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Stellaris Dev Diary #17 - Ship Designer

Good news everyone!

This week we will talk about the Ship Designer. Last week we said that this week would be about “War, Peace, Influence and Claims”, but due to some really good (and secret) reasons we have decided to postpone that Dev Diary for a later date. Now let's continue with how you customize your ships in Stellaris...

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Customizing your ships is vital for making sure that your ships are equipped for any challenges that awaits them in the galaxy. Your ships have a build cost, build time and maintenance cost that is calculated from the different sections and components that your ship consists of. The ships also receive a wide range of different values; all these are affected by what sections and components you use on your ship. These values can be modified by, among other things, researching technologies and the traits of your leader.

Every ship consists of at least one section that you can place different components on. A Corvette, for example, has one only section but a Battleship has three. The number of slots on each section (slots to place components) may vary between different sections. You can choose all different sections by yourself. The sections are divided into categories based on where they are placed on the ship, so a stern section cannot be placed in the middle section position.

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Every section may have available weapons and utility slots. These slots can be of Small, Medium or Large sizes. The different sizes affect the size of the component you may place in the section; a large weapon component may, for example, do more damage but has a lower hit chance. Some sections also have a hangar slot, but more on those in a later dev diary...

Weapon components are, like the name suggests, different components that work as weapons of some kind. It could be something like a huge X-Ray Laser or some point-defenses that are great for when you encounter hostiles using missiles.

Utility modules are passive components that affect the properties of the ship. It could be different types of shield or improved power reactors. A reactor is vital for your ship to function; several different weapon and utility components drain power, and unless you have enough reactors providing the necessary power, your ship will not be able to function (it’s an invalid design).

We also have some required components depending on the class of ship you are trying to build. One of the basics is what FTL capability your ship has, so you may build some ships with warp and others with wormhole FTL. It is, however, only possible to have ships with the same type of FTL in the same fleet. You may also set what thruster to use, which affects the speed of your ships and their evasion chance. For military ships, you can also set what combat computer to use on the ship, which affects how they behave in combat. Different combat computers can be unlocked by technologies. There are a lot more types of components than the above, but this should give you a hint of the basic mechanics..

For those of you who really don’t like to fiddle around with designing your own ships (and we know that you are legion), we have the option to auto-generate new ship designs whenever you research a new technology with something that the game thinks you should use on your ships. This algorithm is very close to what the AI will use.

In the mid and late game you may also use the designer to customize your military defense stations and make sure that noone will ever be able to penetrate your solar system defenses.

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That is all for this week, I hope you enjoyed it despite the fact that I don’t write as well as Goosecreature! ;-)

Next week we will talk about fleet combat in Stellaris!
 
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Arkangilos said:
Lol yeah, carriers.

That's why carriers became the staple of the fleet. It wasn't small ships replacing large ones, it was carriers replacing battleships.

I hope that it's balanced by price
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Not entirely accurate. At the time carriers came to be battleships were still in wide use. What really ended large ships was the advent of guided munitions (primarily missiles in this instance). A missile cruiser is 1/3 the size of a battleship and can deliver equal or greater destructive power at a *much* greater range. It is also less expensive, and makes the firepower of a fleet more distributed. Losing a BS is a huge hit, losing a cruiser is less so.
The current R&D into railgun / magnetic based weaponry for use on naval vessels could see a reintroduction of large 'cannon' ships. The range of a hypothetical railgun is more or less equal to the effective range of guided missiles (over the horizon), and railgun munitions are much cheaper than missiles (while the railgun itself is incredibly more expensive, initial cost vs continued cost). This is all hypothetical depending on the efficacy of real world tech rather than hypothetical tech.
 
Haldan said:
So far we've only seen blue lasers and deflector shields. Will we be able to customize the color of respective arnament, or will it change depending on some factor?
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I'd like to know this too. Some of the promo images on the main website has different colors, but that might just be concept art.

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I sure hope we can customize colors ... for shields and engine trails as well as weapons.

