Stellaris Dev Diary #163 - Juggernaut & Mega Shipyard

[Methone]

The Juggernaut is nifty, too. Not necessarily a huge game-changer, but it'll make a handy flagship for my primary fleet and allow them to more effectively operate away from home.

Weren't Titans also billed as the flagships of your fleet?

 

[Longherin]

Weren't Titans also billed as the flagships of your fleet?

So the juggernaut is a flagship flagship. A flagflagshipship.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Weren't Titans also billed as the flagships of your fleet?

And I use them as such. But having some variety is nice.

 

[permeakra]

I'm conflicted. On the one hand, the new toys are nice. But on another, it appears to me that they add little to strategic depth. They are likely to have most impact in multiplayer I care little about. And the news on updates on mechanics and AI do not impress me right now. There is a lot work there to be done.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I'm conflicted. On the one hand, the new toys are nice. But on another, it appears to me that they add little to strategic depth.

While I doubt the Juggernaut will actually change warfare all that much, the Mega-Shipyard has potential in singleplayer, I think.

Specifically, having the ability to pump out ships THAT fast in one place is, as I see it, a HUGE boon to the tactic I've seen people using where they have very little standing navy (allowing them to save on ship upkeep and trick the AI into thinking they're weaker than they actually are) and then mass-produce fleets during wartime.

 

[generalis Julius Caesar]

Eh, I'm not impressed. It all seems trite and inconsequential.

But you can upgrade your ships in the line of combat, well after combat. But there should be six shipyards.

 

[UnitedBlorgFreinds]

This quote was agreed with generally.

Stop thinking of it as a ship. Think of it instead of a mobile starbase. Normally you cannot design those at all, so player choice is massively improved.

The reply was disagreed with.

Correct.

Logic.exe has crashed.

 

[sortulv]

This quote was agreed with generally.

The reply was disagreed with.

Logic.exe has crashed.

Pretty sure that that is a mis-click - someone tried pressing the "unhelpful" button, and failed due to that tradition not being unlocked on the forum yet.

 

[Knotz]

As someone that typically ends up with one 6-shipyard station and maybe a handful of 1-shipyard bastions, the mega-shipyard is a VERY nice addition. Proper mass-upgrading and rapid fleet production in a centralized location? Perfect!

The Juggernaut is nifty, too. Not necessarily a huge game-changer, but it'll make a handy flagship for my primary fleet and allow them to more effectively operate away from home.

I end up with three so this is still an upgrade and means I don't have to compromise my L-Cluster turtling at all and just make all of them ridiculous defense stations. I feel like a lot of people are just too good at the game (ie the utilize and maximize everything to the last inch) which means regardless of what gets added it'll be comparatively unremarkable by the time they get it because they've lapped the game 15 times. It's obviously not a 'wrong' way to play but what could be added that would not be completely OTT and still be relevant to someone who has ensured they have 10 times what they could ever reasonably need?

 

[FleetingRain]

my lad, it works on allied ships not just its fleet

I thought the auras worked only on the same fleet since 2.0, while they had a "range" before that.

 

[permeakra]

Specifically, having the ability to pump out ships THAT fast in one place is, as I see it, a HUGE boon to the tactic I've seen people using where they have very little standing navy

At the point you can get fully upgraded megastructures you already are building gateways, so 10 gateways and 10 dedicated shipyard citadels will give you roughly the same benefits as 11 gateways and one megashipyard. Except, you don't have an Ahiless heel you cannot rebuild if lost and don't have to pospone other megastructures, like Coordination Center. So, the boon isn't that big.

Admittedly, 10 shipyard citadels are 10 citadels you could use for something else, like 360 nav. capacity s. But again, at this point of game I already spam fortress habitats, so not much of a loss in my opinion.

 

[kalauer]

A Juggernaut instead functions like a forward base of operations during offensive campaigns, a place where you can repair your ships.

As of now, I just repair my ships at the flipped starbases, so unless this is changed, I dont really see a reason to drag a ball and chain behind my swift corvette fleets...
Will the ability to reapir ships at conquered starbases be changed? Could add some strategic elements to wars, or be a nuisance, I'm unsure.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

At the point you can get fully upgraded megastructures you already are building gateways, so 10 gateways and 10 dedicated shipyard citadels will give you roughly the same benefits as 11 gateways and one megashipyard.

Orrrrrr you could spend all those shipyard slots on more anchorages.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

Orrrrrr you could spend all those shipyard slots on more anchorages.

While I agree with this logically, by the time you have enough spare alloys to spend on unique megastructures instead of more ships, anchorages are no longer the main source of naval capacity. Just 3 Fortresses (9 soldier jobs) provide the same naval capacity as 6 Anchorages with a Naval Logistics Office. 36 naval cap if you were wondering. Habitat spam is a thing, and since Fortresses are one of the few ways to provide extra housing on a Habitat without using a precious district slot, soldier jobs end up being the primary source of late game naval cap.

