New SE4 Total ConVersion Mod "SMod" open on PBW

[Suicide Junkie]

Firing it up, my reactions:
Map Statistics: Pie Charts
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...odmapstats.png
You've got the classic stock problem:
- Rock natives are better in every way, while gas colonization stinks.
- Small/Rock/methane has an extra planet, while Small/Rock/Ice is short one.
Also:
- All of your quadrant probabilities add up to only 900 instead of 1000.
- Vaccuum Breathers have a big advantage when taking Rock or Ice colony types, and still have a small advantage when all colony types are available. (23.6% resource rate and 24.3% population instead of an even 20% if all atmospheres were equal)
You should tweak the planet chances to either even this out, of give each option some disadvantages to go with their advantages

General comments
1) Nifty animated cursors!
-= Start a new game =-
2) Nicer background.
3) Race design.
The inability to decrease stats is an interesting change.
I generally prefer the method of leaving the option in, while adjusting the payouts so that it is not worth decreasing the ones you usually want to decrease, and it is tempting to decrease the ones you normally increase.
A supply and demand kind of modding

-= Combat modifiers =-
The combat culture modifiers are quite extreme. Checking against the datafiles, you're using stock base and per-distance accuracy modifiers.
With the combat characteristics dirt cheap as well, players are almost certainly going to have to take +35/+35 to space combat at a minimum to be competitive. Although, with no limit, $25/$50 combat modifiers, the berzerker culture won't be required, the characteristic maxxing will be.
Consider that a 10-15% advantage is devastating in stock, and then consider that berzerkers here can get +42/+42 with maxxed maintenance reduction for only 2000 racial points.

-= Maintenance modifiers =-
Everybody is going to have +20% (the max effective) to maintenance as a given.
Maintenance characteristics are dirt cheap to buy. Again here, the culture modifiers will be swamped by the inexpensiveness of the characteristic modifiers.
You may want to set the base maintenance rate to 100% instead of 25%, and adjust the hull maintenance modifiers to match. That will let you use these big modifiers to maintenance, although I think you'll still need to double the cost or more.

-= Advanced traits =-
Woah! Up to +7 speed (Cost 3500) is extreme yet again...
Speed is highly prized in combat, and is a big advantage for strategic manoueverability as well.
Storage techniques is very underpowered, on the other hand.
+20% for the same price as getting twice as many colonies (and thus twice as many facility slots/cargo space)
The only time you would even consider this is if you already had all 3 colony types chosen in a 5000 point game, and you'd have to sacrifice your combat modifiers for it.
I predict it will never be given a second thought by competitive (as opposed to roleplaying) players.

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-= Ship Design =-
Propulsion:
Going with stock-like progression of bonus move.
OK, but I think you went overboard on speed.
EG: Dread- EPM = 2, max 5 engines. Put on 3 standard engine V and a Quantum V's for 14 standard move plus 4 bonus, and the beast flies 8+4 = 12 speed plus the racial modifiers (up to +7) and the tachyon bonus (+5).

Even your worldships would be sailing along at speed 12 before racial traits.
Add the emergency propulsion and it just gets even more out of hand.

Sniper Mount:
Missiles under this mount will launch from farther away, but retain their original travel range. As such, the missiles won't hit their targets unless the target is flying towards you at a decent speed. I'm not sure if you realized this, since the mount description didn't seem to hint at it.

Design Types:
I think you may have gone overboard here.
Design types should help organize the ships into similar Groups, not put each one in its own Category

Troops:
About infantry... Their hitpoints are based on what gun they hold, and they've got quite a large damage:hitpoint ratio. Basically every ground combat is going to be over in one turn... although that's how stock does it, you might consider making the ground combat Last a little longer to add some suspense and leave room for rescue & reinforcements.

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Planets:
The homeworld should start out with *some* basic amount of organics & rads production, even on low tech. Even 10 points as part of the minimum empire generation in settings.txt sould be nice. Perhaps a low tech by-hand type facility for the homeworld (15 points per facility?), and an upgrade given organics manipulation 1 (30-45 per facility).
Having your first orgs and rads facilities 25 turns up the tech tree is just too much.

Tech areas:
Lots of changes, but still standard and logical enough to predict where things will lead.

Looks like you've got quite a bit of good stuff here, but I'm out of time for SE4 today.