True, it will be nice now to actually see how things are done..  Balance will be far easier now.  After I get the hang of it, I'll probably go through aurora (the official forum for my mod) and update things..  But that won't be for a while since I have to get used to mines, SB's (this is going to take a while...), cap modifications, ships, and other things...

But I do intend to incorporate some other mods into the final version.

But I guess its good that I haven't been too quickly forgotten..

Its funny people are saying that...while I wish it true and I know there is evidence showing new ships, but original SINS had stuff like the gunships that never made a appereance. You can hope though

thats why we have innovators like you guys over at DS to jump in when IronClad drops the ball

hopefully we can get Volt's Fleet Diversification mod combined with the DS mod to start rivalling 7DS!

That picture is a result of the same bug..  That is just the logo of the Envoy Cruiser..  It got accidentally stuck in the wrong construction tab...

I know, I was disappointed too..  But ehh..  That's what mods are for..

Yeah, and now that I [finally] have Entrenchment, I can look through things and perhaps reduce redundancy...

Really though, the three most critical things are Defense Cruisers, Lancers, and Destroyers..  If we could get those things in, we would be quite well off.

True, we certainly do..  But yeah, hijacking this one is probably not the best idea...  Aurora would be a better place for it...

no, I just finished playing as the three races..  Started with TEC, then Advent, and then Vasari.  

Here is my thus-far evaluation of Entrenchment.

Starbases:

I must say that while I love the trade ports of the Argonev, I still hate playing as the TEC.  I was disappointed with the boom of the big red button...  I wanted a bigger explosion...  instead I got a couple blue rings..  I was wanting a monstrous, moon-sized fireball and a huge equatorial shockwave shooting out...  If I ever get particle forge working and I have the time, I am remaking that thing's boom.

I must also say that while I love the ships of the Advent, I don't have any particular affection for their SB..  Of course, I never got the chance to use meteor on any of their forces as I had already subdued them before i got around to researching the defense tree.  I will likely play as them in the future so I can exploit this, but as the Advent, I am almost always on the offensive and I don't think I would be terribly good at using theirs offensively, so I don't think it will have much use for me unless I want to push one front and guard another where my fleet is absent.

In my Vasari game (the race I most commonly play as), I built an Orkulus to guard an asteroid.  All the asteroid had was two hangars, two repair bays, five missile platforms, and my Orky.  Since I love my research, I had both phasic traps and disruptive nanites up and running.  However, the real feat here was what my beloved Orky accomplished.  That starbase was bound and determined to attack at will rather than stay beside the other structures where it was safe, and since this was a test of what it could do, I let it.  Four times, enemy fleets attacked it.  It singlehandedly destroyed them all.  And everything after the first one was equipped with at least five Orgovs (it went up each time, with the fourth one having twelve.)  It destroyed multiple capital ships, all between the levels of 3 and 6.  Even a round where a Kol was supported by Kodiaks and hoho's galore was destroyed.  In fact, after the first two fleets had been destroyed, I found myself saying, "Orky doesn't like visitors" whenever anything popped into the gravity well, regardless of whether it was a scout or a fleet, and found myself laughing maniacally after completing the phrase.  Because nothing they sent in came out.  Orky does not like visitors (Just typing that made me laugh maniacally!)

Structure Killers:

  Orgovs are as ugly as I've heard, though they look like HAL if you look at their front..  That little glowing red dot surrounded by black...  Though despite their looks, they are functional  Those little ships put enemy Argonevs through a lot of pain and nearly killed one of mine that had its defense systems fully upgraded.  Against my beloved Orky, they once brought it down to less than a hundred health, but then it killed the last of them (this was the third fleet btw) and I quickly activated its maul to repair itself and sent it over to see the repair bays.

Starfish are wonderful little things and against those that spam static defenses, I must say that it works out very well.  Also, the description says extreme range.  They weren't kidding!  That range is monstrous.  I had a lot of fun destroying Argonevs with these.

Oh, my beloved army of Orkies (in case you haven't figured it out yet, i fell in love with those things very quickly) was also incredibly functional.  Some have argued that the Vasari need a bunker buster.  My response?  USE THE ORKY!  Offensively, I obliterated half a dozen Argonevs (without any fleet backing whatsoever) and only lost two in the process (both of those were due to my enemies use of a level six marza).  Towards the end of the game, I took a gander at the actual stats of one that I had fully upped the arsenal of.  I was astonished.  Nearly 600 DPS.  And that is not including the second banks of weaponry allowed for by research.  After seeing that, it was perfectly clear why my beloved Orky managed to survive four fleets.

Mines:

I like proximity mines, its a very efficient system.  You pick your place and you set them up.  Nothing special about them, though once spammed, no fleet would ever try invading said planet.

