Information has been a little bit sparse on 2.2 and what it actually consists of, and I apologize for that. This is because we typically wait until features are 100% complete before announcing or discussing them too much, which in this case has been a little problematic. There are plenty of things which are progressing well, but which aren't quite finished. Most of them will also probably finish all at once, so instead of waiting to discuss different changes, here's a giant overview of most of what we've got on our plates for Imperial Civil War at the moment, finished or not, in no particular order. I won't cover the three new playable Warlord factions here, since they're getting their own posts.
Regime Change - Finished
Instead of having to go on annoying suicide runs, we've given Imperial players a new way to get through the era. You can see it in action and the reasons for doing so in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2VUyDBWP3k
Particle Changes - Finished
Projectiles can sometimes be a bit overwhelming on screen, especially from larger ships. This is no longer a problem; lasers are considerably smaller and travel faster, meaning less clutter on screen. Depending on resource, we'd also ideally like to move towards getting some death clones and damage particles back ingame.
Era Progression vs Tech Progression - In Progress
One of the most common (and frankly, annoying) misconceptions about the mod is that era progression and technological progression necessarily mean the same thing, resulting in people saying "why should I have to kill my heroes to get better tech" when the only faction which gives up their heroes to progress chronologically is also the faction which tends to get hurt the most by doing so, the Remnant. There will be an even further divide between technological progression and era progression in the mod in 2.2. Instead of automatically getting ships when you progress eras, eras will be one factor among several. For example, upon reaching Era 3, the New Republic will have to complete tech upgrades to start constructing its new class ships, including the Sacheen, Nebula and, making its potentially-regrettable return, the Republic-class Star Destroyer. Research like this will be constrained to the Empire of the Hand, New Republic and Imperial Remnant for hardcoded reasons. This also gives the Remnant a greater incentive to stay within certain eras where it has invested money in upgrading its arsenal, and losing your leader now becomes an even greater setback.
For other factions, being the Pentastar Alignment, Greater Maldrood, Warlord Zsinj, and Eriadu Authority, there will be other prerequisites in place to give a feeling of progression even within single-era GCs. There will be some heroes available for recruitment only on certain planets, for example bounty hunters like Dengar and Bossk for most Imperial groups, or Rei'kas and Krassis Trelix for the Pentastar Alignment (more on that later). We've yet to say much about Maldrood, but a significant portion of their roster will be based on their pirate connections, including some unique units which will be both familiar and potentially unwelcome to some players.
Diplomatic Influence - Finished
Smallpox has mostly finished the Diplomatic influence system for GC. Here is basically how it works, in his words. Keep in mind there may be significant differences for this as it goes through testing.
The galaxy map is divided into sectors. Each planet gets assigned a value that represents your current influence on that planet. -If you lose a planet in a sector you lose influence on all other planets owned by you in the same sector. If you conquer a planet you gain influence on all other planets owned by you in that sector. You gain a little influence every day on each planet you own. If your influence on a planet drops to 0 you lose that planet (affiliation changes to neutral if no enemy diplomat or fleet is present). Every faction gets a diplomat unit with a build limit of one at a time. Diplomats have galactic stealth. If a diplomat is in orbit of a planet owned by another faction, the faction's influence on that planet will decrease every day. If the influence hits 0 while a diplomat is present the affiliation of that planet will change to the faction the diplomat belongs to. The diplomat also gets removed. Diplomats are also removed when the planet affiliation changes due to another faction conquering the planet.
Ground Combat Changes - In Progress
There are a few different things we're playing with for ground. First off, we're removing some of our worse maps and sprinkling in vanilla ones where they fit again. This also means we've slowed down the unit movements back to their original speeds. Ground buildings are going to have defensive turret hardpoints built into them in order to add another layer to ground battles. I'm still playing with the turret types to make sure terrain affects them as little as possible, but for the most part the system is complete and in place. We're also playing with expanding hardpoint use on the ground, giving a bit more depth to your tactical choices and hopefully making one of EaW's better features more prominent. Infantry will all be gvien back the crouch-move ability as well. This is a good portion of what were doing, but not everything.
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/8/7376/thumb_620x2000/swfoc_2016-06-24_21-50-40-77.png)
New and Redone Units- In Progress
This is a bit more difficult to talk about without just turning it into a list, so that's basically what I'll do. As usual, there'll be a few older units getting redone or updated in some way. There will also be plenty of new hardware in space and also on ground to get your hands on. There's probably two dozen units not present in 21, including the Bellator, Secutor, Gladiator and Allegiance to name only some of the triangular ones. There's also the ULAV and AT-TE on the ground. The Empire of the Hand will also get considerable attention in this respect, with three new capital ships and four new defense platforms.
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/8/7376/thumb_620x2000/swfoc_2016-05-23_04-44-03-01.png)
This isn't quite everything in the mod, but hopefully it gives you an idea of our major goals with the mod for this version. More information, and more specific information, will come as we go. For those of you who would like to, I would also appreciate it if you gave this thread (http://thrawnsrevenge.com/forums/index.php?topic=5932.0) on one of my personal projects (which will hopefully help to allow me to focus more on things like modding) a read.
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