Hi, PiratesAhoy team. I noticed how the New Horizons Build 14 file is quite large in two parts. May you sort of unify the two parts into an .exe just like b13_final.exe, so that hefty amounts of space are only used during installation of the mod?
No, for these reasons:
1. Nobody currently working on Build 14 knows how to make an installer .exe file.
2. You've sort of touched on the reason why the mod was split into two files when Beta 3.5 was released. The single file was very large and most of it was files that hadn't changed for ages - most of them still haven't changed. The idea, then, was that you'd only need to download Part 2 Contents Archive once; then you'd only need to download a much smaller installer to stay up to date. Except...
3. ... there's now a third file, a .zip which contains all the updates since 2022. The reason why it's a separated .zip instead of a new installer - see point 1.
Or perhaps, release the Beta 2 as a .exe?
No, partly because I don't have Beta 2. I might still have an early Beta 3 from before it was split into two, but it has more bugs than a nest of cockroaches. For example, you know how, in "Tales of a Sea Hawk", you capture Bridgetown and Silehard sends a fleet to recapture it? So you board one of the ships, loot a few corpses and chests, and the game crashes. Or, the game survives you boarding almost all the ships, then crashes when you finish capturing the last ship because you have to sink, not board, whichever ship you defeat last. Both those bugs, and plenty more, have been fixed since early Beta 3.
Instead, you may want to try Build 15. That's still in development and has issues of its own, but if you're willing to tolerate the buggy mess that is Beta 2 then you certainly won't mind Build 15!