On a related side note, if Akella and BlackMark Studios in the near future decide to release the "Hero of the Nation" ENGLISH DLC (SDTEHO 1.6.0), your mod should not be significantly impacted unless they decide to make significant bug fix changes.
Based on the Russian release, the predominant change was in the quest files, quest locations, location textures, dialogue, added characters, and updating two of a ship files(tied to French battleship of the third rank "Elyaton"), none of which are intrusive to breaking a player's game, otherwise there would be a fair number of pissed off individuals. This is partially why I had to be careful in modding my game, as I know which files are most likely scheduled to be updated, and which are not, so I do not need to repeat work over or correct the changes.
I am willing to do testing for you when released, but in the meantime, I basically "finished the game" again, as I do not have many goals left except correctly capturing the Gold Fleet.
Grinding for certain achievements is not really fun for me, if there is no added content.
The game series has been highly enjoyable with good memories, but it still seems hard for me to believe that another title could ever be resurrected based on the limited community.