Sorry for the delay in responding, I had to actually test the new changes myself >_>
SHOTGUN_RANGE (8192 * 12) <- down from 8192 * 16
Hitscan weapons have a max range(??) and the shotgun's was reduced?
Yes, if I'm not mistaken hitscan weapons do have a maximum range, with 8192 effectively being infinity (I think Q3's railgun has the same range). I'm sorry I have no idea what the * 12, * 16 is about though.
I don't understand the zap changes. It still seems useless. Damage for claw is 40 and for mara+ fires every 400 ms. Thus 40 * (1/.4)=100dps. Zap does 33. With a max of 3 targets, that's a max of 99 dmg, which is only about equal. Vs a single target, it's (obviously) only 33dps. This all tells me that it's only worthwhile if you can keep 3 targets in range for a reasonable amount of time. Unless the log saying "for all targets" means that zap ignores armor? Is that the case?
No, you're right about the damage (not about the armor; I don't think we'll ever do something like that), but I think it's useless because turrets are still too able to track bouncing marauders. I've made another minor change to help with this, letting (skilled) marauders bounce around full bases without taking too much damage, and it's here that the zap is much better than the slash, even when you're not always getting three targets and breaking the chain frequently. I tried it instead with 50 damage on my own: filled the lamer spot on Niveus with just turrets and took out about half of them in one life. So 33's probably an okay value

Can still use the slash when it's safer though. Don't consider the zap finalized yet either.
What's the idea for breaking bases now- you need dretches and maras to run in first to "distract" turrets while tyrants can take advantage of the fact that turrets aren't clustered anymore to run in and hit important things?
Hopefully dretches will never be vital in attacking bases, and tyrants have never really been best suited for it either. Marauders are intended to be the main base breakers -- at least 1.1 style bases.
Dretch HP needed that boost after Unlagged. I'm real disappointed to see it back down to 25.
This might just come down to a matter of opinion, but people shouldn't be relying on dretches as much as they do in 1.1; hopefully the higher classes will be appealing enough for them to upgrade as readily as humans do. I'm already seeing this with the basilisk improvement. And personally, coming from Gloom, I like the weak dretches (makes the shotgun more fun!).
Result: Generally making the game even harder for newbies to pick up, and alienating many long-time players with drastic changes.
I don't really see anything that's been made harder for new players yet, but there are lot of user interface things that haven't been implemented, so maybe you're confused there. Regarding your second point: long-time players can be alienated if it means improving the game. I'm not going to let Trem stagnate as long as I have any influence here. Besides, the code's open; like you said
here someone very well might make a "nostalgia" mod.
This is a good thing. Open source means the best ideas win and no one has to suffer in order to please "long-time players". Good thing too, since my ideas might all turn out to be crap. I'm not going to address your other issues though since your attitude seems to be getting in the way of acquiring accurate information. I'm sorry we don't keep everyone completely up-to-date very well.
I see all this stuff about turrets, but has anything been done/planning to be done to telsa generators?
We intentionally focused on getting turrets right first (and I hope hope we're close to there now). One thing I don't want to do is make teslas any stronger, since I think the game should be more volatile at higher stages to make stalemates less likely and better defense (as opposed to better offense) at higher stages goes against that goal. Teslas do nicely complement the new turrets though, so we're going to try dropping their dcc requirement and maybe also trading off some of their power for a price drop.