* When a large new AI Barracks is created, that can cause a momentary lag in the time, which we forgot to mention last game. Now there is also a message shown of "AI Barracks Created With Units: 1200" or similar, to let players know what is going on. These lag spikes are really temporary, not all that common (except when loading old savegames with tons of units over the ship cap), and lead to better performance on an ongoing basis in that savegame.
* Previously, AI Barracks were not allowed to be created except when the attack + threat level was already over 1500. Before that point, it would cause border aggression only, which could be rather catastrophic with older savegames, especially longer ones. Now the AI Barracks are allowed to kick in at any time regardless of the attack + threat levels. This also will make the barracks more likely to be used during the course of normal games started in 3.181 or later.
* Previously, Border Aggression could be really vicious, sending vast quantities of ships cumulatively into threat when there are a lot of planets all with fewer than 200 excess ships on them (the minimum to make a barracks). And it could also be really vicious in sending a lot of core or mark IV ships at the players when they were used to seeing mark I or II ships in a game.
o Now the Border Aggression will never kick in at all if the attack + threat level is already 500 or more.
o Additionally, when ships would be released via border aggression, and those ships have a tech level that is more than 2 marks higher than the current tech level of that AI player (so, mark IV/V ship with a mark I AI tech level, or mark V ship with a mark II AI tech level, basically), then these excess ships are simply exploded rather than being released. This keeps the ship caps pruned as needed without causing a ridiculous spike in difficulty and without having players ever get swarmed with core ships early in the game.
* Refactored the ship category buttons at the bottom of the main screen to a two-tier model letting the player drill down to either the full list, the low-power list, the non-low-power list, or a list of a specific ship-type.
* Command Stations and Guard Posts now get their own line of icons in the intel summary in the galaxy map. This prevents them from completely overwhelming all of the other special ship icons by their presence.
* The ships that show up with an icon on the intel summary view have their own text line directly below in purple, but they were also still showing up in the larger lists of my/allied/enemy ships further down. Now they have been removed from those lower lists (but not the counts of enemy ships by mark level), so as to make those lists more focused and easier to read.
* The non-core guard posts now have white borders like other ships. The core guard posts will soon.