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Stellaris Dev Diary #163 - Juggernaut & Mega Shipyard

Hello everyone!

Today we’ll be talking about some big stuff – namely the Juggernaut and the Mega Shipyard.

Both of these new behemoths are a part of the upcoming Federations expansion.

Juggernaut
Stellaris has been in development for many years and, and if there’s something we know for sure its that big ships are cool, and bigger ships are even cooler. With this flawless logic in mind, we obviously wanted to add something even bigger than a Titan.

Mobile starbases is something that we know has been widely requested, so why not hit two avians with one lithoid?

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Visually, the Juggernaut has the shape of a giant pair of wings.
The juggernaut is as much a mobile starbase as it is a massive warship. Although the Juggernaut works like a mobile starbase in some regards, it will not project borders or control ownership or systems. A Juggernaut instead functions like a forward base of operations during offensive campaigns, a place where you can repair your ships. The Juggernaut will not have starbase modules or buildings – instead it will count as always having 2 Shipyards (which means it can build, repair and upgrade ships).

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The Juggernaut can be designed in the ship designer, and features 2 XL turrets, 6 hangar slots and 5 medium turrets.

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In addition, the Juggernaut gets access to a couple of new and unique aura components.

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The Juggernaut will be unlocked by a technology which requires Citadels and Battleships to be already researched. A Starbase will also need to have a Colossal Assembly Yard in order to be able to construct one. The Colossal Assembly Yard is required for (and unlocked by) both the Colossus and the Juggernaut.


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The Juggernaut will have an empire limit of 1.

Mega Shipyard
New Megastructures are always nice, because we all want more ways to show off the glory and magnificence of our empires. The Mega Shipyard is exactly what it is, a giant shipyard that allows you to build a lot of ships really fast.

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The Mega Shipyard will also provide ships with +100 starting XP, so that it will not matter where you build them. Generally speaking, we are trying to avoid design that creates incentives for players to engage in more micromanagement that may not be fun. We believe the choice of where to build a ship (because it would cost less, or gain more XP somewhere) is an example of micromanagement that is not very fun. The only incentive is to avoid loss aversion, which is not a good. Incentives should generally be positive.

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The Mega Shipyard is unlocked by a technology which requires Mega-Engineering (like the others). It’s found in the Society tree and belongs to the Military Theory category.

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The Mega Shipyard will have 3 stages (in addition to construction site):
Mega Shipyard Framework
- 10 Shipyards, +33% Ship Build Speed, +100 Starting Ship XP
Mega Shipyard Core - 20 Shipyards, +66% Ship Build Speed, +100 Starting Ship XP
Mega Shipyard - 30 Shipyards, +100% Ship Build Speed, +100 Starting Ship XP

The bonuses to Ship Build Speed will be empire-wide.

Keep in mind that these numbers are work-in-progress and may change.

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That is all for this week! Next week will be the last dev diary of the year, before the holidays, and we will be doing a round up of the year.

Also keep an eye on our social media channels, as we will be sharing some more screenshots of the Juggernaut and Mega Shipyard.
 
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Let me guess, the juggernaut will fly to a neighbouring system for half year, and any war will be long over before it actually can arrive on the front?
 
The Mega Shipyard will also provide ships with +100 starting XP, so that it will not matter where you build them.
I have issues parsing this sentence. It feels like something is missing.

I think it says "all Shipyards get +100 XP", to avoid Micromanagement.
But down below you only say the Build Speed is global, not the XP. Also, what about the Naval Academy? Will this bonus add to it or replace it?
 
I have issues parsing this sentence. It feels like something is missing.

I think it says "all Shipyards get +100 XP", to avoid Micromanagement.
But down below you only say the Build Speed is global, not the XP. Also, what about the Naval Academy? Will this bonus add to it or replace it?
You can't build a naval academy on the Megashipyard. So you have the bonus natively.
 
Looks cool, but by the time any of these features even come into play the game will have slowed to a crawl.

Please stop adding stuff and just focus on getting the game to run past the mid-game. It’s been years and still no effort has been made to fix the engine.

Imperator runs great. Stellaris should be able to as well. I cannot wait for the day I even reach a Stellaris endgame on a galaxy of more than 800 stars on my top notch gaming computer. The game is fun — now if it were playable we’d get somewhere.
 
