DJAS Mod v11
This mod is built from Captain Kwok's excellent Balance Mod, and makes a number of changes.
1. Ships are split into destroyers, cruisers, and battleships. All are available from the beginning of the game, and all get bigger as Large Scale Construction is researched. Destroyers are good fighter-killers and missile ships, cruisers are good anti-ship and all around, and battleships can crack planets and starbases and make good carriers, supply ships, etc. Fighters, drones, and other units have much the same uses as they do in BM.
2. There are 4 types of weapons: Missiles, beams, pulses, and guns. Each can be researched up to level 100, and so can shields and armor. There are 3 tiers of technology, unlocked by researching a "breakthrough" tech that unlocks advanced theoretical sciences. The higher tiered tech starts at level 1 again, but quickly eclipses the older tech. It becomes a balancing act. Go for the higher tier too soon and an enemy may be able to defeat you by leveling existing tech, but wait too long and you won't stand a chance.
There are lots of smaller changes, but those are the main two. Racial and specialized weapons have been left in, but may or may not be useful. They have not been tested against the new weapons and will eventually be replaced. Racial tech other than weapons, armor and shields has the same usefulness as in BM. This mod is currently multiplayer only. Singleplayer will start, but the AI players do nothing.
Install by unzipping to SE5\GameTypes.