The specular is also very dark on the terran texture, whereas the old terran had almost white toward the polar regions and gray on the oceans and almost black on the continents.

Well, i guess that the issue, darker specular map than before. 

specular is alpha in the diffuse. 

Well, its certainly not adding team colours 

Change it to black and look at your dark side luke

Edit

Previous to patch 1.12 the Alpha channel was the "Specular Map".

this is for ships/structures models -cl but I doubt they changed it for planets

So basically....only people who host games on ICO should buy the DLC and all others should just wait for a DLC game to be hosted?

Not that I'm complaining, but I'm thinking most ICO people have absolutely no reason to get the DLC now since the same people host over and over again and most MP guys don't mess around with SP....

As for the pictures, I'm talking about the ones at the bottom center of the screen...they are the same ones as before (even though the planet textures obviously won't match them)...

The Orky was slightly nerfed...first weapon upgrade no longer builds as fast, which should help a little bit in curbing Orky rushing...

I assumed as such....which I'm thinking we should take our pound of flesh and ignore PMs for now...

Because you love us and want to support our decision not to put draconian restrictions on DLC use in multiplayer? 

Kill the heretic,...

I did not have a chance to play the 1.5 yet, just for a moment to check the new textures at least, so i can comment on only what i saw. And yeah, the aesthetics are important to me, as i said before, and while there are indeed better looking games than Sins, i dont give a shit about them.

Anyway, i am not fan of self-serving visuals. I am looking forward to new DLC, but not cause of new planet textures, rather cause of that planet specialization, bonuses, and new technologies. In short, the gameplay implications. I would probably not pay for a bunch of new planet types, which differ just visually. Never did i use any of those mods which added new planets, as i simply saw them just more content with no deeper meaning - with all the respect to the creators of those mods.

Obviously, i care a lot for the visual representation of those new additions, that is just my nature. Things need to look good  . 

It is actually really interesting topic, the things people care about when it comes to gaming. We already know there is certain difference between SP and MP players, what do they put emphasis onto. Then some people like me care about the graphics/visuals, some others not so much. Someone cares about backstory and campaign, basically narrative, cause of their need for immersion. And then there are some, who care just about gameplay and its rules. There is a guy on C&C forums, the coowner of gamereplays.org site, who claimed he does not care for graphics/narrative, as he cant get immersed into the games AT ALL - therefore he approaches the games completely as a set of "riddles" or issues to solve, you need to do, in order to win/beat the game or the human opponent. 

Thats fairly off-topic i guess, hehe

If you nerf phase missiles you really hit vasari hard. Instead of nerfing them, buff or atleast give advent and tec better late game defence against phase missiles.

Early game vasari rely heavily on them. Take that away like every other early game gimmick they have and they will fail anywhere but economy spots.

Meh.  As an SP guy I'll pay the $5 for it assuming it plays nice with mods.  However, if the DLC stuff is unmoddable or causes conflicts with existing planet mods that currently add so much more variety in planets, I'm not touching it with a 10-foot pole.

I strongly disagree. Phase missiles, like all weapon upgrades are more or less meaningless in the early game. And Vasari have the god damm Orky at Military Tech 2..... which will solve all of your worries of being rushed once and for all... not to mention it is a devastating weapon on the offensive too. The minor nerf to its first weapon upgrade does not solve the problem enough.... you rarely will destroy the starbase in time.

From the medium game on the vasari are easily equal to the other races and in late game they become an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction. Having a superior economy AND a superior military compared to the Advent, they effortlessly mop the floor with an Advent player with comparable skill and empire size.

The biggest part of their military supremancy is coming from the phase missiles... especially those on their bombers.

A Vasari carrier does have 2 bomber wings, like the TEC carrier... it consumes the same ammount of fleet supply... and yet it offerns easily 3 times the firepower. For similar ammounts of money.... the Vasari can have a much more deadly bomber fleet. 50 Vasari carriers equal well over 100 TEC carriers. Add the second best fighters of the game and you begin to realize why Vasari have strike craft supremacy.

Yes... it would help a lot if Advent had an culture INDEPENDENT phase missile block.

For reasonable damage levels, we speak about a phase missile block level above 90 %.

Right now Advent have a lousy 20 % block, limited to total cultural domination. Advent offense vs Vasari in late game? Forget it.... all your capitalships and Titan will die in under a minute.

It was suggested in the past, that every shield research of the Advent should grant a bonus to phase missile block. That way it would be not automatic and require a bit of effort on the Advent side. It also might make other research upgrades instead of phase missiles actually worthy.

Currently, as Vasari... you dont want to bother with any weapon upgrades, but phase missiles. Just research the

CHEAP

TO EARLY in the techtree

MEGA WEAPON UPGRADE OF DOOM

that will make all other weapons upgrade in the entire game look like worthless crap.

Forget Advent maxed plasma with Energy Aura.... Vasari can have far more firepower for maybe half the money and far earlier.

While certainly being well within their right to do so.... I really have to say that is is more than a bit ungrateful.

The Multiplayer Community of this game is a small minority of players... one that has a lots of demands however. Much work has went into pleasing them.... so sure..... go ahead... give the developer the impression that the MP guys are not a worthy buyer group..... but then dont complain that they some day might not longer care about MP balancing.

On a more light note..... I think that depending on the additional researches offered, many MP players could be convinced to buy it anyway. After all, if you want to have a DLC game going, it rather sucks if you cannot host one yourself. The ability to play the features in other peoples games, might ingnite interest.

While not draconian... it would without any doubt lead to a divide in the - already small enough - MP community. People without DLC might not find games anymore and might decide to quit playing MP alltogether, and that is not what anyone here can want.

I was speaking about the implemention of the DLC, not about the features.

The current implementation will help avoid the community split that for example Supreme Commander 2 had when a DLC was released with the system you were suggesting earlier.

So the MP community does not have to fear a split.

I also speak about all the MP focused balancing changes, you know for the average SP person, the jumping Orky, Maw, Desperation and all the other things were pretty ok.

Time and possible further balancing patches will tell.

As for minor inconvenience... Steam sucks..... but it is sometimes a bit more convenient than buying elsewhere.... look at its success.... and that although they are offering an inferior product compared to a physical copy. Player base will decline and in time you might need somebody to host a game.... and then it quite sucks if the only capable host is using a non DLC version. Unless you want to wait 1 hour... but we already spoke about inconvenient things above.

The MP players are only a fraction of the Sins player base.... and from this fraction the hardcore MP players are even a smaller fraction. I dont think that they are that important to Stardock from an economical point of view. A bit of "free riding" wont cost SD much and almost certainly will cost them less than a draconian solution that might create an outcry in the community.