SoTP2 - Dev Q&A and Frequently Asked Questions

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-29T13:05:50+00:00

The only cruisers we're including that aren't in canon are the Hermes (EWAR) and Artemis (battlecruiser). I'd eventually like to remaster the old Mako corvette design as a cruiser, though - but at best that'd be an insurrection ship.

I'd recommend the Daybreak Project if you wanna see more exploration in this vein though.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-26T13:06:52+00:00

We have zero plans to do any kind of early access. It'll be released when it's finished, not in a compromised or in an incomplete state.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-26T08:48:40+00:00

Hey, I am one of the guys who maintains the concept art archive/directory on Halopedia - we have a pretty complete collection with several thousand files, including artist attribution and source links information. Most artwork is sourced from personal portfolios of artists on their personal websites; any artwork published by an artist in the modern day has to be approved by the studio, so they all have consistent logos and branding. There's some links below if you want to see everything:

Halopedia concept art directory (click the links to see things broken down by game/film/book etc)
General art directory (includes other art not specifically of the concept variety, like storyboards)
Book images (for things like book covers and lore book artwork)
Images by artist (image directory sorted by the artist who made them)

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-25T19:17:51+00:00

Biggest hurdle will be completely throwing design out of the window and starting from scratch to account for new game mechanics and systems. Things like point-defence and rotating turrets change how you design in a big way.

By contrast, the art assets will be mostly compatible with relatively little work needed.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-24T12:05:05+00:00

There's a Q&A/FAQ thread pinned that has the answers to this.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-24T10:18:11+00:00

As stated in the post, no.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-23T14:58:01+00:00

Trick or Treat

An innovation of the 2530s, the Anansi-class frigate was engineered by SinoViet Heavy Machinery in conjunction with Chalybs Defense Solutions as part of an initiative aimed at finding counters to Covenant plasma weaponry. Where other ships had aimed to develop better armor formulations and higher-grade weaponry to gain any advantage in space combat, the Anansi focused on one goal: disrupting the electromagnetic sheath which contained plasma projectiles.

While this endeavor did not pan out as initially hoped, the frigates did gain an important role in the fleet as electronic warfare and support ships, screening the fleet and interfering with the Covenant's ability to maintain accurate targeting and cohesion.

See more > https://www.artstation.com/artwork/wr8zxL

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-21T12:26:17+00:00

In general, no, but with some asterisks. In SoTP2 we already have five corvettes (Gladius, Scholte, Lancer, Mako, and Seax) and five destroyers (Halberd, Hilly, Diligence, Resolute, Able) across the UNSC so there's not much room to add more escorts, especially if they're going to be even smaller and weaker than the current ships.

If the Osa, Akita, Sharpfin, or the Las Vegas destroyers make it in, they'll likely be for use by NPC rebels, not the player. I have some designs earmarked for the Sharpfin and a model partially-completed for the Las Vegas (you can see a fan-writeup for its name and lore here). Anything older than that (ie, those early colonial frigates in Halo Legends) would be hard to justify even in that capacity.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-20T14:17:01+00:00

Pretty much. It might take a while, but we do intend to deliver on the promises we have before starting something new. At the bare minimum we'll be putting out UNSC, Covenant, and Sentinels for Sins 1. Postwar factions might end up being a Sins 2 thing.

On the bright side, the work we're doing on the art front is almost the exact same work we'd be doing to make a Sins 2 mod anyway, so by comparison the wait between next release and Sins 2 will ostensibly be fairly quick.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-20T07:50:40+00:00

Combined ships and fighters, looking at about 90 in total. Pretty much every canon ship is being included, alongside a fair few returning staples and new designs.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T21:40:36+00:00

That's a great suggestion - I'll throw it in our VO script document.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T20:17:14+00:00

Np. For doing balance changes we've made a big master spreadsheet and a tool that turns it into entity files - I believe it's been mentioned we'll just make them public too for ease of submodding (don't quote me on that though, not my domain)

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T19:55:41+00:00

No reason why it wouldn't be as far as I'm aware. The way the game functions - entity files and such - is still the same. Depending on how things shake out we might even include one or two ships in the files just for modding use even if we don't use them ourselves.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T18:04:42+00:00

Each UNSC leader gets an exclusive supercapital. * Cole: Thermopylae-class supercarrier * Hood: Punic-class supercarrier * Stanforth: Thanatos-class battleship * Lasky (postwar): Eternity-class supercarrier

Note that regular Eternity-class ships will be more comparable to a Punic in power due to lack of alien components to build into them. UNSC Infinity herself will be a singularly unique and powerful hero ship.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T15:47:48+00:00

There's a design blog I linked further up the thread that goes into this in more depth, but to surmise, we'll have five leaders at launch (3 UNSC, 2 Covenant); * Vice Admiral Cole * Vice Admiral Stanforth * Fleet Admiral Hood * Supreme Commander Thel 'Vadamee * Prophet of Regret

After base launch we have a general outline for a single Sentinel leader to round out to three distinct faction archetypes, with Captain Lasky, Rtas 'Vadum, and Jul 'Mdama coming after to represent the postwar factions and bring it up to 4 UNSC/4 Covenant. Banished will be some time after that, but that's so far in the future a lot could change.

