Aaaand its back to Solforce. Why? Dunno.
"One of the more unique missile weapons that your scientists could see a practical use for, these are essentially 'point defense sponges' which are slow moving and don't have a very large warhead but due to the amount of damage they can take before they explode, they serve as a great way to let other, more important missiles to hit their targets."
These replaced the 'storm' missiles including the burst variant I created (which have been set to 'IsVisible=False' so are still actually there) and was only done since the AI once they researched storm missiles would use them over any other missile at all and often over any other weapon type either. With this change the AI still likes these missiles but not nearly as much as they used to and I hope they perform well enough for players to consider them.
Other changes were a little more important - I nailed the crash bug with the Zuul at last that I'd introduced. Blasted thing.
In the process of fixing that, I also changed all 99% techs (most techs are 0, 99 or 100) to either being 100% or 0% for every faction. Research Studies and feasibility studies are essentially removed. While I don't mind the system, the fact that I can't stop the research screen from being covered in immense red bloom was the deciding factor. This does mean salvage is less important (and outright useless sometimes) but its a sacrifice I don't think many will miss considering the vastly increased pacing PH has.
Because all factions barring Tarkas are more or less at a good state, I went ahead and doing a side by side comparison, I've rebalanced every race's engine section and came up with a more direct system of upgrades between each era. Essentially each engine gets 200 extra structure per era and a 50% increase in all other relevant statistics, a flat 2 extra armor width increases and forward speed is increased by 100.
To show an example of this, here is the relevant info for the three Focus engines for Solforce - Fusion, Antimatter and Reflex. A note for Solforce is that they can research Node Pathing but all that engine does is increase node FTL speed by 2 - still important but otherwise their stats are identical to the base version. DN versions are not yet balanced like this but they will be.
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SOLFORCE NODE FUSION ENGINE
<Struct>1600</Struct>
<Top>13,11</Top>
<Bottom>13,11</Bottom>
<Side>13,13</Side>
<Crew>50</Crew>
<Power>100</Power>
<Supply>75</Supply>
<Acceleration>50</Acceleration>
<RotationalAccelerationYaw>1</RotationalAccelerationYaw>
<RotationalAccelerationPitch>1</RotationalAccelerationPitch>
<RotationalAccelerationRoll>1</RotationalAccelerationRoll>
<Decceleration>5</Decceleration>
<LinearSpeed>225</LinearSpeed>
<RotationSpeed>1</RotationSpeed>
SOLFORCE NODE ANTIMATTER ENGINE
<Struct>1800</Struct>
<Top>15,11</Top>
<Bottom>15,11</Bottom>
<Side>15,13</Side>
<Crew>75</Crew>
<Power>200</Power>
<Supply>125</Supply>
<Acceleration>75</Acceleration>
<RotationalAccelerationYaw>2</RotationalAccelerationYaw>
<RotationalAccelerationPitch>2</RotationalAccelerationPitch>
<RotationalAccelerationRoll>2</RotationalAccelerationRoll>
<Decceleration>7.5</Decceleration>
<LinearSpeed>325</LinearSpeed>
<RotationSpeed>2</RotationSpeed>
SOLFORCE NODE REFLEX ENGINE
<Struct>2000</Struct>
<Top>17,11</Top>
<Bottom>17,11</Bottom>
<Side>17,13</Side>
<Crew>100</Crew>
<Power>300</Power>
<Supply>175</Supply>
<Acceleration>100</Acceleration>
<RotationalAccelerationYaw>3</RotationalAccelerationYaw>
<RotationalAccelerationPitch>3</RotationalAccelerationPitch>
<RotationalAccelerationRoll>3</RotationalAccelerationRoll>
<Decceleration>10</Decceleration>
<LinearSpeed>425</LinearSpeed>
<RotationSpeed>3</RotationSpeed>
Solforce as noted elsewhere are supposed to have good cruiser class ships but they have huge problems turning rapidly. Even the reflex-era engines are garbage at turning at any reasonable speed - its one of their factional weaknesses. They make up for this at least in the mobility department by having higher top speed (LinearSpeed) then most factions.
Here are a few comparison Fusion engine sections from the other factions.
Liirian Crusade -
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LIIRIAN CRUSADE STUTTERWARP FUSION
<Struct>1400</Struct>
<Top>11,10</Top>
<Bottom>11,10</Bottom>
<Side>11,10</Side>
<Crew>25</Crew>
<Power>100</Power>
<Supply>75</Supply>
<Acceleration>360</Acceleration>
<RotationalAccelerationYaw>360</RotationalAccelerationYaw>
<RotationalAccelerationPitch>360</RotationalAccelerationPitch>
<RotationalAccelerationRoll>360</RotationalAccelerationRoll>
<Decceleration>360</Decceleration>
<LinearSpeed>175</LinearSpeed>
<RotationSpeed>360</RotationSpeed>
