The logistics of getting all the graphics files out to end users hasn't come up yet for EB, really. We assumed that because of all the content that our download is going to be huge...v0.4a was less than 4MB, and the graphics it had were only for less than 20 new units; about 1/25th of the total. That doesn't include any buildings, faction icons, or other large files. So there is no getting around it, our download is going to be massive.

However, I don't think it ever occured to anyone to try and find a way to handle the .pak issue above; up until now none of our internal releases included things such as the new faction icons.

I guess I've been spoiled by the mod work I'm doing for another game, where a mod development kit was released with the game and tools were supplied for this. However, you would think that even without such tools, CA would have some sort of internal mechanism for dealing with patch files that affect the .paks. Otherwise they would be faced with the same problem we are; I suppose it is possible that they have a programmer waste time coming up with an install program that unpacks the relevant .pak files and repacks it with patched content, but I don't think that is a likely scenario...they must have an easier way.

When we have some time we'll play around with the naming routine, to see if we can come up with some way to get a new .pak read before the originals.