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Oh I had a "wtf I can't put empath song on my choppers?!?" moment while playing yesterday, so I thought a document detailing the changes to special abilities might be useful. 
Special Abilities
The overall goal of the changes to special abilities is to make combat more varied, to avoid there is one strategy or unit type that works for all situations. Therefore changes have been made to the following abilities:
AAA Tracking
Now also available for noncombatant units (including terraformers) and psi units.
Empath Song
Hypnotic Trance
Blink Displacer
No longer available for air units.
Empath Song and Hypnotic Trance now only give a 40% bonus to psi combat.
These changes are based on the goal of weakening air power and strengthening psi combat.
Dissociative Wave
No longer available for fast moving units.
Just like air power is overpowered compared to land and naval combat, so can within land combat rovers and hovertanks be too powerful compared to infantry, and is it possible to see only rover rushes. If Dissociative Wave would be available for fast moving units, then they could bypass the defense against them: Resonance Pulse (ECM). Now this is prevented, and might infantry hopefully keep a larger role in offensive combat.
Fuel Nanocells
Antigrav Stuts
Now also available for naval units.
This might hopefully make naval combat a bit more varied, by allowing the player to build eg fast scout ships.
Space Superiority (SAM)
This ability now comes free of cost for air and naval units, but still costs the same for land units (similar to Deep Radar).
This addresses the problem that fighters cost more than bombers, making offensive air combat more attractive than defensive air combat.
Heavy Artillery
The cost now increases with armour, not anymore both with armour and speed.
Artillery is hardly used in standard SMAC. The biggest attempt at correcting this is simply making artillery more likely to do damage. This here, decreasing the cost for fast moving artillery might also help a little.
Special Abilities
The overall goal of the changes to special abilities is to make combat more varied, to avoid there is one strategy or unit type that works for all situations. Therefore changes have been made to the following abilities:
AAA Tracking
Now also available for noncombatant units (including terraformers) and psi units.
Empath Song
Hypnotic Trance
Blink Displacer
No longer available for air units.
Empath Song and Hypnotic Trance now only give a 40% bonus to psi combat.
These changes are based on the goal of weakening air power and strengthening psi combat.
Dissociative Wave
No longer available for fast moving units.
Just like air power is overpowered compared to land and naval combat, so can within land combat rovers and hovertanks be too powerful compared to infantry, and is it possible to see only rover rushes. If Dissociative Wave would be available for fast moving units, then they could bypass the defense against them: Resonance Pulse (ECM). Now this is prevented, and might infantry hopefully keep a larger role in offensive combat.
Fuel Nanocells
Antigrav Stuts
Now also available for naval units.
This might hopefully make naval combat a bit more varied, by allowing the player to build eg fast scout ships.
Space Superiority (SAM)
This ability now comes free of cost for air and naval units, but still costs the same for land units (similar to Deep Radar).
This addresses the problem that fighters cost more than bombers, making offensive air combat more attractive than defensive air combat.
Heavy Artillery
The cost now increases with armour, not anymore both with armour and speed.
Artillery is hardly used in standard SMAC. The biggest attempt at correcting this is simply making artillery more likely to do damage. This here, decreasing the cost for fast moving artillery might also help a little.
. As the mod doesn't change the game executables, I thought it should work okay with the Loki Linux Port of SMACX, but it dies before showing the main menu - an strace didn't leave anything I can use either.
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