CRASH FIXES
- added extra safeguards to help prevent crashes when using faulty themes
- fixed rare crash when giving diplomatic gifts

BUG FIXES
- now cancel intelligence missions when target colony or base conquered, destroyed, etc
- fixed bug where sometimes getting tech bonuses from disassembling ships without advanced tech
- Ion Defense and Tractor Beams no longer counted as weapons when checking civilian designs in Ship Design editor
- ensure never load pirate raider troops when loading troops onto transports (e.g. loading troops from own colony while attacking pirate base)
- ensure custom planetmaps getting loaded ('other' folder)
- ensure mouse scroll wheel retains focus when Character and Empire Policy screens are closed
- ensure colonies only appear once in Top Colonies screen, even when controlled by pirates
- fixed problem where ships with advanced tech were sometimes not giving tech bonuses when disassembled

MODDING
- NEW MODDING FEATURE: defined Research path. Optionally allow specifying project order for a race for each tech tree (see new entries in race files: WeaponsResearchProjectOrder, EnergyResearchProjectOrder, HighTechResearchProjectOrder)
- reverted file loading for certain files to be encoding neutral, i.e. does not matter whether ANSI or UTF-8 (resources.txt, components.txt, research.txt)
- increased maximum government amount to 60 (governments.txt)
- increased maximum planetary facility amount to 100 (facilities.txt)
- increased maximum fighter amount to 50 (fighters.txt)

USER INTERFACE
- increased font sizes for main menu items when screen resolution is greater than 1920x1080
- increased font size for Galactopedia topic index
- increased font size of hover panel at bottom-middle of screen
- increased font size in Game Options screens
- slightly increased font size in main view for system names, nebula names, etc
- increased font size of tradeable items in Diplomacy trade screen
- increased font size in hover tech descriptions in Diplomacy trade screen
- increased font size in Component Guide screen (Design Detail screen and Research screen)
- ensure correct empire remains selected in Diplomacy screen when conclude trade deal

GAME BALANCE AND AI
- further improved AI ship design: no longer add too many extra reactors, nor remove too many shield components, when attempting to shrink a new design to fit within construction size limits
- increased chance of counterintelligence missions successfully intercepting enemy intelligence missions, especially for agents with high counterintelligence skill levels
- random government selection more balanced (no longer frequently choosing Military Dictatorship)
- initial home system ruins (Age of Shadows) now never contain system map bonuses
- reduced number of spaceports empire builds when has low population
- increased maximum fleet count. Now relates to overall number of ships and bases, up to maximum of 100 fleets
- AI empires now check whether colony is safe to build at prior to initiating research station construction (e.g. check for nearby pirates)
- lowered effectiveness of counterintelligence, now better accounts for duration of intercepted mission (3 months vs one year, etc)

PIRATES
- ensure pirate smuggling freighters repair at pirate base when damaged
- ensure pirate smuggling freighters retrofit when necessary and able
- empire will not detect and attack pirate smugglers when they are smuggling resources for that empire
- ensure that pirate-owned colonies are included when checking for wonder completion
- pirate factions now get research bonuses from scientists at their bases
- pirate factions can now change their home base to any space port in their empire by selecting new option in right-click pop-up menu

OTHER
- ensure that new settings and savegame folder locations are properly created (My Documents\My Games\Distant Worlds Universe)