I think a lot of things have changed for the better in 1.0.2. There is more room for expansion in plugs because the limits on several resources have been increased, the AI is smarter & more challenging, the beam bug from 1.0.1 was finally fixed, and several other things.
Unfortunately, I don't like all the AI changes. I'm not sure whether AI ships have to worry about fuel for their afterburners, but it sure seems like they never run out. This makes the speed of opponent ships pretty ridiculous once you have a high Combat Rating. It means that no matter what ship you fly, you still won't be able to outrun many opponents. I have been in a UE Fighter and had Voinian Heavies catch up with me (while I was afterburning). I've been caught by Kraits while I was in a Crescent Fighter (again while afterburning). I'm all for updating the AI to make it more challenging, but it's been moved to the point of being utterly unrealistic. For someone like me, who really enjoys flying fighters, all the advantages of flying in a fighter have been canceled out in 1.0.2. If this is was done on purpose by Ambrosia in order to make it harder to fly fighters effectively, then they should come out and say that the EVO engine has been intentionally changed to make it nearly impossible to do everything in a fighter. They even changed the stats on fighters' shields to make them worse.
In my opinion, Ambrosia has tried to address the historically weak AI, but they've done so by giving the AI unreasonable bonuses, rather than making it that much smarter.
As for continuing to release new versions of EVO, it's not really that important. When EVO came out, a plug came out very quickly that carried the EV universe into the EVO engine. Ambrosia probably expects that to happen with EVN as well. I plan on porting the EVO universe over to EVN to see how it performs with the new engine, and eventually I might do the same for EV. If other people are interested in these plugs, I may consider a public release.
I would suggest that you try 1.0.2. You will have to adjust your style somewhat, depending on what sorts of ships you use. And playing 1.0.2 on Strict can be really hard, so be warned.
If people are really desperate to get copies of old versions of EVO, I saved the original installers for 1.0.0 and 1.0.1. Of those, I recommend 1.0.0, as it doesn't have the beam bug. Let me know if you want me to try to upload one of the installers.
(still trying to understand how a ship with a top speed 100 clicks slower than mine can catch me),
Paradigm
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