Note: These latter four journals are unique in that they're structured to discuss how both base Sins and other mods have implemented these features. This is because they are substantially more "tweak"-ish than our first update, and at first glance it would be relatively easy to confuse their implementation with duplication. Multiple rationales can lead to the same change in gameplay, and so I'll try my best to explain why certain features behave the way they do, instead of just discussing the end result.

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Planetary Defenses III: Hangars and Defensive Structures
While there's much to be said for passive defenses like mines and active ones like turrets, these structures are entirely reliant on their positioning. Even worse, a long-ranged ship or fighter squadron can have free reign to destroy them without a more mobile arrangement. Hangars and command and control stations provide the flexibility needed for a strong defense.

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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!

Bow to the greatness of the team, finally a strategy game that makes me use my brain, instead of spamming units like hell!

Yes, I too enjoy a game that exercises my bran,

Real men use their brans.

Its not actually a bran

lol my mistake, hahaha

I like a bit of Bran Flakes in the morning tehehe
Anywhooooo...

I'm loving these updates

Awesome. Only just realised these dev journals were being posted, since they aren't visible on the main website... :P

actually something I thought about that should be added to the game, sweet.

That are good changes I tend to spawn many hangars in my gravity well because they are kind of durable have flak (in entranchment) and the most important is they have fighters :D

You could make the cloaking a ability. They will only be invinsible for a fixed amount of time. Aomatically uncloaking. The ability will have a cooldown so you can't immediatly cloak them again. There might be the problem that a player is cloaking them shortly before a enemy fleet is arriving and the enemy never saw the positions of the mines, moving blindly into them. This could be prevented with the condition that the ability is only usable when enemy ships are in the system or that scout frigates can detect them in a close range.
Don't know if this is possible to programm, it is just an idea.

Yeah, that was my initial idea, but the cooldown thing doesn't work properly with the buff set up now, so it's not doable since a player could just turn them on whenever a ship came in range and then immediately turn them back off.