This game is pretty unplayable right now, sorry. I'm so frustrated by the game that I'm uninstalling it until 1.04 comes out.
Before I was a proponent of wait and see, but the results as of now are pretty obvious. The TEC are the strongest race by far and there really isn't anything anyone can do about it. An early attack combined with early tradeports is so strong it's ridiculous. Everything everyone has said in the "Sim City in Space" thread is absolutely true. There's no denying it, only the rationalization that the game is still playable despite being horribly unbalanced. It's not. I'm sure everyone's grateful you worked very hard to introduce new programmed features, but really you guys sort of killed Multiplayer flat dead with a single shot.
1.03 has actually managed to go /backwards/ in terms of acheiving balance goals. While the market exploit is gone, the new market has simply shifted in favor of the TEC. There's no question, an advent or vasari trying to compete is simply stymied by the economic advantages. They don't have the ship quality, cultural or anything that enables them to compete with a straight economic boom. Your choices are to attack extremely early. Oops, that's not really a choice. Because once the TEC reach a certain point in the game it's extremely difficult to stop them from simply rolling over you with their superior economic output. The early credit advantage is -seriously- unbalancing.
Can anyone explain to me the logic behind making LRMS stronger than they were before? The longer range doesn't help, and they're still easily massible thanks to the TEC's new economic dominance. The patch didn't change anything- the cost increase in proportion to the economic increase tilts unbalance to a ridiculous degree.
And seriously, what's with the siege frigate nerf? Reprogram the AI for godssake. Fix the chat too. Unified commands and IRC options are great, but who told you to mess with the chat system?
Ironclad really needs to do something, because this patch is really really really really bad. It's one of the worst patches I've ever seen an RTS, one that attempts to introduce great new features but actually sends the game back another 2 months.
Like I said, I really loved this game, but what it's turned into in the past few days is just disgusting. Yeah, this is probably the typical 'I quit' post, but quite frankly it's a real shame that such a great game should undergo such an unfortunate transformation.