The level of polish in this mod always amazes me. It's one of those few mods that feel like a core part of the game rather than a simple mod, and it deserves all the visibility it can get. That being said, I have two (three) things to say about the big sprite rework that has been teased in various posts:
Color:
In the sprite rework teasers, many of the new sprites replace the original dark green color with a desaturated, lighter color. I feel sad that the iconic dark THI color is being lost
Shading:
In the reworked sprites, the shading has been lightened heavily for various reasons. However, this also causes the new sprites to lose much of their depth and shape, making some of the ships look like pancakes with detail stickers. The author also calls the old shading a "crutch". However, in a 2D game without dynamic shadows, this crutch is needed to some extent to have a sense of volume.
Homogenizing with the vanilla sprites is great but I think that the shading removal seen in the teasers is too much even compared to newer vanilla sprites.
Of course, this is based entirely on the teasers and for all I know the final sprites will be quite different from the WIPs shown so far.
Xiakou-class:
Love the Xiakou-class and I have a suggestion regarding the design. It being a combat-capable freighter, I always felt that the cargo containers on it could be covered in some way instead of being fully exposed. Maybe having one large metal panel covering each container block would make it look like they have a thin sheet of blast-armor on them, also simplifying the sprite. And it would make for a great spot to have big chinese characters written on the side!