community they should be better.