First I want to say how amazing the work effort was put into this mod. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I believe I have over 1400 hours into ES2 and this was a refreshing change of pace. This was more a full conversion mod as it was different enough to be advertised as such.

I have 2 small items that I feel should be adjusted, and 1 large issue with the mod.

1 - The 150%+ nerf to probes was harsh. This is noticeable through out the game. But it was compounded in the early game when you dont have much to do and are waiting on buildings for your one settlement. Having to wait 5 turns for one probe is brutal. This is exacerbate by only being able to hold one probe instead of the original two. The only way this is tolerable is to upgrade with Titanium or Hyperium. But these are not available until the second tier of the tree. The biggest issue goes hand in hand with 3rd issue of how valuable strategic are in this conversion. Losing a scout with 3 titanium probes could cost you an early game building. Due to this, I just stopped exploring after a while. I finished the game with only 80% of the galaxy explored.

2- The rework to planets bothered me on several levels (game balance, reality, and preference). First 80% of these planets are mild conditions. Since this is so inaccurate in reality it breaks the immersion for me. In addition, this takes away the need or requirement to terraform planets. Going hand in hand with the immersion, I loved when I can take a barren set of planets and turn them into a lush string of Atolls. This shows how far your tech has come and gives it that advancement feeling. I only needed to terraform two planets in a campaign where I owned 22 systems. This was due to only 3 planet types having an -8 approval rating (Barron/Lava/Desert).

Terraforming was only required to address bad approval. Since most planets are mild, I used this as a base line. This means that no matter what you did terraforming, all you got was +1 population. In addition, setting up a system of all the same type of planet to dry and match bonus from specific building would have been an option if not for the strategic resource that was folded into the cost.

I also had issues with how the planets names no longer match what they are, nor do they feel intuitive. Examples include: Snow, Arctic, and Tundra not being cold. This isnt a deal breaker as we can just establish some new names. I do appreciate the concept of trying to fit the planets into types that match the FIDSI system. Still I dont think this was needed.

3 - My final comment/issue is a big one; this will prevent me from using the mod moving forward. This was building in strategic resources into EVERYTHING. I do understand the push to make them more desirable and want people to fight over them. I just dont think it was properly executed. This issue also bleed over into everything else. My comments 1 and 2 might have been mitigated somewhat by being able to spend resources to use those better probe mods or even play around with terraforming planets into specific groups. I spend 90% of the game with less than 100 titanium and hyperium. If I loaded up my game prior to winning, you would find useful building not built on every system because I had to make the decision of that building was useful ENOUGH to my system right now. This effectively cut the use of any weapon/ship mod that used strategic resources because I couldnt mass produce them. I did put a few on my coordinator class and my carrier ships because i built very few of these.

I need to load up the game and go through all the Titanium and Hyperium it would take to build the buildings I researched and had access to on one system. It was crazy. So what this game ended up becoming was a mini-game of balancing strategic resources. It consumed the entire play through.

My suggestion is the need to cut the required need for strategics in half. This would be a better starting point to reassess the balance. Personally I would leave half the buildings with the same resource requirement and let the other half not having any. This would make tech selection play a huge role as well. Needing to get buildings that dont need strategic would drastically affect your tech selection.

In closing. I wanted to restate how much a breath of fresh air this mod was. While I can disagree with aspects, I can tell a lot of work went into it. Mad Props to the creator(s).