Ok Dread Lords Race mod, though currently the custom tech tree and not the racial's are the focus, per my warnings below the racial aspect will come when i've got the rest working.
Ok a big WARNING first. Then i'll give a basics rundown
This is V0.2 which means some things are incomplete.
A) Currently any localisations, (that is in game text for anything), that aren't new or for something that was edited from base have not been subject to changes to make them suitably dread lordy.
The weapons and defensive systems trees are only including the basis, the various buff modules and resource consuming modules and techs for them are missing. That's work to do.
C) There's no race included so you'll have to create one to use the tech tree. This is pretty much going to be my last priority.
D) Because i've edited certain techs that are base techs I've had to go in and use the total conversion method of updating the Improvements file, (i'll have to do the same for starbase modules when i get that far), as such this mod is NOT compatible with any that also replaces that file, and may or may not be compatible with any that edit it.
E) Currently the defensive modules will only produce shield FX and the Offensive one's Beam FX, going to look into a fix for this.
Okay, the rundown.
The tree is a mixed bag, you have poor farming, poor extreme world colonies and por approval. Conversely you get significant boosts to your end-game terraforming, access to all extreme world types an age earlier and some strong boosts to military buildings, military production, (particularly on non-production heavy worlds), and manufacturing.
You also get completely unique weapon and defensive systems. Both types provide you with amounts of all types of value and the defensive systems are fleet wide. The catch is that the defensive systems are much less powerful on a per module basis relative to their other stats and whilst the offensive systems are slightly more powerful overall, the spreading of DPS across all defence types costs them much of that power. In effect true mixed defence ships will perform as well or slightly better against them than against most others, but specialised defense ships will suffer. It also creates some interesting implications for small vs large.
And here's the download link.
If you want your Starbases to be able to mine even with Culture/Military/Economic Rings, download the following file as well and apply it over the top. You still need the base download above however. The File on it's own will merely unlock no mining restrictions for normal races, but it should cause any errors.
Here's the mining download link.
V0.11.1 to V0.2 Changes in Brief:
The mains changes where the removal of the Hyperion Buildings and the replacement thereof with a specialised Tech line in the Military tree. This suits the more distributed production style of the Dread Lords much better. Research building have also received a major balance pass, several localisation bugs have been squashed and i've changed all instances of DreadLords fighter use to suing a new Escort fighter. This is a medium class ship and due to it's shared use i've had to replace the Advanced TransportModule's Interceptors with Escort Fighters as well as the top line T5 Pragmatic Trai effect. Naturally this affects all factions.