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A few things though I prefer 1.2 overall. 1. The teleportation system is good. Less walking that way (can take forever as we all know lol). 2. The gonk droids were a nice touch. 3. I liked Kaah being in the central zone after clearing everything up. 4. Separating the modules in the industrial zone was a good idea. 5. All the new droid voices were nice plus.

Well, I've played 1.2 several times, and I think I liked that version better than 1.5. 1. I didn't like bringing the Sith Assassins in. Though not great, I liked Vash dying better in 1.2 than in 1.5. 2. Didn't like Kaah's death all that much either compared to 1.2. I would rather he and Vash live somehow (re casting the voice may be the way to do this like you said). 3. Not sure if I missed it, but I didn't like removing that quest with the droid who gives you a mission when you play as Hk, T3 or GO-TO. 4. The droid that gives the mission to find out where the true colonists come from appears to be have been removed sadly. 5. Not sure if it just me, but the black market droid crashes every time I click on it. 6. I liked the original opening scene better and this one didn't seem as good IMO. 7. I didn't like the police droids being removed either. 8. This version felt a lot more buggy over all (one quest I completed (rogue assassin part quest I think) opened back up in the Research and Development center after it was already closed.). 9. Not sure why the recent events mission was removed. I liked that one. 10. I would also just get rid of the new sequence on the landing pad at the end. Felt weird and out of place imo.

While being a good mod, unfortunately it is not quite as tested and polished as one would like. This is especially evident in version 1.5, which introduces a large number of regressions (mostly cosmetic, but some of them quite serious; see https://deadlystream.com/topic/4979-bugs-errors-reporting-with-m4-78ep/) compared to version 1.3. In addition, the ending from version 1.3 was replaced by a more awkward, less elaborate, and less believable one, with no gameplay courses to trigger the original ending (despite the voice-overs and dialogues still included in the game). And to add insult to injury, version 1.3 (which appears to be the most stable released version of the mod at the time of this writing) was never released for non-Steam users; neither on DeadlyStream, nor on ModDB. All things considered, version 1.5 is a formidable case of "newer is not always better" both story-wise and quality-wise. Version 1.3 is recommended to play at this point. As of version 1.5.1, the 1.5 release is not recommended until/unless the regressions are fixed and the original ending is made available as an option.

Regarding M4-78 enhancement project in general, the main point to appreciate is a herculean amount of work that was required to recreate several modules of content from the scaps present in the original game. The content complements the original game nicely, fitting the Star Wars universe quite seamlessly with a new dose of industrial cityscape action in a fairly unique setting. Even though little is given away about the history of the planet, a sufficiently determined player with high enough skills/stats is able trace the origins of this world, which is a nice touch (being able to learn the origins of each world is one of the points that made the first KOTOR so awesome, and which its sequels desperately lacked for the most part). Regarding version 1.5.1 specifically, very few positive enhancements were made since 1.3; that includes minor cosmetic fixes, greater freedom of exploration (where Environmental Zone can be visited before Industrial Zone) and better framerate in the Industrial Zone. The negatives, unfortunately, far outweigh the positives.

Well, as this is 1.5 we're talking about and I did Beta test 1.5 and know about the previous versions I think it'd be best to leave my opinion on M4-78. First of all, Zybl revamped the intro to Korriban on the Hangar platform to use cut Atton lines from the E3 Demo instead of the spliced lines of 1.2 and before. While most of those splices where pretty bad *cough* HK-47 *cough* I felt some lines where remarkably good such as the one with Kreia where she says "Droids gather while we wait here" was absolutely well done it sounded completely natural, the only way someone could guess it was a splice was because the line "Our enemies gather while we wait here" is so iconic. Most of them have been removed except for, you guessed it, the HK splices I hate. The Atton lines are alright though they do sound a bit awkward and Atton does say "you should keep your Lightsaber up or do whatever you Jedi do in these situations" despite the fact you may not have a Lightsaber. In previous versions, the player would have to play as either Goto, T3 or HK through the radiation sometimes walking long distances to get to a location. To make the walking less like torture an optional sidequest was added in and was odd in the fact you got the quest from one foreman droid but depending on who your character was whether it be T3, HK or Goto this one Foreman droid would have an entirely different purpose, personality and sidequest with a different plot but same overall pacing. For HK this foreman droid was an off-world assassin droid hunting down a specific droid, for T3 it was a droid tracking down a computer virus intent on destroying the archon M4-78 and for Goto is was some sort of package retrieval mission. At some point, you'd be stopped by three police droids who question your droid over the deaths of recent droids (2 droids or more depending if you did the optional sidequest) and they'd put your droids arrest on hold until they fixed the radiation leak. Once the Exile arrives on the planet the Exile can destroy the police droids once they threaten to arrest him/her for refusing to hand over the droids. All of this was removed in favour of a teleportation transport system to make the radiation section quick, the teleportation is, in my opinion, would be better if it showed your droid move away and then teleport to give that immersion that your droid did move away instead of being teleported. While that filler sidequest is good for being removed I felt those Police droids should have stayed, Zybl2 actually forgot to remove the police droids 100% last time I played the mod which may have been the late Beta/first release of 1.5. Just before you fix the radiation backtrack a bit and you should be able to find the Police droids and approach them from behind. On top of turning the industrial zone into 2 sections to reduce lag the actual research centre part has been severely downgraded lacking lots of the droids and placeables from the earlier version making it feel empty and incomplete, while I can understand they are the cause of the lag I felt that downgrading the level severely was somewhat uncalled for, cutting down was inevitable though I felt they went a bit too far. Not that I'm complaining about my less laggy experience though. The new ending is kinda weird, and by weird, I feel it is bugged. You can go to the environmental zone first, fight the droids and convince Kaah to help you get to industrial archon to reach M4-78. I'm loving the freedom of choice with that though of course, this method is somewhat hidden (You need to use Bao Dur's shield breaker to break into the environmental zone). What I don't like is how Darth Sion on Korriban is tracking the Exile as he does on Malachor in cut content with the meditation and the hologram (Which is broken for females). On Malachor he says 'prepare my ship, I'll attend to this myself' but here he instead sends the Sith Assassins. The Sith Assassins, with basic attack and no force powers, kill Kaah and Vash in an ambush and once this ambushed has happened I fell that is where M4-78 ends. I much preferred the original ending as it felt more... like an actual ending and it had an actual resolution with M4-78 and the droids as well as Kaah and Vash in a believable way. Not that the new ending can't be bug fixed and enhanced, however. For 1.5 that's all I can think of. For M4-78, in general, I dislike the infinite medical equipment droid merchant and the inconsistencies with the environmental zone droids.

Gotta say the story is good, and the journal entries have improved compared to the previous versions, where it was really easy to get stuck without any clues. The separation of Industrial Zone into smaller chunks has eliminated the long standing lag problem in the reactor corridor, which is also a big plus. Instant warping into the relevant parts of the planet during the initial radiation flood stage also eliminated the tedious back-and-forth that was present previously, which I appreciate, given the sheer size of the long corridors with little to do in them.