Instead of nerfing things, why not BUFFING things in order to balance stuff ? And no, the mod wasn't better years back, it was worse, imbalanced, lacked originality(Lot's of imports, and come on, many other mods have a Nomad faction of their own.), fewer people to play with, and so on...The mod evolved, it developed, it became better and it keeps getting better, what changed for the worse however are the people; the people who made this place so great either don't want change because of new rules being added to prevent abuses and violations from pervs, and thus end up banned, or just leave. What is left, are a few great people who contribute to this community but their voices are deafened by a rampant hoard of 12 year old LN admirals who grow tails when they reach puberty and cry to nerf all there is so they can just pop it with their dreadnoughts without the logical requirement of the component "brain". Another parasitic factor is the new gene of Zerg called "Social Changeling" who enforces other people's opinions on matters after reading it somewhere on the forums, but without thinking about it themselves. For example: A claims that the bomber should be nerfed. B, enforced this opinion, and finally C, our Social Changeling becomes like B, only because A and B said it.
Example two:
C lurking on the forums when it spots something interesting...
A: "Bombers do a lot of damage and are able to take quite a beating before going down, I suggest we make special bomber guns who are slow and useless and nerf them from using fighter guns"
C still lurking...
B: "Yeah, you're right..."
C: OMG U GYS R SOOOOO R8 !!! NERF DA BOOBERS !!!! REMOVE DA BOOBERS !!! DA CMMNITY HAS SPIK !!!
And there are other factors too which I should not name here, and all these factors contribute to making the beneficial players wise of mind to lose interest in this place and seek another, leaving behind only death and destruction. This is why this mod seems to be a lot worse than the previous ones, but that is just an illusion, the mod in itself is great, it's the outside factors which plague it.