Hey can i ask if like the new races have new models and all for the mod
actually they dont, im not primarily a modler, so i re-use what is available, but i try to change the setup and stresses on each race to make them different than the others.
The Infectors produce a lot of cheap but weak ships, a lot perhaps like the Zerg, and have two abilities predominately, the phase out hull and the volatile nanites.
The Traders are on par with the Tec, but they get 3 times the tradeships of everyone else.
The Diplomats are culture heavy, they get upgraded culture for their caps, and each of their caps also carry blackout ability.
The pirates of course get the pirate ships with a lowered cost, and access to capitals and starbases that they previously didnt, for both the playable and the npc pirate races, which will make things pretty heavy if you are fighting an enemy and the pirates with a starbase show up on your doorstep. 
The rest of the mod, i tried to balance for an early game, but not exclusively, i raised the costs on all the caps and ships, so each race only produce so many early on, and beefed up the armor for the Tec, raised the shields for the Advent and increased the ship speed for the vasari. So this should mean no matter which race you enjoy most, you wont get overwhelmed in a rush early on, and should have the strength to withstand the early battles without fear of losing in the first part of the game.
I initially increased the planet sizes, but something in my process is lowering the speed of the game, so i removed the large planets and went back to standard.
I have plans to work the research and the bonuses for the races, but that is still on the drawing board and i havent yet even begun to start that.
In addition, my StarFall for Vanilla Sins had numerous 'ships' which i made to flesh out the fleet on other worlds, basically what i did was take the planet modules and make moveable versions that could accompany the fleet, so that ships could readily get their shields restored, or have enemy weapons interrupted, or have strikecraft disabled or whatever. It made it fun, but that is also something that i want to port to Entrenchment which i haven't even started to look at.
At some point i would like to return to the Big Planet thing, but i have had so many performance issues it has been a huge headache. And until i can figure it out, some optimum size for the planets without dragging down the speed of the game, then i will leave it as is.
It seems to me, the devs of course have the easiest hand in this, however they are pretty busy already with probably the other expansions and their new IP project, so they may not want to spend as much time re-building the under system to get planets to revolve, or have interchangeable skyboxes, or modular and or ships where turrets turn or guns rotate and target, or engine cowlings spin about in space. Such things are wonderfully aesthetic and make the game more than a quick and down and dirty battle sandbox. That and a campaign, or making it so the players can create their own campaign. Some of the more ambitious modders are trying things like that right now, but it certainly cant be easy given that only so much is accessible from the modding side. We would have to be coders and build our own programming into the game to get some of the things we want to do into the game at present.
Anyway, thats where things are at the moment, i am taking another class this second part of summer, so will have my hands full in a few more days. Ahhh, the last few off have been fun, so it may be a month or so before i have time to get back to what i want to add, but if some ambitious modders want to pick up my mod and add things then they are welcome to. Thanks for the comments and hope you will give the mod a try, it was fun thinking up all the things i wanted to put into it, and then seeing if i could pull it off. I'm relatively new to all this, i've only been into modding the last 8 months or so. There are tons of people out there that code for breakfast, have been doing this stuff for years and can do pretty much everything, even write there own gui code and patch the system underneath.
But they are probably either game makers or heavily on their way in that direction, so they may not have alot of time to spare, but they know alot, and are a great help in getting ideas on how to get to some particular thing you may want to do if you ever get into modding.
Take care and have fun gaming and modding!!
-Teal
