It had all started so simply, eleven thousand years ago. The odd replacement leg here, the odd augmented eye there, and for a while everyone on the Vla-hurk home-world was quite happy with the trend towards cybernetic augmentation. Then along came the New World Religion, and the obsession with 'biological purity', and before you know it, half the Vla-hurk population is being shunned for having so much as a hip replacement operation... ...and so it went on, until after a thousand years of this, the augmented half the Vla-hurk finally said 'screw this for a game of soldiers', climbed aboard their freshly built fleet of battleships and nuked the whole planet from orbit, never to return, or set foot on a planetary surface again. And ever since, the Vla-hurk 2.0, known commonly as 'the outcasts' have roamed the galaxy, still angered at the discrimination that lives on in their now heavily-augmented memories, and determined to dish out their own form of punishment, this time against so called 'pure-biologicials', with their much feared war cry of 'how do you like them apples?'. They may be murderous cybernetic psychopaths, but they still have a sense of humor. What The Outcasts Expansion Pack Contains: 10 New ships. 4 Cruisers 3 Frigates and 3 fighters, all in a new graphical style by the same artist who did the original GSB artwork. The outcasts ships are generally of the saucer-configuration, with no shortage of engines and the odd ominous pulsing glow of their power generators... 6 New ship equipment modules: The outcasts have developed a number of innovative technologies not available to other races. Most famous is their holographic 'decoy projector', a cruiser module that projects a holographic copy of the hosting ship used as a decoy to attract enemy fire. They also have access to unusually long ranged sniper-lasers for their frigates, and outcast's frigates are the only vessel able to use the 'multi-target tractor beams' which are highly sophisticated units capable of trapping multiple enemy fighters in their beams simultaneously. Other new modules include the slow-then-fast moving twin-stage missiles which are harder to shoot down, the souped up solar power collector and the deadly and rapid-firing pulse gun, the ideal anti-fighter weapon to use alongside those cunning new tractor modules. 2 New Scenarios. Two new maps for you to fight against the outcasts (in three difficulty modes each), and to use in online challenges. Obviously you can use the race in fighting any existing maps, from any other DLC or the base game. How does this work with challenges and stuff? If you install the expansion pack, then in future when you post challenges the game will have a little ticked checkbox which tags your challenge as having content from the parasites. That means only people with the expansion pack can play that challenge. If you aren't using any outcasts ships in your fleet, you can un-tick that box and the challenge will work just as before. You will be able to download and play existing challenges with your outcasts fleet no problem. I bought the game from X, do I need to get the expansion pack from that site too? No. It won't make any difference. Sounds awesome. I must have this immediately. let me buy it now! I'm glad you feel this way. Click one of the big buttons below (the expansion pack is $5.99)