The Mega Shipyard will also provide ships with +100 starting XP, so that it will not matter where you build them. Generally speaking, we are trying to avoid design that creates incentives for players to engage in more micromanagement that may not be fun. We believe the choice of where to build a ship (because it would cost less, or gain more XP somewhere) is an example of micromanagement that is not very fun. The only incentive is to avoid loss aversion, which is not a good. Incentives should generally be positive.
Does this hint at changes to the Retired Fleet Admiral governor trait, which reduces the build cost and boosts the build times of ships built in the area that that governor is assigned to? Because that's a major incentive to micromanage where ships are built, which you say you are trying to avoid.
 
By the time you're late enough in the game to afford a juggernaut your ships should already have regenerating health, so the repair ability is meh. It's stuck with only two XL guns and a bunch of bugged strike craft that have been worthless for years (fix the bugs, seriously). Being able to construct ships in the field is genuinely cool, but other than that it's basically a gigantic slow moving liability that we now have to protect in enemy territory. Will it really be worth the upkeep and fleet capacity, not to mention the construction time?

Come on, a ship that big should be loaded with weapons, not arguably worse than a titan.
 
your ships should already have regenerating health, so the repair ability is meh
Yeah but iirc, unless you're a Swarm that regen is REALLY slow. It's 5 health or something, and not 5%. 5.
 
"The Mega Shipyard will also provide ships with +100 starting XP, so that it will not matter where you build them. Generally speaking, we are trying to avoid design that creates incentives for players to engage in more micromanagement that may not be fun. We believe the choice of where to build a ship (because it would cost less, or gain more XP somewhere) is an example of micromanagement that is not very fun. The only incentive is to avoid loss aversion, which is not a good. Incentives should generally be positive."

This right here makes me worried... If only because of what it's saying between the lines... Quite literally what this is summed up too is "we don't like you to have to think or plan strategy in a strategy game"...

The incentive to build a 100xp bonus somewhere or move your juggernaught to something that can is a reward.. the reward being the 100xp..

additionally the strategic choice.. move it somwhere, or keep pumping out ships with 100xp less on the jugg to supplement the fleet until the main fleet from home gets there..

These are important decisions in a strategy game..

These are important in any game to make that game interesting.... This is why Imperator Rome was trashed at release, there was no hard decisions, or interesting mechanics...

Stellaris still gets trashed for this, and now it seems like you're deciding to make it even simpler. (Not saying people can't like it, or love Stellaris how it is. I think it's fine at the moment, though boring mid/late game which this federations expansion seems to fix).
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Rule of thumb for any good game designer... clicking buttons for immediate satisfaction is not strategy, and makes for a boring game.. People who buy games like Stellaris are looking for depth to some degree... Stellaris BARELY functions as a strategy game as it is because of how shallow everything is. (Most things do come down to just click a button, and watch. The only real strategy at the moment is how you build up your planets).
 
I don't so much dislike the Juggernaut's (intentionally) weak armaments, as just the weapon composition; Strike Craft that will always ignore shields and two X and five M guns that can either fully ignore all defenses, or none. If at least there was a little variation like, say, choosing between a gun loadout or a strike craft/missile loadout so that at least the weapons on the ship itself synergize, I wouldn't really complain, but right now it seems like kind of a mess.

A point could also be made about using L slots instead of M's, but scaled down in number to still be inferior to Titans so that the Juggernaut at least gets to fire more than two of it's guns or gets to use the currently very popular Tachyon+KA combo, although I would understand if that would make it "too effective" in your mind.
Still though, being able to choose between a carrier and an all-guns version would be nice. That, or reworking stirke craft/missiles and shield/armour/PD/flak mechanics in some way to make those and "normal" weapons mix better, although that might be better for a future patch.
 
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I don't so much dislike the Juggernaut's (intentionally) weak armaments, as just the weapon composition; Strike Craft that will always ignore shields and two X and five M guns that can either fully ignore all defenses, or none. If at least there was a little variation like, say, choosing between a gun loadout or a strike craft/missile loadout so that at least the weapons on the ship itself synergize, I wouldn't really complain, but right now it seems like kind of a mess.

A point could also be made about using L slots instead of M's, but scaled down in number to still be inferior to Titans so that the Juggernaut at least get's to fire more than two of it's guns or get to use currently very popular Tachyon+KA combo, although I would understand if that would make it "too effective" in your mind.
Still though, being able to choose between a carrier and a all-guns version would be nice. That, or reworking stirke craft/missiles and shield/armour/PD/flak mechanics in some way to make those and "normal" weapons mix better, although that might be better for a future patch.
I think it would be a good idea to give Titans and Juggernauts a few weapon loadout options, yeah. It's weird to me that player-built Titans can't have hangars like Fallen Empire Titans can.