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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.
2018_01_11_5.png


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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BlackUmbrellas said:
A "Dreadnought" still isn't an actual Thing, and they can call "the next biggest ship up from Battleships" whatever they want. They didn't "skip" anything.
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http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Dreadnought
http://galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Dreadnought
http://sinsofasolarempire.wikia.com/wiki/Marza_Dreadnought
http://www.milsf.com/ship-classifications/
But clearly it isn't a thing.

stumason said:
If you want Dreadnaughts (or a number of other classes in your game), use NSC. It has had dreadnaughts and titans for months.
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Yeah, I think I will do this. All this talk about ship types has really made me want to give that mod another try.
 
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BlackUmbrellas said:
So, you mean a Battleship with all L-slot weapons?

There you go, Enjoy your dreadnoughts.
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I actually take "dreadnought" in the way that terrycloth described it, with regards to space combat - A large heavy ship (battleship or larger) that has a primary focus on heavy artillery weapons rather than fighters or a large battery of smaller guns and this was precisely my initial thought. Because that's exactly what Titans are. Hence why I asked for a definition in my first post.
 
The word dreadnought was the actual name of the first "modern" battleship. The thing that made it different from existing designs were the the main turrets with large bore guns. Up until that point battleships were armed with lots o small guns. The old pattern battleships , sans the big guns, were more or less reclassified as battlecrusiers . Though technically a battlecrusier is faster they are more or less the same thing.

I guess technically any battleship with an XL mount is a dreadnought .
 
calen said:
That comment was more about how I wasn't making random stuff up, and not that all space opera use the same classification.
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So then the argument is that in some specific space opera you've read/seen they used this classification and therefor it should be used in Stellaris?
 
Razzlie said:
You're right about the current meta, but I believe the reason why it is this way is because there isn't enough specialization, so you have little incentive to have ships with specific roles when you can just slap Kinetic Artillery and Plasma on your Cruisers and let loose. A more rock-paper-scissors type hard counter setup would see a lot more variety, as much as some people voice dislike for that type of thing.
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I actually would like that, with there being similar situations for the defensive techs to make it worthwhile to have a race devoting themselves more to certain weapons and defensive systems.
 
Misguidedworm7 said:
Implied and/or quoted from the stream,
The Khan are a sort of space mongol faction, they live on space stations, controlling territory, they are a neutral antagonistic faction. They raid nearby territories, stealing population and resources. You can defend yourself with naval might, or pay them protection money to not raid you. If you are not on hostile terms you can buy special admirals and generals, or even send them to raid your rivals territories. Their diplomacy is somewhat like the curators, trade enclaves, and artisans, but much more hostile.

As a mid game crisis similar to robot uprisings the Khan tribes can unite under a Khan, turning them into a military menace who will raid pillage and destroy anyone near them, you fight, you die, or you grovel at their feet surrendering everything you hold dear for a chance at mercy.

Pirates were less talked about, what was said is that there is a reason not to leave holes in your empire. The implication leads me to speculate that pirates will spawn from unclaimed territory on the edge of claimed spaces, with areas that are surrounded having much higher chances of pirates spawning to raid nearby areas, likely stealing in much the same way the Khan do, but on a more localized scale.
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thanks. just finish reading dev blorg 101,that sounds really cool
 
Guriezous said:
What's the point of having so many ship classes?
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Flavour. Beyond game mechanics there is flavour and it is a vital part of the gaming meta.

To be fair, a lot of this flavour is in the segments you can assign different classes of ships to create carriers, arsenal ships, battleline gun ships, and so on.

It is clear that some want larger ships and some do not think there is a place for them. For some players, it would simply mean another tier of technology to research and field. But for some players it means that Sector Fleet England can be lead by the Superbattleship Agincourt, whilst the Home Sector Fleet with it's trio of Albion Class Titans, held in reserve for when the might of Her Majesty's sector fleets are not enough, etc.

And there is nothing wrong with either approach.

I do think a larger than battleships, but smaller than titan would be cool, but how to avoid it simply becoming my fleet is 150 Superbattleships instead of 300 Battleships?

What I would really like to see is bonuses for each different ship class in a fleet, to encourage more than battleship spam. Instead of each ship simply being a larger and tougher weapons platform, there should be unique facets to each class that ensure their continued usage throughout the game.
 
thetick2 said:
Flavour. Beyond game mechanics there is flavour and it is a vital part of the gaming meta.

To be fair, a lot of this flavour is in the segments you can assign different classes of ships to create carriers, arsenal ships, battleline gun ships, and so on.

It is clear that some want larger ships and some do not think there is a place for them. For some players, it would simply mean another tier of technology to research and field. But for some players it means that Sector Fleet England can be lead by the Superbattleship Agincourt, whilst the Home Sector Fleet with it's trio of Albion Class Titans, held in reserve for when the might of Her Majesty's sector fleets are not enough, etc.

