Planetary Defenses III: Hangars and Defensive Structures
What we started with
Base Sins' hangars were pretty much just hangars, and there was no real "buff" structure for planetary structures. Each defense structure typically had a specific role to play.
What they did
Most mods have focused on improving and diversifying the existing roles of the single-role defenses, like Phase Jump Inhibitors being able to completely shut off phase jumps out of a system temporarily when researched.
What we did
Hangars
Hangars are pretty similar to base Sins' version, except structurally weaker and with some changes to their abilities. The main change is that they support much more fighters than their Sins counterparts - swarms of fighter craft are not uncommon. However, they're more expensive, take up more slots, and are less durable. It's intended that a player use only one or two hangars, rather than a lot of them spread across a well.
Hangars also give small area-of-effect bonuses to ships near them, such as an increase in hull repair rate. Hangars do not serve as repair docks for your ships, though - they are very much unqualified to do maintenance on anything larger than a fighter. Only the existing abilities of your crews to repair hull breaches are amplified.
Defense Stations
The Defense Stations (the Coordination Hub for the Soviet player and the OKW Station for the German player) are large structures that can boost the effectiveness of planetary defenses or ships defending a planet. They essentially serve as planetary grid control centers, aiding the effectiveness of your ships' targeting, for example, or speeding up the reload speeds of your turrets. Unlike the Civilian-tree Comm Center (its closest equivalent), Defense Stations serve a very specific purpose.
One function of the Coordination Hub and OKW Station is that they can both disable the minefields in a gravity well. This disables their proximity trigger but makes them invincible and immune to jamming. This is as close as we can get to the gameplay mechanic we wanted with Sins hardcodes in place: the original goal was to make a minefield that was entirely cloaked, then could be deployed with explosion triggers coming about 5 seconds later in order to throw off an attacker. Of course, it's not quite the same, and if it ends up being a easily exploitable mechanic with no real legitimate use (people just repeatedly toggling minefields over and over), it'll probably be removed. However, in testing we hope that players will be able to find a way to use them tactically, with safeguards on how often they can be toggled.
Defense Stations are very good investments as their bonuses often apply to everything in orbit, meaning just one can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your defense strategy. However, their bonuses generally do not stack, so expect diminishing returns with more than one. Instead, you should be using your Military slots for more defenses!
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are there defence stations that increase range and accuracy?