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Stellaris Dev Diary #100 - Titans and Planet Destroyers

Hello everyone and welcome to this very special triple digit Stellaris development diary! Today's dev diary marks the start of talking about the Apocalypse Expansion that will be accompanying the 2.0 'Cherryh' update. We still can't give you an ETA on the release of either, and there's a fair bit to cover in the expansion before then, but we're getting closer. As this is the start of talking about paid features, I just want to take a moment to reiterate that everything talked about in dev diaries 91-99 (with the exception of Dev Diary #95 which was about Humanoids) were about the Cherryh update and all features and changes mentioned in these previous dev diaries are part of the free update, NOT the expansion. Everything mentioned in this dev diary will be part of the paid Apocalypse expansion, however. Please note that some of the screenshots in this dev diary feature placeholder art and icons.


Planet Destroyers (Apocalypse Feature)
As mentioned all the way back in Dev Diary #50 and again in Dev Diary #69, Planet Destroyers have been on our wish list for quite some time, but wasn't something we could make work with restrictive nature of the old warscore system. Now that this is no longer a concern thanks to the new war system we talked about in Dev Diary #93, we finally have our chance to implement this beloved sci-fi staple.

Planet Destroyers come in the form of a new ship class called a Colossus. Though nominally a military ship, the Colossus has no actual fleet combat capability, but is instead a single massive weapon solely dedicated to the purpose of laying waste to enemy planets. To build a Colossus, you must first already know how to build Titans (more on those below) and then take the Colossus Project Ascension Perk, which unlocks a special project to research and design your first Colossus. Each Colossus mounts a single World Devastator-class weapon, and during the course of the project you will be given the option to choose which such weapon you want to focus on, with five potential options to choose from:
  • World Cracker: Shatters a planet, leaving behind a broken debris field that can be mined for resources. Available to non-Pacifists.
  • Global Pacifier: Encases the planet in an impenetrable shield, permanently cutting it off from the rest of the galaxy. A research station can be built to study the planet afterwards.
  • Neutron Sweep: Destroys most higher forms of life on the planet but leaves the infrastructure intact for colonization. Available to non-Spiritualist, non-Pacifist empires.
  • God Ray: Converts all organic Pops on the planet to spiritualist and destroys all machine/synthetic pops, as well as massively increasing spiritualist ethics attraction on the planet for a time. Available to Spiritualist empires.
  • Nanobot Dispersal: Assimilates all Pops on the planet, causing it to defect to your empire with its newly cyborgized population. Only available to Driven Assimilators (and thus requires Synthetic Dawn as well).
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(Weapon icons are placeholders)

Additional types of World Devastator weapons that are potentially available to your empire can be researched as rare technologies after finishing the Colossus project. Once the project is complete, you will be able to build a Colossus at any Starbase with a shipyard where you have the Colossus Assembly Yards building built. Once built, the Colossus functions similar to a civilian ship, in that it is own fleet, and cannot be merged with other fleets. Each empire can only have a single Colossus active at the same time, but can build a new one if their active one is destroyed.

Colossi have no conventional armaments (though we are discussing a few medium/PD turrets to them), and their real purpose is to target enemy planets. When a Colossus is ordered to target a planet, it will travel straight towards it, ignoring enemy ships entirely even if they fire on it. The Colossus will travel to the planet, take up position and begin charging its weapon. The weapon takes quite some time to charge, giving enemy fleets a chance to try and destroy the Colossus to stop it from firing (though Colossi naturally can take a great deal of punishment, they are not invincible). Once the weapons is fully charged, it will fire, executing its effects (as described above) on the hapless planet. The Colossus is then free to continue on to the next planet if you so wish. Most Colossi weapons can only target planets owned by empires you are at war with, though some of them can target primitive worlds and the World Cracker can be used on uncolonized rock-type worlds (but will not always generate a mineral deposit in that case).
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(Animations & interface are partly WIP)

The system for creating World Devastator weapons is fully scriptable, and modders will be able to create their own planet-destroying/changing effects.

