News for Maelstrom Mod, Febuary 2012

Highlights (Release 7)
Added Titan Capital Flagships to Expansion series for all six races. Only one Titan is in play, per player, at a time. They can only be replaced an hour after last build. Titan ships include new models, abilities, sounds, effects, etc.
Thanks to ZombiesRus5 for sharing the Flagship Ability.

Bug fixes
- TradeAlliance longrange frigate crystal cost typo fixed
- TradeAlliance Travelon heavy cruiser missile barrage ability now needs to be researched
- Fixed Replicator carrier cruiser's continuous replicate problem
- Minidumps for Magnetar and Quasar Stars abilities fixed
- TA antifghter now attacks strikecraft
- Pirate Capitalships block planet bombardment, preventing multiple colonization by pirates in a short period of time.

Balance
- Increased cooldown time on Dreadnought spawning
- Replicators Siege Capitalship ability 'Neural Attack' reduced in intensity
- Balanced a number of Planets, i.e reduced populations and logistics
- Increased the firepower of Norlamins Colony Frigate (i.e approximately equal to light frigate)
- Balanced research trees (i.e pruned some depth) particularly for Norlamins and TradeAlliance races
- Balanced orbital defense modules of new races
- Decreased Tec and TA Dreadnought Firepower
- Militia: Dangerous asteroids now large and small types, heavy and longrange ships grow on a hourly basis

Sounds
- New sound tracks for TradeAlliance
- New opening music theme
- A number of sounds for abilities have been fixed

Models
- Added Titan Flagships and Titan Planetary Coordinator models for 6 races
- Updated Dreadnought Planetary Coordinator models for 6 races
- Updated Mining Planet mesh
- Updated Capitalships: Norlamins Siege, Colony, Replicators Battle
- Updated Starbases: Norlamins, Replicators
- Updated Cruisers: Norlamins Utility, Replicators Envoy, Replicators Carrier, TA Utility, TA Envoy, TA StarBase Constructor
- Updated Frigates: Norlamins MineralExplorer, Replicators Siege, Replicators Colony, Replicators AntiFighter, TA Scout
- Updated Support: Norlamins TradeShip, Norlamins RefineryShip, Norlamins RemoteRefinery, Norlamins Fighter, Norlamins Bomber, TA TradeShip, TA RefineryShip

Abilities
- Norlamins Colony Capitalship ability 'zone of force' updated, now ships are invulnerable and cannot move
- Replaced 3 Replicator Capitalship abilities on colony, battle, support
- Replaced 5 TradeAlliance frigate abilities adding more diversity
- Added Mega-Laser ability to the Norlamins heavy cruiser
- Replicator and Norlamins Utility cruisers (with module capture ability) can only take over 'some' enemy orbital structures

Research
- Added new planet research for two types of planets - Giant Planets and Hi-Technology Planets
- Increased Norlamins ship firepower (i.e range, rate, damage) via 4th, 5th and 6th order research

Planets
- Updated Legendary Planet model
- Added abilities to original planets (Terran, Ice, Desert, Volcanic)
- For Original Sins: added moons to planets
- Fixed Aura Planet's 'Phase Distortion' ability

Effects
- Fixed Magnetar Star's particle effect
- Fixed particle effect for Replicators Siege Capital ability 'Neural Attack'
- Added rotating domes to TradeAlliance colony Capitalship
- Added rotating saucer to Norlamins Colony Frigate

Strings
- some strings too long to fit into display box ... have been fixed