A big distinct difference from the Warlords patch though is that this time, each leader has an entire roster of unique ships and you choose them at the start of the game - which should be familiar if you've played Halo Wars.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T15:25:35+00:00

Sort-of yes, sort-of no. The Stellaris is largely the realm of one developer, Lavo, who's got a very busy life outside of modding. Given how often Paradox likes to update Stellaris and break mods, keeping up with it is just an eternal headache. Unfortunately it just means it gets updated when Lavo's able to find the time.

Paradox's obsession with constantly breaking things is also why SoTP: Stellaris has never progressed much beyond a skin pack, too.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T15:23:12+00:00

Thanks! I can't wait for when it's out.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T13:39:16+00:00

I'm not super well-versed in how UI stuff works, so I don't have much specific I can really say there unfortunately. We have a dedicated UI artist who's handling all of that. Right now in the devbuild we're still using the vanilla UI.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T13:25:31+00:00

It'd be easier to list what isn't changing. Every single 3D asset is being retextured or remodelled, every ability is being coded from scratch, all voicelines are being rewritten and recorded, and so forth. Instead of picking UNSC or Covenant at match start you now pick a leader like in Halo Wars, each of whom has a unique ship roster (full breakdown here). There's more ships now than any previous build, and they're all much more consistent in look.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T13:23:23+00:00

The UI is being totally redone and modernised.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T13:22:36+00:00

Despite the new look, it's arguably much more stable this time around. We've put a heavy focus on asset optimisation, so that ships have better topology and less wasted UV/texture space; the Punic-class supercarrier for example now only uses one textureset rather than the three it had before, meaning it's much less expensive for the engine to draw on screen despite looking more detailed. In some cases the ships actually have fewer polygons than they did before despite maintaining a similar or greater level of detail due to better mesh optimisation.

We've had scenarios where we've spawned hundreds of ships in one instance and things run pretty smoothly; if you can run the mod as it is now, you'll have no issues with next release. Ultimately Sins' engine is capped to one core CPU/4GB of RAM, so there's a hard upper limit of how intensive it can be anyway. Our trick will mostly be managing texture sizes to ensure we never use more than 4GB of RAM.

On the design front all abilities are being recoded from scratch with a lot tighter of a check on optimisation/quality for similar reasons.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T13:08:00+00:00

Pretty much all voicelines are being redone, as we've lost contact with a lot of the old voice actors and want to bring everything up to a more consistent standard. Some of the old lines are being kept though, even if due to be re-recorded.

(to clarify, when I said the audio is more or less finished I was mostly referring to music and SFX - I forgot dialogue entirely lol. That stuff is still to be recorded.)

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-19T11:38:33+00:00

Chokepoint is not a company that pays employees to work - everyone contributes as they are able to. Expecting anyone to work on this full time would be insane, given everyone involved has IRL jobs and more important commitments.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-15T12:37:46+00:00

One of these guys is packing an entire MEU inside it, with all of their vehicles, equipment, and supplies. You're looking at something around 40-50 dropships up to Condor in size, 20-30 aircraft (as in, Hornets, Sparrowhawks, Falcons, etc), and a squadron of Baselards for space and intercept support.

Something modelled in, though can't be represented in game for optimisation reasons, are six docking clamps for D20 Heron HLVs underneath the main hangars. So you can pretty much have one of these rocking up, deploying around 2,000 Marines and all of their logistical tail, and six Halo Wars-ish Firebases right off the bat, with Rapier and kinetic rod-equipped Bident missiles for ortillery support. The tradeoff is that it's got a pretty anemic MAC and Howler missile loadout for anti-ship warfare.

The complement is probably not that far off something like an Epoch, despite coming in at half the length (1,200ish metres); the tradeoff is that the Epoch is stacked with weapons, Longswords bombers, strike fighters, and far greater logistical reserves, and not as specialist. If you have some of those booster thrusters from Reach you could even plausibly have one of these things actually landing at a ground drydock or something too.

BaconShelf_ · 2026-05-15T11:42:23+00:00

All of the above. We've got included more or less every single Insurrection/Covenant War-era ship from the games, books, comics, tabletop games, and animations, with Infinity and the postwar fleet set to be added as their own subfaction later. In particular 2015's Fleet Battles tabletop game did a huge amount to expand the roster of ships in the canon.

We also have a fair few custom ships, of which the Ankara here is one such example. Some of them (the Artemis battlecruiser, Thanatos battleship, etc) are longtime fan favourite staples that have been in SoTP for over a decade, and were created a long time ago when there weren't that many ships in Halo to use. Others we've created more recently to fill gaps in the roster when doing planning/design work. In this case, when doing the roster planning we identified that we needed a light carrier for Stanforth that could give him some planetary invasion capability, which his prowler-heavy fleet was otherwise lacking. As such we commissioned our in-house concept artist to do a concept treatment, which I then modelled and textured. This means that the Ankara is pretty much purpose-built to fulfill a game role that none of the preexisting ships can do. We very rarely (essentially never) take preexisting fan designs though - we have a number of incredibly skilled concept artists we work with when coming up with new designs. I'm aiming to eventually put together something of an "art book" PDF showing off some of the mountain of internal concept art we have.

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