First off, I wanted to thank you for the fantastic mod. I've been playing SWEAW for years, but I recently switched to the Steam version just to try out your mod that I've heard so much about. I absolutely loved it! It's a truly magnificent and seamless addition to the base game. I was thrilled to see such a vast array of familiar ships and characters!

I noticed that you're working on a new update, so allow me to share some of my observations and humbly offer a few suggestions as both a veteran of the original game and a fan of your mod.

Let's start with balance. The capital ship and frigate combat is absolutely awe-inspiring, a masterpiece, if you will. However, I felt that the smaller ships were somewhat underwhelming. The anti-starfighter corvettes, in particular, seemed to be lacking that punch. I remember these guys from the original game, especially the Corellian corvette, which could vaporize any fighters and bombers within its attack radius. In comparison, in your mod, neither they nor the Tartans nor similar ships feel particularly impactful in battle. There have been instances where I engaged in combat, warping right into a cluster of enemy bombers, deploying a group of Tartans or similar corvettes, which are described as anti-starfighter units, only to find out that they didn't seem to have much influence. There were times when I watched enemy bombers easily reach and damage my capital ships. The same goes for my side. At the start of a battle, I could select all my bombers, click on the shield generator of the enemy flagship, even if there was an armada of corvettes and fighters around it, and I'd still be confident that my bombers would make it through and take down its shields. As a result, despite the seemingly wide selection of corvettes, it didn't really have much impact. In the end, I just stopped using them altogether, opting to rely on Star Destroyers alone until the enemy crumbled. Essentially, the game lacks an efficient tool against fighters and bombers. Let's talk about those fighters now. Boy, oh boy, there's a whole bunch of them, but they hardly seem to do anything. Like I mentioned earlier, my bombers always reach their targets, and even in the most intense battles, fighters and bombers are swarming in large numbers on both sides, and I barely control or keep track of them. It feels like they're just buzzing around aimlessly throughout the entire fight, bogging down the computer. And at the end of most battles, I find myself flying around the map, scouring every nook and cranny for those pesky little fighters all 'round.

Another issue that I've noticed involves the missile cruisers and corvettes. Some of them, meant to be long-range artillery, are ridiculously resilient. With the AI factions lovingly churning out these rocket ships by the dozens, battles turn into a painful spectacle where huge Star Destroyers clumsily chase after hordes of tiny ships. Each one of those little buggers easily tanks damage from an entire fleet of massive ships for what feels like an eternity. Like, some of them have around 10 or 12k HP, same as some of Tier1 capitals, while being much smaller in size. Perhaps it's worth considering giving them weaker armor or reducing their health?

Let's also chat about another serious issue: pathing. It's nearly impossible to control those capital ships properly. Sometimes, instead of flying straight to the designated point, the ship decides to chart a course to a completely different location, doing a backward twist in the process. And sometimes, even when I'm frantically hitting the S key to make them stop, they stubbornly try to make a U-turn and fly off somewhere else. By the way, why can't they just turn around on the spot? During espace preparation sequence, ships can smoothly rotate around their axis while staying put. But when I try to turn them around during a battle, they start pulling off huge arcs that cover half the map, all while getting blasted.

In defensive battles, it's a struggle just to line up my capitals roughly in a single row. Often, when I command the ships to attack a target, one or two cruisers from the fleet just go ahead for no reason, flying straight through the entire enemy fleet and, of course, getting blown to bits in the process. Another problem is the control groups. It's awesome that ships get sorted by type when I select the entire fleet, but sometimes the sorting gets really wonky. For instance, the LAAT, which is supposed to be effective against fighters, somehow ends up grouped with bombers. And huge capital ships like the Secutor end up there too. Some capitals get allocated to separate groups. Because of this, every space battle starts with me spending 2-3 minutes just sitting on place, manually assigning ships to control groups, which isn't the most convenient thing.

As for planetary battles, I won't dwell on them too much because it's evident they're still a work in progress. The only thing I want to mention is the regiment system—it's interesting but can sometimes ruin the game. In one defensive battle for a planet I had been developing for a long time, I had secured an excellent position and was winning against the enemy, thanks to a multitude of defense turrets and the advantageous spot. I had enough troops left to finish off the remaining foes. However, out of nowhere, one more of my soldiers died, and as a result, the unit's casualty count exceeded 50%. So, even though I had plenty of troops remaining, the regiment was marked as lost, and the game handed me a defeat in the battle, which was quite unpleasant. If the game hadn't interrupted my fight, I would have definitely won without a doubt.

And finally, the Forge on Rakata Prime. It's a magnificent boss fight, a really cool concept, but in my opinion, the battle drags on for too long. At first, it was thrilling to fight against the gigantic station, but after forty minutes of harpoint clicking, I wasn't exactly thrilled anymore. Perhaps it would be more engaging to reduce the number of hardpoints while making them more dangerous and powerful. And on top of that, those insane swarms of fighters posed no real threat but heavily burdened my computer, causing a significant drop in FPS, which made the battle even longer and more tedious.

Well, those are the only observations I've got. I'm not insisting on them or claiming my opinion is the absolute truth, but if any of this helps you improve the mod, I'd be glad. I hope you don't mind me sharing these observations. I'm just a regular guy who genuinely enjoys your mod and wants to see it reach even greater heights. You've already created something truly special, and I believe addressing these issues would take it to a whole new level. Aside from that, everything is really awesome, and it's an incredible piece of work. Thank you for breathing new life into my favorite game.