You'll notice one striking difference between Solforce and Liir, that being the speed differences. Liirian Crusade ships are the 2nd slowest in the game (at least their cruisers are) and in comparison to Solforce again, they have a top speed of 175 compared to the humans 225. However there's a huge difference in how quickly Liirian ships can stop, start, turn and rotate as its nearly instant. They are not essentially 'naval vessels in space'.
Hivers -
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HIVER FUSION ENGINE - RUBY DOCTRINE
<Struct>2000</Struct>
<Top>15,15</Top>
<Bottom>15,15</Bottom>
<Side>15,15</Side>
<Crew>100</Crew>
<Power>100</Power>
<Supply>75</Supply>
<Acceleration>75</Acceleration>
<RotationalAccelerationYaw>6</RotationalAccelerationYaw>
<RotationalAccelerationPitch>6</RotationalAccelerationPitch>
<RotationalAccelerationRoll>6</RotationalAccelerationRoll>
<Decceleration>10</Decceleration>
<LinearSpeed>230</LinearSpeed>
<RotationSpeed>6</RotationSpeed>
HIVER FUSION ENGINE - DIAMOND DOCTRINE
<Struct>3500</Struct>
<Top>20,15</Top>
<Bottom>20,15</Bottom>
<Side>20,15</Side>
<Crew>100</Crew>
<Power>100</Power>
<Supply>75</Supply>
<Acceleration>50</Acceleration>
<RotationalAccelerationYaw>2</RotationalAccelerationYaw>
<RotationalAccelerationPitch>2</RotationalAccelerationPitch>
<RotationalAccelerationRoll>2</RotationalAccelerationRoll>
<Decceleration>5</Decceleration>
<LinearSpeed>150</LinearSpeed>
<RotationSpeed>2</RotationSpeed>
Hivers have four major Doctrines which their ships follow but only two of those are used for engine sections, those being the two largest doctrines of Ruby and Diamond.
Ruby Doctrine as you can see are surprisingly fast for Hiver ships and if combined with other Ruby-Doctrine sections will often be even faster than this. This does come at the cost of structural rating and armor plating though.
Diamond Doctrine gives the Hivers the most structurally sound and heavily armored sections in the game but look at its speed - 150. This also means they have the slowest ships in the entire game.
Morrigi Confederation -
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MORRIGI FUSION VOID DRIVE
<Struct>1100</Struct>
<Top>10,10</Top>
<Bottom>10,10</Bottom>
<Side>10,10</Side>
<Crew>40</Crew>
<Power>100</Power>
<Supply>75</Supply>
<Acceleration>60</Acceleration>
<RotationalAccelerationYaw>25</RotationalAccelerationYaw>
<RotationalAccelerationPitch>25</RotationalAccelerationPitch>
<RotationalAccelerationRoll>25</RotationalAccelerationRoll>
<Decceleration>25</Decceleration>
<LinearSpeed>190</LinearSpeed>
<RotationSpeed>25</RotationSpeed>
As you can probably see by its stats, Morrigi fusion-era ships are not very strong and their top speed isn't very good either though their acceleration and ability to stop is quite good and their ability to turn and roll isn't that bad either. With the Morrigi it is important to note that their Antimatter and Reflex engines get a larger era boost compared to the other factions.
Tarkasian Empire -
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TARKAS FUSION HYPERFIELD DRIVE
<Struct>1750</Struct>
<Top>12,10</Top>
<Bottom>12,10</Bottom>
<Side>12,10</Side>
<Crew>35</Crew>
<Power>100</Power>
<Supply>75</Supply>
<Acceleration>10</Acceleration>
<RotationalAccelerationYaw>6</RotationalAccelerationYaw>
<RotationalAccelerationPitch>6</RotationalAccelerationPitch>
<RotationalAccelerationRoll>6</RotationalAccelerationRoll>
<Decceleration>5</Decceleration>
<LinearSpeed>200</LinearSpeed>
<RotationSpeed>6</RotationSpeed>
Tarkas engines are nothing remarkable and their description explicitly states this. Like the Morrigi, they get larger bonuses once they get antimatter and reflex engines. Their structural rating is quite considerable at the very least and while their turning and rolling rates are poor, they are not anywhere near as bad as Hivers or Solforce.
Zuul Horde -
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ZUUL FUSION DRIVE
<Struct>1000</Struct>
<Top>10,10</Top>
<Bottom>10,10</Bottom>
<Side>10,10</Side>
<Crew>50</Crew>
<Power>100</Power>
<Supply>75</Supply>
<Acceleration>75</Acceleration>
<RotationalAccelerationYaw>5</RotationalAccelerationYaw>
<RotationalAccelerationPitch>5</RotationalAccelerationPitch>
<RotationalAccelerationRoll>5</RotationalAccelerationRoll>
<Decceleration>5</Decceleration>
<LinearSpeed>205</LinearSpeed>
<RotationSpeed>5</RotationSpeed>
Zuul have an odd mix of engine stats. As one of their factional traits, their cruisers are structurally weaker than the other factions but they are almost free to build and construct. While their rotation and roll rates are not very good again, their top speed is remarkably high and their impressive acceleration can be used to dodge slower moving projectiles if you are into micromanagement.
Where's the Loa?
Well the Loa are still being worked in too much for me to post their direct stats here. That and I'm undecided on where their top speed vs rotation rate should fall on the factional scale.
--------------------------------------------

