That's actually pretty skimable. Anything with the words "bug fix" can be ignored, and balance tweaks from several revisions away don't exactly mean much.
I think that there is a good reason to update from 3.0-6.0. It's almost a different game by this point; the lack of AI Turrets is only one difference. Mechanics, ship types/balance, and strategies will all be quite different.
I do think that guardians are more reasonable, but I was never around for the AI's days of using turrets.
Took a look at the guardian stats (specifically the lighting one.) Beefier and hit a lot harder, but unless the AI likes to stack a half a dozen mark V ones at a single spot, the combined Hp and DPS will be way lower. Right now there's dozens of mark IIIs per defensive point, so we get a shade to close and they just go *KERZAAP!* "Oh I'm sorry you didn't
need that
entire fleet did you?" Add in all the missile and laser turrets backing them up, and even starships only last 30-40 seconds; less if you've yet to taunt out the 60 electric shuttles inevitably sitting there.
Harassing him into updating sounds like a plan. If nothing else the unpatched game isn't exactly a lot of fun right now. A day of play to maybe take one system (Assuming it doesn't decide to send a cross planet attack at the other end of our space, meaning we get to spend half an hour cleaning that up) is just... eck. For that matter the AI not having every turret ever should help with the lag of doom (For some reason an older system isn't every happy about rendering and simulating 6000 units and the all projectiles that implies
).
