Following up on this, early this morning I managed to get ahold of a helpful representative at the SkyRC website chat, and asked about v1.17 (which came on my SkyRC MC3000, purchased late last April), the previous version v1.15, and the current one v1.18;
TL;DR: v1.17 has a bug (related to the operation of D.REDUCE setting and possibly to its “inverse similar during CV-Phase of Li-Ion battery charging”[1] which is why SkyRC does not make that version available for download, and instead recommend updating to v1.18. I asked about falling back to 1.15 in case 1.18 doesn’t work for me, but they apparently evaded that question.
[1] see the SkyRC manual p.22, under “D.REDUCE”.
And here’s the complete transcript (edited for clarity/brevity):
13 Sep, 2023
[15:08] DMenezes: I have an SkyRC MC3000 with firmware 1.17. I see there’s an update available for firmware 1.18, but I’m worried that the new firmware could not work as well and I would need to go back to the old one.
[15:09] DMenezes: I searched the SkyRC website for version 1.17 so I could go back to it if needed, but could but could not find it. I could find version 1.15, tho.
[15:11] DMenezes: My question is, is there a reason the older version (1.15) is available for download, but the newer one (1.17) isn’t?
[17:34] SkyRC: There is a bug in V1.17
[17:34] SkyRC: So we did not put it on the site
[17:35] SkyRC: The bug is about the charge or discharge reduce[17:50] DMenezes: Ok, so I better upgrade ASAP, I guess
[18:34] DMenezes: if I upgrade to 1.18 and it doesn’t work for me, should I then move to 1.15?[18:45] SkyRC: I believe 1.18 will work for you
I hope this is helpful to other MC3000 owners.