Stability testing once again. Also testing to see how the Solforce AI is going before I do the VAE-like tech tree changes.

Drones are doing very good compared to how they perform in the base game.

For early-game performance reasons, Interceptor missiles (LR and SR versions, not the Polaris and IOBM ones) no longer have an impact effect much like most other PD weapons.

Which I implemented after this battle, so it'll still be in this screenshot.

I actually lost this battle quite convincingly - I did not have 'air superiority' or whatever you want to call it as my drones got wiped out and I had little to deal with their drones in return.

Early game balance between Solforce fleets seems to be in a good spot again and the AI is doing quite good.

While I still wish mod tools were released so I could at the very least design ships which can launch drones and other things at a whim, what is available will have to do. When I'm really considering going back to SOTS prime to let my so called 'creativity' flourish... well, one day perhaps. There's so much I want to do with SOTS2 but can't due to the limitations.
Anyway... Release Date? Once again, it doesn't have one. It will be released when it is released. However I will state that PH is in a very good state and with maybe a month or two of more work, it should have enough done where I won't feel like I'm letting people down who have waited this long already for it.
Right now I'm less focused on getting new ships and techs out and more focusing on AI and gameplay tweaks and fixes. So a lot of the work I've been doing actually can't be shown in a screenshot as its entirely in the background. Income might be a little too high right now but at the same time, the matches I've been playing for my testing are not forcing me to colonize worlds with huge development costs. I've seen a world in the match I'm currently playing with a 12 million development cost and I'm not entirely sure how the AI would go with that as of yet.