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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.
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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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grekulf said:
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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Can this principle be applied to fleet replenishment?
Currently when you reinforce a fleet, the smaller classes are built first, taking up all the shipyard slots. This means once they are done, the starbase is left building 2 battleships with 4 empty shipyards. Since these are also slower, once built they take the longest to reach a fleet. If fleets were rebuilt in the biggest first order, the starbase would have minimal downtime, and the faster ships would be catching up to the slower ships as they rejoin the fleet. Having to cut the number of ships in a fleet so that battleships build first, then re-adding each ship class and reinforcing gets tedious for multiple fleets.
 
This sounds really neat, but I have to wonder about how these will change gameplay...

The Juggernaut is meant to be a mobile shipyard, a forward base that doesn't require your ships to schlep all the way home (or to a conquered shipyard) for repairs and resupply. However, with its massive firepower and offensive auras, it seems like it should be leading the charge! Wars might even slow down as navies wait for the Juggernaut to reach the front before moving.

The Mega Shipyard and its global boost are welcome, but I have to wonder if +30 shipyards is excessive. Then again, for what a megastructure costs, maybe not...
 
If possible can we get art assets that are different for each ship-set for all mega-structures? It's kinda jarring when you are a lithoid empire and the mega-structure really doesn't match the art style.
 
Elfwind said:
If possible can we get art assets that are different for each ship-set for all mega-structures? It's kinda jarring when you are a lithoid empire and the mega-structure really doesn't match the art style.
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The textures already vary like that. Lithoids have a special rocky texture for their gateways, I know that much.
 
Janx14 said:
I'm not really sure beyond flavour why you're limited to just one.
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(Refering to juggernaut) Game balance.
Liquid Ghost said:
Is there any indication in-game of how big these ships are now? How big is a Titan? How big is a Juggernaut?
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Big.
lordvagrant said:
Can this principle be applied to fleet replenishment?
Currently when you reinforce a fleet, the smaller classes are built first, taking up all the shipyard slots. This means once they are done, the starbase is left building 2 battleships with 4 empty shipyards. Since these are also slower, once built they take the longest to reach a fleet. If fleets were rebuilt in the biggest first order, the starbase would have minimal downtime, and the faster ships would be catching up to the slower ships as they rejoin the fleet. Having to cut the number of ships in a fleet so that battleships build first, then re-adding each ship class and reinforcing gets tedious for multiple fleets.
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Doesn’t matter in SP. You can play way suboptimallily and win.
Scottbert said:
This sounds really neat, but I have to wonder about how these will change gameplay...

The Juggernaut is meant to be a mobile shipyard, a forward base that doesn't require your ships to schlep all the way home (or to a conquered shipyard) for repairs and resupply. However, with its massive firepower and offensive auras, it seems like it should be leading the charge! Wars might even slow down as navies wait for the Juggernaut to reach the front before moving.

The Mega Shipyard and its global boost are welcome, but I have to wonder if +30 shipyards is excessive. Then again, for what a megastructure costs, maybe not...
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I think that the juggernaut has enough firepower for what it’s purpose is. And late game fleets take forever to build.
devouring august said:
Unless late game perfomance is increased significantly, there is no need for more late game content, since it is not usable when each day takes 10 seconds.
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Jorgas said:
...and still not a single dev diary about the lag issues. get into your head what's important Failadox.
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And here we go again. Not even 3 dds.
 
Nakkivene said:
Juggernaut seems useless. I assume it'll be like 32 or even more fleet cap and who knows how many alloys... For 2 shipyards and roughly the power of a battleship? Unless there's some superb micro-intensive use for jump cooldown reduction.
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Speak for yourself, I find it annoying when my reinforcements take a year to arrive and then wander through an enemy system with enough firepower to blast them to scrap.
 
Hmm...I don't have a good feeling about the Juggernaut. As many have pointed out, strike craft have proven to be problematic. The lack of PD is also concerning. Repairs in enemy territory have never been an issue either. The only thing the Juggernaut has going for it is a measly 2 shipyards. That is some very slow repair/build time. I think it would be better to raise the number of shipyards to 6 and it might actually be useful in a situation or two.