Titans (Apocalypse Feature)
Titans are another new ship class available in the Apocalypse expansion, but unlike the Colossus they are much more like conventional warships. Titans are researched through a regular tier 5 technology, and can be built in any Starbase with a shipyard and the Titan Assembly Yards building. Titans are massive flagships that come equipped with an array of heavy long-ranged weaponry and layer upon layer of shields and armor. Their front section has a single Titanic-size slot that can fit weapons even stronger than XL weapons, such as the immensely powerful Perdition Beam that can fire across a whole system and potentially destroy a battleship in a single shot. Titans also have an aura slot that can fit a single offensive or defensive aura that can buff friendly ships in the same fleet or debuff nearby enemy ships. Titans are intended to be the flagships of your fleets, and as such are limited in number: You can always field at least one Titan, plus an additional amount dependent on your overall naval capacity.
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Ion Cannons (Apocalypse Feature)
Finally, there is one last Apocalype feature to talk about for today: Ion Cannons. Ion Cannons are stations that can be built as part of the defense platform fleet of a Starbase. Each Ion Cannon is essentially a single massive gun emplacement that mounts a single Titanic weapon, allowing the Starbase to engage enemy fleets at massive ranges and greatly improving the Starbase's ability to deal with enemy Battleships and Titans.
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That's all for today! Next week we'll continue talking about Cherryh and Apocalypse expansion, on the topic of Marauders, Pirates and the Great Khan.
 
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I don't remember there being any limitations on where you can expand an outpost into a fully fledged starbase. It wouldn't make much sense anyway. One of the core ideas with massive defense-oriented starbases is the ability to wall off critical chokepoints and routes between your empire and the enemies, whether these systems have a planet or not.

Planets have been, in general, made less important to your empire. They will most likely generate the majority of your resources (at least when late-game rolls in) but they no longer set your territorial capability or warfare production. In all honesty, I don't really see the value in a planet destroyer Colossus unless the user is playing an EXTERMINATE empire with no intention of colonization, or they are dealing with a Fortress World. Militarily planets just don't have much value otherwise.

Of course, the mere existence of a Death Star looming over a war might be enough motivation to accept a peace offer.


as i understood the dev diary's and comments:

1: planets could only be colonized if a star-fortress was in the system

2: star-fortresses could only be built in systems with habitable planets (as the star-fortresses are taking the place of space stations above planets.)

i assume that if a colossus destroys a system's only habitable planet.... then the star-fortress can no longer exist
 
as i understood the dev diary's and comments:

1: planets could only be colonized if a star-fortress was in the system

2: star-fortresses could only be built in systems with habitable planets (as the star-fortresses are taking the place of space stations above planets.)

i assume that if a colossus destroys a system's only habitable planet.... then the star-fortress can no longer exist

1. You only need a starbase (the frontier outpost equivalent that just claims the system) to colonize a planet.

2. I haven't seen any post or anything that would imply that only starbases in systems with colonized worlds could be upgraded to starforts.
 
2: star-fortresses could only be built in systems with habitable planets (as the star-fortresses are taking the place of space stations above planets.)
I see no reason to believe this is the case and are you saying that it will just immediately downgrade to an outpost? Or are you saying outposts can't be built in systems without habitables (because that categorically has to be wrong).
 
Is the AI's infinite vision being fixed at any point? It really robs the game of any fun when ambushes are entirely impossible, and when the AI knows exactly when it should send Science ships to rush a system after you've cleared it of hostiles. Honestly, I really couldn't care less about apocalypse weapons or whatever, that sort of content is what mods are for. What I want from the actual team is to make sure the nuts and bolts are working, and they simply aren't.

While I don't know about what they're directly doing about it, I know for a fact it's pretty simple to make the AI pretend it doesn't see everything even though it does, in fact iirc Stellaris does already do that, maybe just not enough. Should be relatively easy to fix as far as AI issues go and it won't be something they make a dev diary out of if they do, so you just have to wait and see how it goes or try asking the devs directly on their streams or on the forums and hope for a response.
 
1: planets could only be colonized if a star-fortress was in the system

Planets can be colonized if an Outpost or anything better is in the system. You can just build the level 0 minimal functionality Starbase in the system to colonize it (and exploit it otherwise, for that matter). No need to upgrade it at all and certainly not to Star Fortress levels.

2: star-fortresses could only be built in systems with habitable planets (as the star-fortresses are taking the place of space stations above planets.)

i assume that if a colossus destroys a system's only habitable planet.... then the star-fortress can no longer exist

I've not seen anything that would suggest that Starbase upgrades can only happen in systems with colonies and it seems to actively contradict with the design decisions of the system. Similarly there's no mention that I can see that suggests that they would downgrade right back to Outpost or cease to exist if the colonies are removed.
How did you come to this conclusion? Got a quote or link to it? Honest question.

In fact, right now Starbases are completely immune to Colossi, as they cannot target the star on which the Starbase resides.
 
There's already clone and droid armies, psychic powers that manifest due to a connection with an otherworldy force, and an army attachment that consists of mysterious warriors armed with said psychic powers as well as a preference for and mastery of melee combat.

And it takes a planet-killer to make you suspect that we're getting Star Wars-y.

Touché !

