NEW UPDATE!!

I'll post this here rather than make a new topic.  Things I found last night:

The cap changes seem epic.  My Kortul was an unstoppable beast, even my AI ally's Kortul was taking on another small fleet on his own and lived to get full shields not very long after, wow.  Scramble bombers was actually pretty damn good also.  I got a Marauder for the sake of trying out some of the changes and was dissapointed it still seemed crap to me.  I didn't feel like I'd weakened myself by not getting an egg is the best part about the changes although obviously the egg would still be a great choice.

The game run really well late game, whatever you did for "Optimized various situations that could occur late game and slow the game down unnecessarily." it seems to have made a difference for me.  Although my game wasn't as big as I normally make at 6 players it still seemed to run noticably better.

Strike craft are more significant again, yay!  Love seeing swarms of fighters and bombers making a difference in a battle and not cut down in the first minute of a fight.

Every ship had 2 red debuffs on their info card the whole game, I can't remember what it was?  Something like 30% hull points lost and 100% something or other.  Was permanant on my ships.  Didn't actually seem to be an effect to the ships though, looked like just a UI issue.

the 30% hull points lost and 100% antimater lost debuff is the starbase effect when you jump out of a system containing an enemy starbase

But the point is I hadn't since right near the start of the game.  And it was on my ships constantly.

The changes to cruisers are good and the changes to cap ships are fantastic.

The new Halcyon is an absolute monster. 6 squads by lvl 3 with ADA and Anima Tempest doubles the strength of all the Halcyon's SC squads. Very useful cap ship and all its abilities are very powerful.

The Egg is basically the same when it comes to combat effectiveness. It actually kills frigates more easily now at lvl 1. The Vulkoras is a beast. Nothing kills planets as quickly as this thing. I haven't tried this yet, but I expect that a lvl 6 Vulkoras and an Egg will make a great anti-SB team.

I have't tried them out yet, but the Skirantra and Marauder seem like they didn't get buffed enough. The Skirantra seems so much weaker now compared to other cap ships, especially carrier caps.

The Revelation changes are welcome, but it needs a buff still. Provoke Hysteria deals 60 dps to capital planets only whereas a Vulkoras does 108 dps to all planets passively with lvl 3 Assualt Specialisation.

Vulkoras does 10~11 dps against planets with maxed assault spec and a little over 5 without it. The listed 53 is single shot damage. A capital planet with 6000 hit points would die in below 60 seconds if it was 100-something DPS. I've checked it all over when I made this thread. Most of my statements are a bit outdated, but the Vulk's damage hasn't changed as far as I know.

With Platforms I'd wager it's something around 20~22dps.

Clear enemy ships and see what damage Vulk will do over a period of time (above 60 seconds will give you a decent approximation) if you don't believe me.

That is much clearer now, thankyou. It was 11:30 pm when I posted that, my brain needed a break.

Am I making something wrong? Where do you see those squadrons? My Level SIX carrier has 6 squads (with lvl 2 ADA).

Although I did that upgrade, it did neither change the amount of squadrons listed in the control nor the amount of squadrons reported in the planet info for my fleet?!? Furthermore, the text description is now mixed: In yellow it still reads extra strike craft and the explanation says that it's the number of additional squadrons.

I was astonished that the progenitor has been changed - I did not read that in the overview. Did I miss it or are there more changes which were not reported? Anyway...I believe it's more fair now. 60% cost reduction really was immense

I've especially got the impression that the AI is now reduced in their attempts to flee. Where they would have fled before, they now did split their forces. The big part focusing their attack on the hangars, ignoring stationary guns, while a small fraction of them focused on my cap while ignoring the smaller support ships.

Screet

Carriers start with 3 squads a piece.  Every two levels (starting at level 3) they gain one extra squad.  Adept drone anima adds one extra squad above and beyond that tally per level.

So, a level 3 carrier with level 2 ada should have a total of 6 squads.  Three from its base allowance, one from leveling up, and two from ada.  A level 5 carrier with maxed out ada can have 8 squads (3 base, 2 from leveling up, 3 from ada).

Honestly, ada isn't (and I don't think it ever will be) a jaw-dropping ability.  By the time you get a lot of strike craft out of it, drone hosts are available anyways.  I've seen a couple of Halcyon rushes, but every time the defending player had no trouble bringing out flaks.  It seems to me every successful Halcyon rush probably could have been pulled off with any capital ship. However, I now think ada is a solid ability that is a viable alternative to racking up points in TK-push or energy amplification if you don't need these abilities (or further levels in these abilities).  However, I wouldn't pick a Halcyon for ada.

Screet, I think you are running into a bug in Vanilla Sins, (reported here).  The Halcyon is supposed to start with 3 now, and add squads with ADA, but its not working.  I beilieve Blair said he was working on fixing it in the upcoming hotfix too.

Oh, and the Progenitor changes are mentioned in that same thread, page 4, reply 88:
"5. Progenitor Mothership
 - Colonize planet upgrade cost reduction decreased from 20%/40%/60% to 15%/30%/45%
 - Colonize duration increased from 360/360/600 seconds to 360/480/600"

Actually, the progression is a little different.  At level 6 they also pick up a squad.  So 5 squads at level 5, 6 at 6, then 7 at 8, and finally 8 at 10.

Darvin, you mentioned seeing some Halcyon rushing.  What other first cap picks have been popular?  Any new strategies evolving?  I've been unable to get online with Entrenchment since it didn't download correctly... and am going to have reinstall, or something.

Anyone else have comments on cap picks?

Well, most people are sticking to 1.03 strategies as far as capital ships go.  I see a lot of Evacuators, Progenitors, and Marzas floating around.  They remain viable and powerful picks as always.  I presume the low number of Akkans is due to the Akkan bug in the current version.  I've seen Sova and Halcyon used for rushing, but I haven't seen any strategies that were good enough to merit copying.  Kortul seems to be a popular Vasari first pick now.  I also ran into a couple people who seemed to love the Rapture (seeing as it was unchanged I can only presume these were people using it in 1.03) but as usual I was not impressed and still regard it as more of a second cap selection.

To be honest, I haven't seen that much variation.  It seems most people are still pretty conservative with cap choices and while a few were willing to try out Halcyon and Sova, that seems to be the limit of their experimentation.  I've yet to see a Kol rusher, which is surprising given that the cap has such a strong following and got a very nice buff.