EDIT: Also, about ship prefixes: how long, or short, can they be? I've only seen three-letter versions, can they be five? Or one?
 
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BaronIronmaggot said:
I strongly dislike that we are even gonna be able to see individual ships and have to command them. I was fine with EU IV and CK II having armies as just numbers. I would have like to see similar things in Stellaris.
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You cannot. You command Fleets in Stellaris, you can see individual ships (maybe only in actual battles or with small fleets, it is unclear at the moment), but you cannot issue commands to a specific ship. Once a battle begins you have no control over what happens, with the exception of being able to hit a 'Run!!!' button. Exactly like in CK, EU, HoI, & Vichy.
 
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xarastier said:
How odd! That a machine composed of solid, liquid and gas is created to be modified, changed, and molded to replicate the attitude, behavior and whims of a human being.
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Yes, the ship with its CREW should not perform differently because of a competent commander. /s

Tactics are a real thing, in Stellaris they are abstracted by adding a leader to a Fleet. His tactics have the in game effect of increasing things like dodge chance, fire rate, etc.
 
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This game reminded me of an old forum game I used to play so i'll admit I was a little sad cause of Nostalgia when I saw that all ships were generally just mechanical.

I'll admit I was kind of hoping for biological or non mechanical ship constructs kind of like the space squids or crystal ships you see in some game play.

it wont stop me from buying the game by any stretch but it'll just go on the mantle with things like making a mechanical/synthetic race for stuff I wished was in it.
 
Apparently a cruiser can fit a single hangar bay, while battleships (and presumably the defensive stations) can fit more.
 
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Lothmar said:
This game reminded me of an old forum game I used to play so i'll admit I was a little sad cause of Nostalgia when I saw that all ships were generally just mechanical.

I'll admit I was kind of hoping for biological or non mechanical ship constructs kind of like the space squids or crystal ships you see in some game play.

it wont stop me from buying the game by any stretch but it'll just go on the mantle with things like making a mechanical/synthetic race for stuff I wished was in it.
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Don't lose hope like that! New content will keep being made for this game for years.
 
Lothmar said:
This game reminded me of an old forum game I used to play so i'll admit I was a little sad cause of Nostalgia when I saw that all ships were generally just mechanical.

I'll admit I was kind of hoping for biological or non mechanical ship constructs kind of like the space squids or crystal ships you see in some game play.

it wont stop me from buying the game by any stretch but it'll just go on the mantle with things like making a mechanical/synthetic race for stuff I wished was in it.
Click to expand...

There is every indication that what you're asking about is either already in-game or will be in due course, whether by the devs or by mods - probably both.
 
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From what I've seen of the game play weapon modules seem to effect range somewhat (thus making the front a good place to put missiles or point defenses for initial big fleet to fleet engagements) but I wasn't certain about the defensive modules.

ex: If I have shields on the middle and rear sections and none on my front but both ships are flying towards each other front to front initially (before they begin to mix together and dogfight etc), does that mean that I'd just be taking hits to hull for the initial salvos until dog fighting starts after which my shields would protect me from flanking attacks (until they circle around the front again etc)?

Or do all the various areas add up to general ship wide defenses / health? Ex: Can I just stack shields in front, armor in middle and power in the back and call it a day cause I'll have a cumulative total of X shields, Y armor and Z power regardless of where their weapons hit?

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Also do upgrades that give bonuses to strike craft apply to the amoeba flagella if you can recruit them?
 
Does it matter which section things are installed? For example, is point defense particularly more effective in the front because of the head-on approach of two fleets at the start of a battle? Another example, would you have to have shields on each section to protect the whole ship - i.e., a section without shields is not actually shielded?
 
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Zoft said:
For military ships, you can also set what combat computer to use on the ship, which affects how they behave in combat. Different combat computers can be unlocked by technologies.
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Are there more than 2 of these? im a little underwhelmed by the options i have researched in my 70 hours play so far.
 
4 techs, 6 combat computers currently: basic defense, basic offense, advanced defense, advanced offense, AI, precognitive. At least, that's what I've seen so far.
 
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