Yes, yes, and yes.
They added enemy pirates and timed/remote explosives that can be used to also blow open doors though.
...
Also, combat rolls are quite a bit different, with a small chance of critical hits that allow you to penetrate armor.. so no ones invincible anymore..
Read: Haxus added pirates that pull from any published designs, including secret, unbuilt TL32 designs from some of the larger empires, and repeatedly spawn mobs of up to 10-15 of them in your systems at whatever your current tech level is.
The warfleets of virtually all empires in the game were wiped within a week, and instead of recognizing the system as fundamentally broken, Haxus just toned them down slightly to 5-7 at a time, since he stated he wanted to keep large empires from being run by only one or two players.
I was running a good sized empire (Blitzfaust) on the edge of populated space with a couple friends, and we got buried by pirate versions of Tymas and Toucan warships. Couldn't even build new ships, since they spawn in orbit within reach of the pirates.
Basically, the game went from "not very new-user-friendly" to "haha, screw you." I was severely disappointed, since the game has so much potential. I used to play another game called
Starport: Galactic Empires that effectively went down the tubes due to a head-up-their-ass developer who wouldn't listen to his beta testers, so I have little hope things will improve at this point.
KG