Last night I was enjoying a TA game when I encountered the escalating research cost problem. My opponents didn't seem to be affected and quickly built up an overwhelming tech advantage so I resigned the game and decided to download 1.95. SD Central 2.54.522 doesn't have TA 1.95 (or Sins of a Solar Empire 1.05) so I searched for Impulse, eventually found a link to the site, clicked the download button and ran the install. The application would get some random distance, 45% maximum, and hang.

To check connectivity with Stardock, I went back into SD Central and successfully installed the heightmaps for GC2. SD Central also suffers frequent connection timeouts but all you have to do is click the install button again and it picks up where it left off so, eventually, the install works. The need to babysit the dowwnload to recover from connection timeouts can be frustrating but updates aren't that frequent so it's managable.

Not sure what is causing this but suspect my low speed (sustained transfer rate ~ 35Kb/Sec)  broadband connection has something to do with it. The bandwidth throttling mechanism my ISP uses to create the low speed offering may be responsible for the connection timeouts but I have no problem with downloads from other sites. The computer is running Vista Business 32bit SP1. Admin user with UAC turned off.

Bottom line: I now have 2 programs - Twilight of the Arnor and Sins of a Solar Empire that I can't update because Impulse won't install. Please keep publishing updates on the old SD Central system until you have the wrinkles ironed out of the new one!