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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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But I ESPECIALLY LOVE...

That it diversifies the Colossus perk.
That Perk can now be used to represent "Mega-Ship Construction" with the Colossus and Juggernaught being just two examples of the things it unlocks.

I love that.
 
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.
That trait only improves build speed and reduces cost. The ships it builds aren't any better than if you build them somewhere else.
 
So, more fancy lategame content that is irrelevant because anyone who doesn't handicap himself has already curbtomped the entirety of the galaxy by the time it comes around.

Can you please put the developement effort into hunting bugs, improving the AI and actually making MEANINGFUL changes to the core part of the expansion (in this case diplomacy)?
 
IF you are going to release another species pack after this dlc you should do gaseous species or a gelatinous species with new ships designs and planet types :))
 
IF you are going to release another species pack after this dlc you should do gaseous species or a gelatinous species with new ships designs and planet types :))
No!

Give me dolphins or give me death!
 
Ok, first tackling the mobile shipyard thingy:

1. Too few shipyars to be effective
2. We don't know about the repair speed - it may be very slow compared to a starbase so hold your breath.
3. I assume that it stops building and repairing if under attack - so even more useless.
4. We haven't seen its defenses and its ability to be a damage sponge. If it is a decent tank and the enemy only targets it, perhaps it could be useful as a meat shield, but I doubt it.
5. How to you repair the mobile shipyard? If it has to reach a friendly starbase to repair - it's done for - I don't even wish to build it.
6. Movement speed: I assume it will be slow as hell. My modern fleet doctrine is all about speed and evasion - even on BS. To have to escort that thing will make me fall asleep.
7. Strategic benefit: Non existent. If you need it to defend or attack, you need to build more ships, so you wasted the minerals. If you need it to attack its so slow so by the time it reaches its destination the war is already settled. Besides, it is questionable to send it into deep enemy territory. So if the battle is on border worlds, a starbase is always closeby.
8. Build cap of 1 = waste of reasearch.
9. Armaments: It doesn't even register on the damage charts. It doesn't even have PD and imagine it tries to be a carrier. Even the US Ford class carrier had more weapon slots and PD than this.

I guess it may be interesting if they are adding events to find and salvage one in the early game - That's the only reason they would be held back as designers. Other than that, it's a modders wet dream, if it's moddable (including the shipyard count)
 
@Eladrin @grekulf

If you don't mind answering, four quick questions about the Juggernaut:

1.) How much Naval Capacity does the Juggernaut use?

2.). Can your federation build 1 Juggernaut of its own as well (just like they can build 3 Titans)?

3.) Is the Juggernaut locked behind an ascension perk (like the Colossus), or NOT locked behind one (like the Titan)?

4.) Are we likely to see bugfixes soon to strike craft upgrades [their repeatable techs are currently bugged and don't work on most of the fighter squadron]? [If so, this would massively improve the usefulness of the Juggernaut?
 
Ok, first tackling the mobile shipyard thingy:

1. Too few shipyars to be effective
2. We don't know about the repair speed - it may be very slow compared to a starbase so hold your breath.
3. I assume that it stops building and repairing if under attack - so even more useless.
4. We haven't seen its defenses and its ability to be a damage sponge. If it is a decent tank and the enemy only targets it, perhaps it could be useful as a meat shield, but I doubt it.
5. How to you repair the mobile shipyard? If it has to reach a friendly starbase to repair - it's done for - I don't even wish to build it.
6. Movement speed: I assume it will be slow as hell. My modern fleet doctrine is all about speed and evasion - even on BS. To have to escort that thing will make me fall asleep.
7. Strategic benefit: Non existent. If you need it to defend or attack, you need to build more ships, so you wasted the minerals. If you need it to attack its so slow so by the time it reaches its destination the war is already settled. Besides, it is questionable to send it into deep enemy territory. So if the battle is on border worlds, a starbase is always closeby.
8. Build cap of 1 = waste of reasearch.
9. Armaments: It doesn't even register on the damage charts. It doesn't even have PD and imagine it tries to be a carrier. Even the US Ford class carrier had more weapon slots and PD than this.

I guess it may be interesting if they are adding events to find and salvage one in the early game - That's the only reason they would be held back as designers. Other than that, it's a modders wet dream, if it's moddable (including the shipyard count)
You appear to have just assumed a worst-case scenario where its as useless as possible, whixh, uh, is pretty flawed as a methodology.
 
Ok, now the shipyard megastructure:

1. Who said we are not having a standing fleet all the time? It is a huge deterrent for war and helps push your way around. You need a standing fleet for events and NPC hostiles like dragons and devourers.
2. If you always build up to your fleet capacity, you realise you need shipyards to replenish losses or slowly build entire new fleets. So even with existing starbases alone, we need very few shipyards.
3. Any alloys are better spent to create ships, other megastructures - habitats - gateways, or just be saved as war reserves.

Again, I'd ony use it if I found it ruine, the cost to repair it was low and I didn't had anything better to do with the alloys.