I always used my extra starbases to build more shipyards so I could crank out ships faster. I'm sure the Megashipyard will change that, but I still don't see myself actually needing the extra anchorages in the late game.

On an unrelated topic. How does everyone feel about the Curator Think Tank granting a +5% bonus to research speed instead of +5 physics/society/engineering? This would make it actually worth building and make it similar to the Trader Proxy Office, which grants a -5% market reduction fee.

 

[Methone]

since Fortresses are one of the few ways to provide extra housing on a Habitat without using a precious district slot, soldier jobs end up being the primary source of late game naval cap.

Not that you even need that much. Just the naval cap you can get through pure anchorages is more than enough to handle anything up to, and including, the 5x crisis.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

Not that you even need that much. Just the naval cap you can get through pure anchorages is more than enough to handle anything up to, and including, the 5x crisis.

Listen, if I want to have over 6k naval cap, then I'm going to have over 6k naval cap. Where else am I going to get the extra housing? It's not like I can build Paradise Domes on Habitats, even though I think it's obtuse that I can't.

 

[Bitzo]

Again: It does not mater. Ever.
You do not build the Titans for the weaponry.
You build the Juggernaut even less for it.

Me acknowledging that it is supposed to be comparatively weak -

I don't so much dislike the Juggernaut's (intentionally) weak armaments, [...]

[...] but scaled down in number to still be inferior to Titans [...]

- I thought was enough to indicate that I am aware of that, but I guess not. So again, at the risk of this coming across as a bit of a rant: I know that Juggernauts are not supposed to be full-on combat ships and are supposed to fill more of a support role; I get that, it is just the weird mix of weapons you are seemingly (i.e.: there is only one template that I am aware of thus far) forced to have on them that throws me off a little.
In the grand scheme of things, it's not important that all weapons in a given fleet ignore shields, but not armour, or both, or nothing at all, I would just like to have the option of a little customisation that allows for something like an all-guided/carrier fleet (as bad as an idea it is in the current version to use either) for RP and visuals. It also bugs me that Corvette and Cruiser sections for guided weapons have S slots mixed in with them and no guns that pierce shields but not armour (nor look like missiles, for that matter), or that Titans don't get the option for a carrier loadout either (again, ignoring that everything will most likely have been Tachyon'd or Perdition Beamed by the time a single bomber would make it to the enemy and past their FlaK screens), all three of which are arguably actual combat vessels (or at least in part in the Titan's case; Aura and all). I just didn't bother to go into detail about this in the previous post because I did not want to risk derailing the thread, which is about Juggernauts and Mega Shipyards and not about why moving torpedoes/missiles from S/M/L turret mounts to their own G(uided) slot or only making Corvettes, Cruisers, Defense Platforms and Starbases use (swarmer) missiles/torps might have been a good/bad idea, I just thought that requesting a split between an all-guns and a carrier version would be a good idea, both because the visual appeal and the arbitrary and/or minimal benefit of being able to design an all-shield-piercing fleet without a Juggernaut having roughly half of it's guns not do so, not because I want it to be all-powerful, but precisely because the armaments of the Juggernaut are supposed to be relatively inconsequential (the two X's aside) anyway, so whether it fired projectiles with or without mass or their own propellant would entirely be a matter of how you want it to look like during an engagement.
That, and I wanted to point out that mixing weapon types like that in the first place is rather suboptimal, and that they might as well not make another ship design that combines G's/H's with S/M/L/X's unless they wanted to rework some of the aspects of space combat involving strike craft and guided weapons to go along with it.
I do also realise in retrospect that I forgot to mention anything about grapics/visuals or wanting different Juggernaut loadouts for RP purposes - customisation for the sake of customisation - in the previous post and that it might seem odd to have sort of doubled down on that now, especially since that was actually the main reason why I wrote it in the first place. I apologise for that.

 

[ArgoStar]

There is so going to be a mod to uncap the juggernaut so quickly.

 

[NguyenReich]

Well, I'm also all for more customization of Juggernaut. Player should be able to decide if their Juggy is going to unleash a ton of strike crafts, spamming torpedoes or missiles, having a dozen big cannons, or throwing a barrage of smaller projectiles.

Also, should Juggy have FTL jamming? I think that it should to give more strategic depth.

 

[Somebody The Great]

Will the positive Juggernaut auras affect all friendly / allied ships in the system? (Like a starbase.) Or will they only buff ships in the same fleet as the Juggernaut?

I'm actually hoping that the Juggernaut is like a colossus in that it can't be added to fleets, and instead is a separate entity. Then you can choose to have it on the frontlines for it's combat auras, (weapons range, anti point defense and strike craft), or hang behind to use its utility auras, (travel speed and bombardment damage).

If it only boosts a single fleet, then its usefulness in combat will be greatly reduced.