Jorgas said:
...and still not a single dev diary about the lag issues. get into your head what's important Failadox.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I remember the last DD about performance. It feels like it was just 2 weeks ago. Oh wait...

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ris-dev-diary-161-development-update.1285424/
 
FiddleSticks96 said:
Hmm...I don't have a good feeling about the Juggernaut. As many have pointed out, strike craft have proven to be problematic. The lack of PD is also concerning. Repairs in enemy territory have never been an issue either. The only thing the Juggernaut has going for it is a measly 2 shipyards. That is some very slow repair/build time. I think it would be better to raise the number of shipyards to 6 and it might actually be useful in a situation or two.



Yeah, I remember the last DD about performance. It feels like it was just 2 weeks ago. Oh wait...

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ris-dev-diary-161-development-update.1285424/
Click to expand...

Whilst I agree with you people shouldn't be complaining about performance in this DD thread, I also feel like we need a DD which specifically shows what they've done to improve performance. Making one which says they know it is a problem isn't enough for people.
 
Most of this is really exciting and spot-on, but I have to respectfully state that the Mega Shipyard is a bit overpowered even for Megastructure standards. Compare it with the +300 research points of the Science Nexus, for example, and the difference really shows. I'd suggest nerfing a little bit the empire-wide +100% ship building speed. A +60% for example is awesome already.
 
Lord Hierakon said:
Compare it with the +300 research points of the Science Nexus, for example
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Science Nexus (completed) also gives +15% global research speed. Might not be worth all that much given other modifiers (e.g. curators), but it's still more than flat 300 (or 350 if you sacrifice a researcher) science points per research area.

As for ship build speed - in the late game you probably already have +50-75% build speed, so megashipyard's extra +100% build speed will NOT actually halve build time.
 
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Methone said:
Yeah but iirc, unless you're a Swarm that regen is REALLY slow. It's 5 health or something, and not 5%. 5.
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You're a little off. Specifically, by a factor of 5x. It's 1 hull regen and 2 armor regen, per day.

A battleship with 2x regenerative hull plating and no bonuses to HP, which was damaged to 50% hull and then immediately disengaged, will take 750 days to fully repair. That's a little more than TWO YEARS and we're assuming the literally best case repair time for a ship that was forced to disengage. Did you research the HP techs? It'll take longer. Did it get damaged past 50%? It'll take longer. Did you want that second Aux slot for something actually useful? It'll take longer.

Regenerative hull plating is actually quarter-decent on Corvettes, once you can get their evasion to its cap without needing afterburners. Sure, it's only 0.333% - 0.2% hull regen per day (depending on hull upgrade techs), but you'll probably finish the repairs within a year. Cruisers, with their second A slot, no point in going evasive, and high disengage chance, have a chance of briefly making it not 100% worthless again, although cruiser hulls are so strong relative to the regen rate that it's still not good. For everything else, though, it's pure garbage.

The nanite repair plating - which is rare as hell and requires nanites to build it - is actually pretty good. With twice the armor rate and thrice the hull rate, it's still garbage on battleships (0.1% hull regen / plating / day! Assuming you have no hull upgrades, in which case it's somehow even worse!) but it's entirely viable on corvettes and at least worth considering on destroyers (if not going evasive) and cruisers (if emphasizing armor rather than shields).

The only generally good regen options are the percentage-based ones. Devouring Swarm civic, Engineer trait for Admirals, starbase repair, and the old-school Living Metal effect. Of those, the Engineer trait is the only one you can take to the front with you (well, until the Juggernaut, I guess) as any empire type in a modern game.
 
DrNukeLear said:
So the two XL slots have approximately the same damage potential of 6 L slot weapons.
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So, the loadout of a single pre-XL-slots battleship, then? Color me deeply unimpressed. The hangar slots at least mean that it will probably technically out-DPS a single battleship (those M guns will never get a chance to fire in the modern artillery meta) but otherwise... this thing isn't just worse than a titan, it's barely better (offensively) than a battleship. Its auras are its only interesting property, and half of them relate to some of the worst weapon choices in the game (which it demands you use). What a let-down. "Massive warship" indeed...
 
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