In conclusion, for these two to be useful, the war and battle mechanics need to change drastically.
 
You appear to have just assumed a worst-case scenario where its as useless as possible, whixh, uh, is pretty flawed as a methodology.

One word - Titans. They were supposed to be super awesome, ended up as another meh RP thing as Neutron/Kinetic BB kill everything. Titans at least aren't dead weight in the fight with their super laser, L slots, and tracking aura. What does Juggernaugh have? Two shipyards... Tremble before my might as I can repair right after a battle and not 30 days later when the capture star base comes online... Assuming Juggernaught can keep up with battleships. I can also upgrade... upgrading my entire assault fleet with 2 shipyards will probably take longer than flying them back to mega shipyard, doing upgrade there and then flying back. Gateways are a thing.

I do agree it should be renamed to Mothership or something sounding more support like. Juggernaught is a name for battleship. not mediocore support base.
 
In conclusion, for these two to be useful, the war and battle mechanics need to change drastically.
Not really. You completely ignore the "sit around with minimal fleet to minimize upkeep and goad enemies and then pump out ships during wars" tactic a lot of people make use of. A standing fleet is only useful if you're using it.
 
The Juggernaut is not a warship -- it is a support vessel. A really huge support vessel.
Again, the Jugernaut never was meant to be a warship.

Apologies for singling your quote out, but it’s representative of a point of view shared quite widely.

The Juggernaut is a combat vessel. Titans sport T weapons on spinal mounts. Battleships sport XL weapons on spinal mounts. The juggernaut has two XL weapons on turrets, which presumably means that they are more flexible and find it easier to target large ships with. According to the Wiki that’s roughly 148 DPS per turret (Mk2 Lance), at a range of 150 (before artillery computer and aura range boosts).
A Neutron Torpedo is 42.41 DPS, at a range of 130.

So the two XL slots have approximately the same damage potential of 6 L slot weapons. Obviously the damage is concentrated and hopefully will be concentrating on larger ships, the 5 M slot weapons are better suited to mopping up corvettes than fewer L weapons and complement the larger weapon mounts.
Yes different XL and L weapons will have different damage profiles. I grabbed the torpedo because they’re a pretty solid long range investment.

Now don’t get me wrong the 6 H slots are a let down unless strike craft are improved in patching... neither the Pd effectiveness reduction aura or the strike craft improvement aura are likely to fix the problem, because you either have ineffective fighters which (might) survive against PD or effective (maybe) fighters which die to PD, but we do have a patch coming between now and then.
N.b the only time I’ve had success with H slots is scouts Vs Grey Tempest.

The biggest problem with it’s design is a lack of PD. But hey it can build escorts, so no biggy.

But where it shines is the ability to strike deep into enemy territory with a supporting fleet, using the sub space amplifier to increase jump speed and recovery times, securing strategic objectives (like gateways enemy megastructures or trade chokepoints) before repairing and resupplying the fleet, maybe even building a construction ship if we need to rebuild a starbase or a science ship if we have something to research.

But the big question to @grekulf are: Can it upgrade itself or Titans using it’s own spacedock to swap auras or weapons while in enemy territory?

Btw the mega shipyard build speed bonus should apply to the Juggernaut I think.
 
I've never been particularly happy with the shipbuilding in Stellaris - it's too restrictive and tech updates don't feel particularly satisfying. One of the things I really loved about Master of Orion 2 is that as your tech improved, you got miniaturization so you could fit more on the same hull. So at the start a Stellar Converter fit on a Doom Star only, and pretty much took up all the space so it acted like a Colossus. But later, you could fit one with a phasing cloak, and a loadout of disruptor cannons and maybe a short range teleporter on a mid-sized ship and absolutely wreck the place. While weapons improve in Stellaris, it's so abstract that it's a numbers game. I'd love to see things like dark matter power cores giving you the ability to put spinal weapons on cruiser and up-gun destroyers to be other than point defense boats. Seeing the juggernaut, which is a cool concept (bottleneck systems are strategically important in crises or you can get overrun, and they're not always easy to build starbases in depending on the local hyper-network topology, your political relationships with the previous owner, and/or the emergence location of the crises) so having the ability to repair in-place would be very important. One would probably not be enough, though.

I'd also love to be able to fortify a Gateway and jump loci, at least somewhat. The current "Starbase in the middle of system" is frankly only useful because the AI's routing is terrible. In most systems, it's perfectly possible to hide out at the system edge or sneak around to another hyperlane exit or gateway. It would also be useful to have an automated "stay in formation facing this direction" for fleets, because if you get them lined up, after the first battle they return to their starting point but stop when they get there and do not re-orient. This can cause unnecessary losses and increases micro.

Other things I'd like to see while i'm on a rant - you can mine Dark Matter, but can't actually use any of it until you've salvaged a fallen empire shit or nicked the knowledge out of their brains? That's really immersion breaking. Any species who gain the knowledge of handling Dark Matter should be able to figure out how to use it for stuff once it's in their possession. Same for nanites - it should be a researchable technology with potential for gray goo events.