I decided to be a fool and spent a good couple of hours looking for what's been changed in Gallia.
GALLIC REPUBLIC
Picardy:
Battleship Saumur moved to Provence; La Fierte is now guarding Planet Amiens in its stead.
Haute-Seine Shipyard transferred to EFL.
Saint-Quentin Space Colony transferred to Gendarmerie.
Calais and Fort Etaples transferred to OCI and Defense Forces, respectively.
Jumphole to Champagne removed.
Orleanais:
Evreux Research Facility still owned by the Enclave; its infocard updated with an explanation.
Jump Gate to Ile-de-France now connects to Champagne; a new Jump Gate to IDF has been placed to the south of Orleans.
Same with the Jump Hole that previously led to IDF.
Battleship De Grasse is now guarding Planet Orleans.
Champagne:
Mazagran Depot has been destroyed by the Confederacy.
Planet Sedan and its moon moved to where Mazagran used to be. GMS and EFL are now jointly developing the planet.
Marne's second Docking Ring moved to Sedan.
All above changes are reflected in the updated infocard for Sedan.
Epernay Station moved south, its infocard updated.
Reims Station transferred to EFL, its infocard updated.
Chalons-en-Champagne transferred to Defense Forces and used to dismantle battleships Cambrai and Chaumont, its infocard updated.
Sealed Jump Gate to the northeast of Marne removed.
Jump Hole to Burgundy moved to the east of Marne.
MINARCHY OF PROVENCE
Provence:
Battlecruiser Sisteron and Frejus Base infocards updated.
Both infocards say Frejus was abandoned by Brigands after the Minarchy had joined the Confederacy, and that Sisteron is now hiding in its vicinity. However, in-game the base still belongs to Brigands and Sisteron remains in its old place.
Battleship Saumur is now guarding Cannes Resort Station.
Cannes Resort Station transferred to Gendarmerie, its infocard updated.
Slight changes to Monte Carlo and Toulon Mining Facility infocards.
Luxury Liner Antibes infocard updated.
Languedoc:
Battleship Pamiers is now guarding the entrance to the minefield.
Limoux Base infocard updated.
Nimes Station infocard updated.
Dauphine:
Entire system layout has been flipped horizontally.
Grenoble Depot has been destroyed by the Confederacy; in its place now lies Grenoble Wreck.
Montelimar Base infocard updated.
Fourchambault Shipyard infocard updated.
Planet Vienne infocard updated with interesting details on how the Minarchy acquired the Dauphine system.
Same with Gap Station infocard.
Jump Hole to Burgundy moved to the northeastern end of the system.
Jump Gate to Burgundy now connects to Ile-de-France; where the old Jump Gate to IDF used to be, there is now Montbrison Prison Station, a new installation meant to replace Fleury-Merogis in IDF. Infocard of the latter has been updated accordingly.
DUCHY OF BURGUNDY
Burgundy:
Jump Gate to Dauphine has been sealed.
Battleship Venissieux is now guarding Planet Nevers.
Montbard Base has been destroyed by Battleship Rocroi; infocard of the latter has been updated.
Macon Base transferred to OCI, its infocard updated.
Alesia Station infocard updated.
Dijon Station and Avallon Station infocards updated.
Chambery Base moved slightly to the east.
Jump Hole to Champagne moved to where Chambery Base used to be.
Lorraine:
Battleship Epinal is now guarding Planet Metz.
Verdun Base and Thionville Base infocards greatly expanded.
Every other solar in the system had their infocard updated.
ILE-DE-FRANCE Not much here, because I didn't have the patience to thoroughly check through IDF; there's just way too many objects shoved into one system.
All battleships above New Paris moved to other systems.
Battleship Montreuil infocard rewritten.
Fleury-Merogis Prison Station infocard updated.
Versailles Residence transferred to Interspace Commerce, its infocard updated.
Jump Holes and Jump Gates seem to remain unchanged.
I must have surely missed something, but this still shows a lot has been changed in Gallia alone. No wonder we weren't given a comprehensive changelog on release.
All in all, I very much enjoyed reading through the updated infocards. Most have been rewritten to be more extensive or more concise where necessary, and there is a lot of thoughtful and flavorful worldbuilding in there.
I think it's about time Gallia was integrated more organically with Sirius instead of being a disjointed appendage of a House whose only function was to play an external foe. On top of these new changes, Gallia's environments need some love for them to be more aesthetically consistent with the rest of Sirius. There still remain some ugly things from early days of the mod, like the overabundance of planets, asteroid fields and nebulae in Gallic systems. With Freelancer's unrealistically short space distances, all these celestial bodies do is clutter both the Nav Map and the scenery around the player.
Ile-de-France is the worst offender here. The Gallic capital is in dire need of its own Baron Haussmann who would change its layout to be visually neat and easier to navigate. There's simply too many stations, planets (these are the worst, ples delet some of them mercilessly), trade lanes, asteroid and debris fields crammed into one system. IDF alone has more planets than one or two other Houses combined, and it's not like they all serve some practical purpose or even have any significant worldbuilding put into them.
Why they must be delet:
They hang unreasonably close to each other, overshadowing the robust infrastructure and beautiful starspheres of Gallia.
There are too many of them to give each a distinct appearance. There's only so many textures you can slap on a planet, and Gallic planets suffer horribly from texture repetition.
There is simply no reason for them to be so numerous. Proportions of objects and distances between them have never been realistic in Freelancer, so why throw in together as many celestial objects as a real-world solar system would realistically have? Vanilla Freelancer is very reserved in this regard; you'll hardly ever see more than 3-4 planets in even the bigger systems like New York.
Vanilla planets, by the virtue of being so scant, functioned as dominant feautures of the scenery that would grab your attention against the backdrop of a colorful starsphere (Hiran, Fuji, Leeds, Gaia etc.) Hell, even all of Disco planets (except in Gallia and Pennsylvania and maybe somewhere else) function same way when they are not mindlessly huddled into one system (Tuvalu+Nauru, Tangier, Rabat, Gran Ca Exeter). Now imagine if there was a dozen other planets hanging in the same system with those. Would the scenery still be as beautiful?
Sorry for the wall of text. I don't post often, let alone in such verbose manner, but I've been wanting to get this off my chest since 4.86 and I'd like to see if anyone else in the community is concerned by this. Especially now that Gallia has received some major facelifts and is likely to see more updates to make it a livelier place.