Really? Nerf to the SCOUT weapons? That's um... to put it lightly... "a bad idea".
It took like 3 or 4 scouts to kill one of the initial starting combat light ships as far as I have noticed. I have never built more than 6 in existence at one time anyway to explore the universe but they should be effective still in groups vs lone ships.
I have no idea about online game balance since I don't really play online games much but I can't imagine anyone using a fleet of scouts to win a match...
There isn't anything in this patch (balance wise) I like except the graphics fixes which I never noticed the bugs i the first place. I guess I'll download it anyway since AFAIK the SD/IC patches have not yet caused a new bug to pop up.
My
one and only gripe about SoaSE has
still not been fixed:
Please add an option to have the opening movie
ALWAYS play!
This is probably as easy to do as just removing whatever coding turns off the "Play opening cinematic" every time we start the game. This is one of the top 20 coolest opening movies in a game I've played. It's super annoying to have to check the box every time I play it and even more annoying to have to check it then restart the the game if I want to see it but forgot to recheck the box last time I started the game.