I hate the homing mines.  Absolutely hate them.  Way to labor intensive for me to like them.  First you have to order them to go to their location and then order them to convert into mines while the next batch is being made.  It takes too long...

I love the Vasari's miner.  The voice is perfect.  "Watch your step."  "I've got a present for you..."  Both great lines that also made me laugh maniacally.  The mines themselves are ordinary, nothing special there, thought the gravity mines were used to great effect.  Once, a retreating fleet was attempting to escape, so I flew a couple of these things up into their fleet and had them let loose a volley of gravity mines.  This thwarted their attempts to escape.  Later in the game I also used these things to fly into their formations and deploy conventional mines before coming back to my overseers to be healed so they could repeat the process.

Turret Upgrades:

I adore the missile pods and meson bolt cannon upgrades.  Five Gauss Turrets stood against a fleet for a good four minutes while I moved my fleet to protect that world (of course there were repair bays and a couple hangars too, but the GT's did 99% of the offensive work because they had a bunch of flak.  Very good upgrades I must say.  For FD, I was wanting to have heavier static defenses.  IC made my wish come true with these upgrades.

I also liked the Synergy upgrade for the Advent's beam turrets.  As if these things weren't cool enough already, now they stack their damage.  I put these things in giant walls to protect the flanks of of my Transcendia and they worked wonders.  I must say that I also love this upgrade.

And then the Phase Missile Turrets.  I also loved Disruptive Nanites.  In every case of the battle with my Orky, I started it on the opposite side of the gravity well so that my turrets would have at least some opportunity to fire before its determination to use its ability to move possessed it to do something stupid like attack the Orgovs at the very back of the enemy formation.  The enemy forces would then proceed to turn around and go out of range of my turrets.  Even so however, despite the lack of damage they inflicted, the statuses they inflicted was a massive boost to that things ability to stay alive.  I'm assuming it must deactivate active regeneration such as the hoho's repair bots as well or I don't see how it could have lived against the force of Kodiaks, a Kol, some Percherons, eight orgovs, and more than a dozen hoho's.  Regardless, I loved it.

Hangar Upgrades:

Flak was nice, but it wasn't a huge boost to the survivability of the things.  Sure, it helped a bit on defense and did some damage when I was going against it, but really it just proved to be an annoyance.

Telekinesis was also nice, but not game changing.

Phasic Traps however were very helpful.  Due to the stupidity of the AI, it sent its bombers after my hangars instead of my Orky (I think you know what happens next).  Then, stripped of their bombers, the Percherons became worthless and I told my Orky to forget them and go kill the other ships (which it did with very little effort).  Against a human, I'm sure this wouldn't have happened but at least against an AI, it was quite helpful.

So, here is my standing on the races:

TEC: I still hate them and probably always will.  I still hate the Sova and the Akkan.  The only thing I don't hate about them is what was added in Entrenchment.  Everything else is hated.  Sure, the Kol+Dunov combo is awesome, and so is MB, but I rarely use either until later in the game.

Advent: I loved their ships before and still love their ships.  I still find that Having two fleets (one run by Progenitor and Halcyon and the other a Radiance) works quite nicely before combining them at end-game to unleash the power of the Holy Trinity (this is also when I rename them the Imperia (Progenitor), Trinity Blade (Radiance), and Providence (Halcyon).)  I'm not a big fan of the Transcendia, but I'm sure its good, but I just didn't get to see it in action with meteor.

Vasari: My favorite race just improved its standing with me.  I absolutely love the new strategies I can exploit thanks to the new ships and the Orky.  Oh how I adore the Orky.  That thing is wonderful.

After I eat supper, I will begin looking at Aurora for revisions.

I just went through the screenshots thread's first page, and I am downloading that tomorrow (or the next day, basically, as soon as I can).  The booms are way better and my gosh, is that the gravity bomb that looks like a black hole?

Well, I DL'd DS today.  The planets are cool, but the one upgrade that looks like a Percheron Carrier sliced in half with the left side black and white while the other side is in color has me stumped as to what it does..  Does it allow the carrier to commandeer enemy ships or something?

At any rate, I am in the midst of updating Aurora...

I also had a battle last night where two hard AI's had entrenched so heavily on a lava planet that it was impenetrable for the longest time.  I did eventually win however...  It just took me about three hours to punch through that line...

It should also be noted that I attacked that world four times...  This is what happened each time:

1.  Pickett's Charge.  It was my fleet against the defenders.  I did not know that there would be a fleet there however so I am assuming that they jumped in right before my forces arrived.  The battle was a slaughter.  I was outnumbered two to one and was outgunned four to one.  Plus the starbase was sitting right where I entered and there were about a hundred mines that my fleet jumped on top of...  The only survivors were my level 6 Jarrasul and an Enforcer.  Most were picked off when I was retreating because I was having two battles at the time and didn't realize they had a PJI on that world until I had already lost most of my forces...

