This is up on Desura now. It's been authorised for the standalones and on the branches. If it proves stable, we'll get it released on Mac and Linux too.
Hopefully this is the last build we'll release for a while. It's just V17 with two fixes:
1) The _basebuilt.xml has been updated so you no longer start with too much technology, and the alien base no longer spawns at the start of the game.
2) The civilians and friendly AI soldiers have been disabled on the Farmyard map to prevent the crashes from occurring. I think we've fixed the code bug at our end now but I'm not willing to take any chances any more.
THE LAUNCHER WILL STILL SAY V17 INSTEAD OF V17.1 - this is because I need to recompile the build to change the launcher background image, and doing so might add new bugs into the game. The .exes haven't changed since V17.
If you already have V17, you can update it by using this simple patch (less than 100kb):
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26290309/V17.1%20patch.exe