They're just big chunks of data files stacked together. No compression whatsoever (although individual files may have compression, which is why you can't see conversations in plain text).

Wow! Finally we have HD graphics that actually look like, well, UQM. The old HD graphics looked completely wrong in so many places, the flagship and the menus especially.

It seems that this is the full version of the interview that Ars published back in November 2018. It will take me a while to watch the whole thing.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

See also Clarke's Three Laws

Which is precisely why I suggested an explanation for the "magic".

Now, I'm not suggesting that Kwayne's story gives a detailed explanation of this phenomenon, how exactly it works, and so on. The exact reasons for this... well, directed evolution may very well remain a mystery. However, I do believe that it should be a plot point in your story - that the scientists on Unzervalt should acknowledge that this is something strange, something that shouldn't happen normally, rather than take it for granted.

I read "Lk" there.

Yeah, so did I.

The main problem I had with this idea is that, if taken literally, it basically translates to magic. As though everything the Precursors touched was imbued with some kind of supernatural quality (Precursor potential?) that directed all living beings' evolution towards sentience. So what I suggested is basically an attempt to give a plausible scientific explanation (for the UQM setting) for the "magic".

alien wildlife achieving some degree of sentience from consuming Precursor-related biomatter from left behind storages.

That must be some pretty advanced stuff then, not just some biomatter. Some advanced equivalent of the nanots the Umgah injected into the Dnyarri, perhaps?

One way I try to think about it is that the Syreen as a race are nearly extinct due to the devastation of their home world and it's probably required them to make some cultural adjustments as a result to increase the species population.

The dialogue also implied that the Syreen have never gotten as sexually hung-up as the Earthlings did, so they didn't even have many nudity taboos in the first place (if any at all).

Another thing to consider is that, if you can get past the costume, the Syreen are portrayed as total bad***es in the game. They absolutely eviscerate the Mycon for instance.

Absolutely. Both Hayes and Talana mention that there were many Earthlings that did react to the Syreen like a stereotypical horny male would, and then found out that there was much more to the Syreen than shallow fanservice.

There's a fine line between fan-service and blatant sexism and where that line is drawn is YMMV by person.

Again, I agree. Though, in defense of UQM, it parodies the sexist tropes rather than playing them straight - unlike, say, Star Trek TOS. And there is one thing UQM really excelled at, and that was giving all aliens - the Syreen included - real character.

Alvarin on the PoNaF tried to report this item, but they refused to handle the complaint itself, as he is not the IP owner...

Paul Reiche III is on this forum, and he can probably be reached through other channels as well. Has anyone tried to report it to him?

I can't for the life of me repeat the Vela II bug you encountered

In my game, it says "Planet II" in the interplanetary screen, but "Unzervalt" in orbit.

And what about Commander Hayes complaining about the mineral loads being too light no matter how much you bring him? Did you perhaps raise the thresholds for the loads being deemed "medium" or "heavy" so that you need to fill your ship's entire spine with storage bays and fill them to the brim in order for your load to be deemed worthwhile?

UPDATE:
Looks like Hayes reacts to the minerals normally now.

Quick question, did you replace all the content files and EXE because none of this is happening on a fresh installation for me except for the shipyard power lines.
Which is definitely annoying and it only does it in HD mode for me. So should be easy to find and squash when I get back.

I used the "clone and download" option in the MegaMod's GitHub directory to download the new version. I just checked and no, the archive I downloaded did not include the content directory. Is there any way to download the new content files except by using the installer to uninstall and reinstall the whole game?

And as for the, well, power lines in the shipyard screen, I played with the classic low-res graphics (I don't like the style of the HD graphics personally), and the problem was still there for me.

It's not supposed to be 100% lore friendly.

That's exactly the problem I'm having. I'm fine with a homeworld changing from planet I to, say, planet IV. I'm not fine with Unzervalt changing from a Water World to a completely uninhabitable Primordial World. That's, well, a world of difference. And it's really immersion-breaking. So, yes, homeworlds need to be in the habitable zone and have the correct planet type.

Also, Vela I and Vela II are both called Unzervalt now.

And also, Commander Hayes now says that all my mineral loads are "light" no matter how much I bring him. I just brought two storage bays' worth of precious and radioactive minerals, and Hayes still said it was too little.

And finally, apparently I can now view ships' ComSim databank entries from the shipyard, but when I do so, those glowing... pathways... corridors... wire-like things from the flagship to the escort ships remain on the screen, and they are superimposed over the ship's image in the databank entry.

When I started playing with a custom random seed, many planets important to the story were affected by this too (at least in the save file I kept from the 0.8.0.82 version).

Spathiwa's moon is no longer a Pellucid World.
The Pkunk homeworld is in the "gray" zone, meaning its surface temperature is well below zero.
Unzervalt became a Primordial World with class 8 weather and tectonics, and a surface temperature of 117ºC.

Looks like the locations of the homeworlds in the original game were based on what was generated with the default random seed, and that all locations important to the story need to be generated manually, because otherwise many things no longer make any sense.

For us to feel certain of this, we have to put a lot of faith in either the pay-to-play/win american "justice" system or Stardock's self control not to launch ridiculous lawsuits in the future.  Anywhere there is a grey area inside or outside of the agreement, a new lawsuit could be formed.  If you give money to Stardock, you are risking them using these funds against Paul and Fred and/or this community project in the future.

Let's be reasonable here. I don't know what your perception of the American justice system is, but I personally think that Stardock can't just come to the court and bribe it into altering the records of this lawsuit and reinstating Stardock's original complaint (this is an extreme example that you didn't imply in your post, but we do have to define the boundaries here). I think that that amount of "faith" in the American justice system is perfectly reasonable. Otherwise all kinds of wild conspiracy theories can be made up, but since these can be neither proven nor disproven, we'll never come to any kind of consensus here.

And as far as I could see, there aren't many "grey areas" in the outcome of this lawsuit, if we assume that everything that was posted in F&P's blog and the court documents for both the lawsuit and the trademark applications was true. Stardock cannot ever reapply for the UQM trademark or dispute F&P's ownership of the UQM copyright again. The worst thing I can imagine happening is that when F&P start releasing promotional material for the UQM sequel, Stardock would start issuing DMCA takedowns against it and sue F&P for copyright infringement. If that does happen, well... I guess we'll just have to watch as Stardock gets crushed. And I'm sure we'll have plenty of ways to support F&P if that ever happens.

Seriously, I hope people would just stop waging a war against Stardock already. The litigation is OVER. F&P and Stardock are no longer enemies. And I personally don't give a flying F about what Brad Wardell feels about this whole incident. I don't need to see him in tears over what he had done, or otherwise humiliated or wracked with remorse. The only thing I want is a guarantee that nothing like this ever happens again, and the settlement agreement and the court order to dismiss all complaints and counterclaims with prejudice seem like a pretty solid guarantee to me. F&P's copyrights and the UQM trademark are safe in their hands, and there's nothing Stardock can do to change that anymore, even if they wanted to. So personally I hope you people would just move on. I haven't seen any lingering hostility on Stardock's side of the fence.

PRH, Am i correct in assuming you were you using the latest MegaMod binary for testing?

Yep, that's correct.

I've tried your fix and it worked. Thanks.