That was extremely hard game, I started another as Kirko and despite it has similar problem (just food and research), it is much better because of 25% discount for tier 1-2 units so I think only vanguard should be buffed in some way.

somewhat unrelated yet related: Assembly feels too strong.

Main reason here is that it just does everything right. It has ruins, while power is nor what you really need that often (though it isn't bad), the research is crucial in order to get to the great harvest doctrine (which helps with the missing food/production as well). Mainly reason is, though, that their native building is profiting immensly from ruins (Assembly had only a few ruins sectors prior, now most of their cities can easily obtain 4+).

The insane health reg and reviving after battles means that as an Assembly you can easily clear stuff without worrying too much (especially notable with Empire mode, because your hero often starts high enough to get to Assembly II).

Then there is the thing about using mods on the fly, probably one of the biggest advantages. Why? Because you need to retrofit your units once they level up. Assembly can easily do that without their army being impaired for two turns, which again, helps immensly for creeping. The instant retrofit also means that newly produced veterans practically start out with two m ods from the getgo, while other factions have a 2 turn downside until they actually can use the second slot.

And finally a personal preference of mine: Arc weaponry. Arc just does what I want. It has AoE and Crowd Control (Stun, or at least stagger early on). One of my most liked army composition is a bunch of Reassamblers that have advanced reassamble mod, stun and arc extension in that order (the AA constructs half bugged with being able to target structures and sometimes units to bounce their attacks of with Arc Extension to ground units makes it even more pronounced). The Stun/Extension being not in the highest tier also makes it far easier to attain, especially for a research focused race as the Assembly.


Thoughts regarding that? Does Assembly feel strong only to me and am I missing something?

I consider Assembly the most powerful faction in vanilla game (I haven't tried it with your mod yet because of that reason), it gives free research for easy rush to that relatively early mod which grants regeneration, +15 HP and resurgence, it is the best mod in the game. Then Assembly has the best racial building which produces cosmite. But Assembly is the only faction in the game which can't remove shields/armour so I guess it can have problems vs something like Kirko Psynumbra who rely on armour and ignore enemy armour.
The building for research from ruines is useless in vanilla game, but can be OP here because of lots of ruines everywhere and energy problems (so your colonies produce buildings instead of units).

I appreciate your comments and I'll definitely look into the balance of factions at a later stage. However this is a part of the game where I want to be very careful with changes as these factions might still work perfectly if you play them differently. In the meantime just consider Vanguard as a more challenging faction ;)

Ok, fair enough, thank you for the explanation!

My late game problem is that it takes too much time to study terrain/climate to terraform (planetfall is not designed to have a clear way of displaying it) so it is painful for me to play. I switched back to other AI mod for now, hopefully there will be a way to disable terraforming some day (Sharkarn is the best faction in this mod for me). Anyway, I am going to play with your mod later, thanks again!