2.  This time, I had twice as many attackers and three more capital ships.  Once again, this attack was a disaster.  I had 60% losses (would have been more, but I had my carriers bomb the PJI as soon as I arrived, though still better than the 99% losses from the first one).  I managed to retreat successfully however back to the gas giant that had an Orky and 150 mines..  By this time, I had reinforcements headed my way, but my other primary fleet was about eight jumps away and in enemy territory, making any hope of reinforcement from it negligible.  These reinforcements were largely made of overseers to repair my badly damaged fleet as well as a brand new Skirantra with repair cloud.  

Then, the AI seized the opportunity to attack and came to attack me in the gravity well of the gas giant.  Sure, they had sustained 30% losses in the engagement in their gravity well, but they still had the larger fleet and did not know about my mine field.  As such, they found themselves blowing upon entering the well.  Then, my Orky took over.  Fully upgraded offense and defense, the Orkulus managed to hold its own for quite some time, but once they jumped in two dozen Orgovs, it quickly fell to them.  After destroying the Orgovs, I brought in a Migrator and began building another one.  Then I began to focus on the main part of the fleet once more.  Their capital ships were already dead, but they vastly outnumbered me in both carriers and HC's.  My assailants stood no match.  To counter, I began building Enforcers and Sentinels.  Eventually I was able to win the defensive battle.  I did not want them re-entrenching however so I once again attacked them thinking that since they had suffered 85% losses that surely my fleet which was at about 60% of its prior strength (due to reinforcements) could defeat it.

3. When I first arrived on their world, I was winning the battle.  But then they jumped in another fleet that they had been using elsewhere.  Now, I was once again outnumbered 2 to 1.  As such, I retreated and began rebuilding my force.

4.  After that, I went to bed but as I was laying in bed, I was wondering how I could kill the stupid thing.  My solution?  Use my other primary fleet to apply pressure to their left flank on another world while using six Kosturas to damage their orbital defenses before jumping in a fleet twice as large as attack three and six times larger than the first attack.  I would have twenty more Enforcers, fifty more sentinels, and to counter their vast bomber wings and their starbase, about 75 carriers outfitted with 30%F 70%B.  These massive amounts of SC would I hoped win the day.  This time, everything went according to plan.

I waited a while for the AI to calm down and almost forget I was there and then launched an assault on its left flank.  I managed to capture the ice world and then moved to attack an asteroid that was driving a stake between myself and my ally (also an AI).  As I was bombing the asteroid, I noticed that there was a fleet inbound to take the ice planet.  In the first battles, my enemies had been using combined forces since that one spot opened up doors to attack both of them, but in this case, only one one enemy attempted an attack, and it was only about a third of what had been used to defend the lava planet.  I dispatched all but my capital ships so they could continue to bomb the asteroid.  Thanks to the help of my recently built Orky, the ice planet stayed under my control though it was a bit of a stalemate until I brought in my level 10 Kortul (along with an three other lower level caps) from the asteroid as I had finished bombing/capturing it.  Then i was able to distract them long enough to get gravity mines and a PJI set up which allowed me to demolish that entire force.

That's when I knew I had to attack the lava planet.  I ordered my Kosturas to all target and waited for the shots to approach the target.  As the shots were about to arrive, I ordered my ships to launch which they promptly did just as the first of six shots hit home.  Within ten seconds, all shots had arrived and the defenders had already lost much of their shields, which allowed my fleet and bombers to roam free, killing at will before some escaped.  The only losses I received were the result of the big red button which killed a few frigates that were busy trying to kill mines around the starbase for reasons I don't know..  After that loss, the enemy has failed to recover and I am now simply mopping up the last two dozen planets owned by the two AI's.

There is a new Grav Well called Ship Graveyard, though its kinda rare. Its full of 'derelict' TEC ships, Carriers, some cap ships without abilities, frigs and cruisers. That research item lets Colony ships 'capture' the ships for you and add them into your fleet. be careful though because the captured ships will attack the ships not yet captured, so you might want to keep an eye on it in case you lose some ships unnecessarily.

given, it doesnt really do much atm, but its a few free ships you can use for defending difficult spots like plasma storms or magnetic clouds.

really? ive never seen an AI use the big red button or the advent meteor storm... interesting...

also, something to note in case you havent heard, the Kostura now opens a Phase Gate node at the targetted planet, so you can bring in reinforcements from any phase gate in your empire (within the same star system of course) or any Marauder (i think) when it uses its lvl 6 ability (i think, thats the one related to phase jumping right?) anyway, just so you know.

its late here atm but ill have a look at Aurora tomorrow.

sounds like you had an awesome game though mate, enjoy =P