Added Bounty Hunter Faction
- 10 new advanced and highly tunable Bounty Hunter ship hulls.
- Player can also obtain new bounty hunter ships
- Global Bounty/Respect system
- Bounty Hunter Starbases (Strongholds)
- Hire Bounty Hunters as ambient helpers
- Hire Bounty Hunters to clear warp gates
- Hire Bounty Hunters to clear infections (Chapter 4)
- Bounty Hunters can insert themselves into any mission within their borders.
- Extortion demands on leaving their systems
- Additional Chapter 4 BH protection/resistance strategic element.
- Achievement for destroying a Chapter 4 bounty hunter stronghold.
- Bounty Hunter audio chatter

Added Arena
- Arena accessible through Bounty Hunter Strongholds
- 150 Challenges Total
- 10 ladders
- 5 tiers per ladder
- 3 difficulties per Tier
- Specialist reward for beating a ladder on each difficulty level.
- Achievement for winning all arena events

Added AlienFX™ Support (Requires AlienFX™ lighting hardware and DLLs)
- Lighting Modes (per light):
- Nebula Color (default)
- Ship Status
- Capacitor Capacity
- Hull Integrity
- Shield Integrity
- Custom Coloring

Changes:
- Projectile 20% weaker vs. Shields.
- Projectiles 12.5% weaker vs. Armor
- Projectiles 33% weaker vs. Hull
- Explosives 12.5% stronger vs. Armor
- Explosives 20% stronger vs. Hull
- Energy 10% stronger vs. Hull
- Specialist drop chance 150% higher
- All hulls have 100% more health
- Mass Bomb secondary explosions 20% sooner
- Individual Star system tech level spending rebalanced to prevent grind
- Reworked tech tree to be deterministic and evenly distributed
- 50% more research blue prints distributed on game start
- Energy Burst Cannon damage lowered 25%
- Zombie critter damage 33% lower
- Zombie critter max population 33% lower
- Point defense damage increased 50%
- No faction relation changes on mothership assaults
- Weapon boosters 20% less effective
- Huge core mining beam available on any huge beam mount
- Torpedoes do 20% less damage
- Torpedoes have 50% less health
- Early story flow distributed better to prevent long system jumping grinds
- Double mount turret from 3 to 2 blueprints
- Fusion Beams 30% longer range
- Mass driver damage lowered 33%
- 4 Black boxes per huge hull from 6 (to combat Bounty Hunters better)
- If frame rate dips, effects are less likely to play.
- Gravity missiles from rare to uncommon
- Huge ship AI upgrade. Much better at attacking stations and kiting.
- High capacity reactor given better charge rate, only 5% less than basic.
- Double turrets from rare to uncommon

Fixes:
- Large goon pod pickups at mothership and beacon now report 10 goons instead of 1
- Round off error with Slaver bonuses.
- Optimization pass to many systems.
- Save game CRC checker to prevent corruption