New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.742_Hacking_Balance
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
This is just further refinement, mostly focused on balance more than anything else. Hacking points were still too plentiful, and you could hack in deepstrike territory without any downsides, and battlestation science upgrades were way too cheap.
On the other hand, your lone wolf fleets and various other kinds of fleet leaders can do a variety of hacks now, and it says what kind of hackers are viable for each hack type. This makes it so that in particular in DLC1, spire fleet leaders can hack for most things (just not more ship lines).
ALSO, neutral planet science extraction is back, just more expensive in hacking points. I hadn't fully considered the range of multi-faction situations where this was relevant, particularly when allied nanocaust, or even enemy nanocaust, might take a ton of territory that you need to get science from without taking over the planet.
There were a couple of bugs related to DLC1, and I'm not sure how new they were; there's one more that I need to chase down tomorrow. And there's one more major fix now in place to prevent the dreaded cross-threading errors that have been happening for the last half dozen beta versions. Fingers crossed that nailed that one. Plus other minor fixes and tweaks.
How's balance feeling now? If folks need more time to test while this is in beta, that's fine; for the most part I'm going to shift my attention to working on DLC2 as much as possible, while dealing with the bugfixes and tuning that comes up.