I guess this is for me the straw that broke the camel.
 
@Wiz what happens when one planet is under shield from pacificator and I want to use Planet Cracker on it?
 
When Stellaris become Stars Wars.

What's next ? Jedi knights and Sith lords ?

I sincerely hope there will be an option to play without these weapons.
So Stellaris can't have planet kills because Star Wars had a planet killer, even if said planet killer worked very different then Stellaris' do.
Ok.

Oh, and on that note, Stellaris has science ships, federations, strange anomilie events, and diplomancy, clearly it's to similar to Star Trek, they need to take those things out.

You're completely right, Stellaris doesn't just have a couple things similar to Star Wars that are relatively small features, because it has that it IS Star Wars!

Oh, shit, I just realized Stellaris needs to get rid of spaceships, that makes it to similar to Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon Five, Firefly, Mass Effect, Foundation, Starship Troopers, and others all at once! Paradox are total hacks!
 
Xeno invasion - Think of any Aliens movie. You drop off a few aliens and they murder everyone on the planet. In order to take the world back, you will have to invade and kill off the surviving xenos. Can imagine my marines talking about an express elevator to hell, going down. (Arguably this would be the less destructive of all options, as you could reclaim the world, if you are willing to use lots of marines)

Already covered under the army rework.

Certain army types have a much higher chance to cause collateral damage. The Devs specifically mentioned that xenomorph armies would become much cheaper, but would cause a ton of collateral damage. Dead POPs, ruined buildings, and so on.

So, basically, this will be happening at some point when I get my hands on that tech.

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Oh man now I want to create my star wars army. Clone troopers
Already covered under the army rework.

Certain army types have a much higher chance to cause collateral damage. The Devs specifically mentioned that xenomorph armies would become much cheaper, but would cause a ton of collateral damage. Dead POPs, ruined buildings, and so on.

So, basically, this will be happening at some point when I get my hands on that tech.

Yeah I read that, what kills the theme for me is that automatic embarking of my invasion force once their work is complete. If I could just abandon my swarms planet side, it'd be just about perfect. I actually want my swarms to murder every last pop, ruin every last building.
 
Oh man now I want to create my star wars army. Clone troopers


Yeah I read that, what kills the theme for me is that automatic embarking of my invasion force once their work is complete. If I could just abandon my swarms planet side, it'd be just about perfect. I actually want my swarms to murder every last pop, ruin every last building.

Well, you have a point. There are other ways to get the same effect, which is probably why they don't allow it.

Perhaps it might be worth modding the game to have a special bombardment stance for xenomorph armies.
 
Just as a side comment: I think there should be a huge reputation loss if starting to build a colossus, growing parallel to the building process and another rep-loss if it is finished.
I mean...you are building a weapon of mass destruction, a doomsday device, a tool which may only bring death. There is no defense purpose on building a colossus than enforcing a cold war.

Just remember how the world goes totally nuts because of North Korea. And now imagine this on a planet cracking scale.
 
That isn't exactly true. World went nuts because North Korea threatened others with those nukes. Plenty of other countries with nukes that seldom get mentioned. UK, India, Pakistan. Why? Because they don't threaten their neighbors with them.

Also, there is the MAD principle, which so far has worked. So that in itself could justify the making of such a weapon.
 
Not every type of empire gets its own planet destroyer, though we may very well add more later. What weapon would you suggest for Hive Minds (besides the basic ones they already have access to)?
A Xenomorph infestation spawner ala Zerg orbital drops that destroys the infrastructure and spawns some of your pop types on the planet.
 
That isn't exactly true. World went nuts because North Korea threatened others with those nukes. Plenty of other countries with nukes that seldom get mentioned. UK, India, Pakistan. Why? Because they don't threaten their neighbors with them.a

Also, there is the MAD principle, which so far has worked. So that in itself could justify the making of such a weapon.

Possession of a WMD is a threat itself. You don't have to speak it out loudly.
Then imagine on the next UN conference Germany is standing up and declares they just started to build their own nuclear weapons.

Okay, this is getting too political.
 
A Xenomorph infestation spawner ala Zerg orbital drops that destroys the infrastructure and spawns some of your pop types on the planet.
That's called invading with xenomorph armies.
 
Loving the new Ideas. But the Jedi in me has concerns. Anyway. I have no clue if this was postet already. But here we go:

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  1. a chance? definitely, but nothing is planned right now
  2. in the future? maybe
  3. it's likely, but I haven't heard anything about it.

Good, especially for number 3. One thing I think that Stellaris good benefit from would be a TRUCKLOAD of more events. There are times where the game gets very... dull and lifeless that having more events in would make things more interesting.