@ranged weapons: Ranged Old Ones are supposed to have lots of Mind Blasts. Streamgunners are supposed to attack 5 times,
per turn.
@the pretender: He's supposed to be a semi-SC who can also get high in Astral. I'll lower the path cost to 50 maybe and give him S3. He also has a Mind Blast, but that's not too important.
@weapons: The Neoclidians are armed for a new era of Ranged Space Combat. If you're having melee problems due to having almost no melee weaponry, buy some Shoggoths. Trample the opposition under-blob.
You could also buy Streamgunners.
@Orbital Stations: The higher level spell is level 3 Orbital Station. It can only be accessed by a Level 2. Higher levels get higher paths and consume fewer supplies, in addition to being tougher. I think I'll just give them 2E, since you're right the 1E ones are useless.
@research: Awakeners are now poor leaders, but have research bonus 4 (ie, 6/7 research). Elder Awakeners also get the research bonus. Both of them get a decrease in age(Awakener 10, Elder 25). Not much, but the Awakener shouldn't start old now.
Not sure what's up with the sprite numbers. Neoclidia is 2200-2248, maybe that's the problem. Checking an old version of Dom3K, it seems that that's 2600+.
And I'll fix the double-cap-only problem. it's because I placed the capital only troops & commanders as recruitables.
Here's my newest .dm. Time to play!
Edit: Also fixed a problem with Heavy Laserguns.
Edit2: I didn't want researchbonus 4. Too much. Down to 2 now.
Tripledit: Added Neoclidian Warship to unit roster.
Quadrupledit: Fixed a problem with the recruit screen mixing the space & land forms of units up.
Edit5: Two units were number 2205.