And there is nothing wrong with either approach.

I do think a larger than battleships, but smaller than titan would be cool, but how to avoid it simply becoming my fleet is 150 Superbattleships instead of 300 Battleships?

What I would really like to see is bonuses for each different ship class in a fleet, to encourage more than battleship spam. Instead of each ship simply being a larger and tougher weapons platform, there should be unique facets to each class that ensure their continued usage throughout the game.
Click to expand...

They have those, but supposedly all-battleship fleets still win in tests. You'd think torpedo corvettes which are obviously designed to counter battleships would win, but I guess they don't? Or maybe it was just that they lost so hard to anything else that it was pointless.

Corvettes are evasive and can ignore large weapons.
Destroyers have high tracking and can use medium weapons against corvettes effectively (hitting them from beyond their range).
Cruisers have tons of health while still being mobile, and cause use some large weapons and torpedoes (which are good against other non-corvettes).
Battleships can mount exclusively large weapons and XL spinal mounts and outrange everything else.

So the idea was that you have corvettes to negate all the large weapons, that need destroyers to counter them, and the cruisers and battleships counter the destroyers. But in practice corvettes die so fast that you don't really need destroyers either, so you end up with mono-cruiser or mono-battleship fleets because they're easier.
 
terrycloth said:
They have those, but supposedly all-battleship fleets still win in tests. You'd think torpedo corvettes which are obviously designed to counter battleships would win, but I guess they don't? Or maybe it was just that they lost so hard to anything else that it was pointless.

Corvettes are evasive and can ignore large weapons.
Destroyers have high tracking and can use medium weapons against corvettes effectively (hitting them from beyond their range).
Cruisers have tons of health while still being mobile, and cause use some large weapons and torpedoes (which are good against other non-corvettes).
Battleships can mount exclusively large weapons and XL spinal mounts and outrange everything else.

So the idea was that you have corvettes to negate all the large weapons, that need destroyers to counter them, and the cruisers and battleships counter the destroyers. But in practice corvettes die so fast that you don't really need destroyers either, so you end up with mono-cruiser or mono-battleship fleets because they're easier.
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I think the problem was with armor. Cruisers and especially battleships could became near indestructible with enough armor, because of all the damage reduction. With 2.0 changing armor into a type of HP it will hopefully fix this.
 
terrycloth said:
They have those, but supposedly all-battleship fleets still win in tests. You'd think torpedo corvettes which are obviously designed to counter battleships would win, but I guess they don't? Or maybe it was just that they lost so hard to anything else that it was pointless.

Corvettes are evasive and can ignore large weapons.
Destroyers have high tracking and can use medium weapons against corvettes effectively (hitting them from beyond their range).
Cruisers have tons of health while still being mobile, and cause use some large weapons and torpedoes (which are good against other non-corvettes).
Battleships can mount exclusively large weapons and XL spinal mounts and outrange everything else.

So the idea was that you have corvettes to negate all the large weapons, that need destroyers to counter them, and the cruisers and battleships counter the destroyers. But in practice corvettes die so fast that you don't really need destroyers either, so you end up with mono-cruiser or mono-battleship fleets because they're easier.
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I'm not just talking about increased evasiveness.

Corvettes should be untargettable by Large slot weapons, for example. XL weapons should only be able to target battleships and should have a stricter minimum range. Battleships should not be able to dodge torpedoes (but point defence can shoot them down) etc. It's an awful balancing act, but I'm not a game designer, merely a dude commenting on the forums. It's up to Wiz and Co to sort it out.

And while we're on the topic, I want the Science ship class scrapped. Please add a section or module for this so I can make armed exploration vessels for my Xenophobic empire. Nothing grates more than my Determined Exterminators sending out unarmed science ships. WE EXPLORE IN FORCE.

Heck, it would mean I could make the USS Enterprise more accurately (should I want, and I don't want).
 
thetick2 said:
I'm not just talking about increased evasiveness.

Corvettes should be untargettable by Large slot weapons, for example. XL weapons should only be able to target battleships and should have a stricter minimum range. Battleships should not be able to dodge torpedoes (but point defence can shoot them down) etc. It's an awful balancing act, but I'm not a game designer, merely a dude commenting on the forums. It's up to Wiz and Co to sort it out.

And while we're on the topic, I want the Science ship class scrapped. Please add a section or module for this so I can make armed exploration vessels for my Xenophobic empire. Nothing grates more than my Determined Exterminators sending out unarmed science ships. WE EXPLORE IN FORCE.

Heck, it would mean I could make the USS Enterprise more accurately (should I want, and I don't want).
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the problem is the potential for endless battles, which you then have to hack out with a retreat timer or somesuch.
 
because there is the potential to have two opposed forces that either cant shoot each other or effectively cant kill each other. for instance a fleet of corvettes with ineffectual weapons versus a fleet of battleships that cant shoot at them.
 
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