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Stellaris Dev Diary #377 - MEAT SHIPS MEAT SHIPS MEAT SHIPS

Hello everybody! Welcome to our first BioGenesis development diary!

Today we will talk to about ships. That are made of meat!

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Several weeks ago, Eladrin mentioned that the ship designer changes originally planned for 4.0 "Phoenix" would not be included in the Open Beta, as they’re now needed for our upcoming Q2 DLC release. We’ve since seen a fair amount of speculation as to what we might have been cooking that’d require such changes… So please allow me to introduce our Biological Ships!

MEAT SHIPS! MEAT SHIPS! MEAT SHIPS!​

In BioGenesis, we are adding two distinct Biological shipsets, with unique ship classes and technology.

Our goals in adding Biological Ships to Stellaris were to ensure that they are not only different in appearance from mechanical ships (and space fauna), but also in gameplay. Thus, the key mechanical differences are:

  • When using Biological Ships, Corvettes, Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers and Battleships are replaced with Maulers, Weavers, Harbingers, and Stingers, each of which have three growth stages.
  • Biological Ships, including Starbases, Megastructures and Stations, have their primary construction resource converted from Alloys (or Minerals) into Food and their Energy upkeep likewise replaced with Food upkeep.
  • Overwhelmingly, Biological Ship technologies fall in Society Research (Biology) instead of the familiar Engineering Research (Voidcraft).

And in classic Stellaris fashion, we’ve kept the flavor and narrative around Biological Ships intentionally vague, just enough to let you roleplay them however you like. Maybe they’re an extension of your Devouring Swarm, just another drone in space. Or maybe they’re advanced bio-machines, the pinnacle of your scientific achievement.

In order to use Biological Ships, you’ll need to select one of the shipsets during empire creation.

New shipset selector

Different types of ships prompted our UX designer to give the Shipset selector a fresh coat of paint!​

Growth Cycles​


Similar to Space Fauna from Grand Archive, Biological Ships have growth stages, but unlike Space Fauna, they do not naturally progress through these by aging. Instead, these ships have a unique component slot for supplementary organs that can be researched. Generally speaking, the Juvenile and Mature growth stages will likely be occupied by Growth Organs that allow the ships to progress to the next stage.

Growth Glands!


The accumulated growth progress for ships is shown in both the ship’s tooltip and the ship details window.


Growth Progress Tooltip


Growth Progress Details

When Biological Ships are designed (either automatically or using the ship designer), all researched Growth Stages are configured as part of a single ship design. Once a Biological Ship has acquired sufficient Growth Progress, it will automatically change to using the next Growth Stage in its design. Alternatively, Biological Ships can be constructed at a shipyard at a later Growth Stage.

Mauler Growth Stages

The three growth stages of the Spinovore Weaver

MEAT SHIPS! MEAT SHIPS! MEAT SHIPS!

​
Although all Growth Stages of Biological Ships use the same Fleet Command Limit for their ship class, later Growth Stages use more naval capacity, with the Mature stage using 1.5× and the Elder stage using 2× the Naval Capacity of the Juvenile stage.


SHIPS MADE OF MEAT​

Maulers primarily focus on short-range combat with shield penetration and high damage to armor and shields. Equipped with melee-range mandible weapons and either short-range S-slot or PD-slot weapons, these ships will form the bulk of your navy in the early game. Their unique mandible weapons have similar damage scaling against starbases and larger ships as torpedoes.

Mauler Designs


Mauler Designs

The unique Organ components that Maulers have access to are the Corrosive Fluids and Metabolic Recycler (and their upgraded versions)

Corrosive Fluids


Metabolic Recycler


Weavers are support ships, making use of unique weapons to apply powerful buffs to their allies or debuffs to their enemies.

Weaver Designs


Weavers have unique access to an array of six support components, each with six tiers that belong in the PD-slot.

Weaver Support Weapons


Weaver Suppressor Weapons

The unique Organ components that Weavers have access to are Symbiotic Amplifiers and Developmental Pheromones


Symbiotic Amplifiers



Developmental Pheromones


Harbingers are carriers capable of deploying large amounts of strike craft and supporting them with point defense or long range missiles.

Harbinger Designs


Harbinger Designs


Strike craft for empires using Biological Ships are deployed in greater numbers per fighter wing, but have reduced hull points and armour instead of shields.

Biological Strike Craft

The unique Organ components that Harbingers have access to are Chitin Growth Regulators and the Incubation Matrix

Chitin Growth Regulators



Incubation Matrix


Stingers are powerful late-game warships, equipped with multiple XL weapons or capable of unleashing heavy broadside barrages.

Stinger Designs



Stinger Designs


The unique Organ components that Stingers have access to are Exhaust Spiracles and Rangefinder Clusters.

Exhaust Spiracles



Rangefinder Cluster


As each of the different Growth Stages of each of the classes of Biological Ships can be built at a shipyard, we’ve taken the opportunity to implement collapsible headers when selecting which ships to build.

Shipyard Headers

This works for mechanical ships and space fauna too!​



Since Biological Ships have their own weapons, armour, shield and core components, we’ve gone through and ensured that the technologies use the appropriate icons depending on if you are using a Biological shipset or not.

Technology Swaps


Modding Notes​

As part of the work required to implement Biological Ships there have been a lot of changes to how ship components are scripted. Here’s some highlights:
  • class_restriction, size_restriction and slot_restriction are deprecated in favour of using the possible and potential trigger blocks instead.
  • Core Components now have an upgrade_path parameter, components that have the same upgrade path are shown on the same row.
  • Ship components now support the show_tech_unlock_if = { } field, like buildings.
  • New targeting parameters:
    • use_ship_main_target: if yes, overrides target_type and target_focus when ship's main target is within range, default no
    • target_type (target_enemies (default) / target_allies / target_controlled / target_own)
    • target_focus (single (default) / spread)
    • target_type: only valid if component_set has affects_target_type = yes
    • target_focus: only valid if component_set has affects_target_focus = yes
  • New parameters for weapons:
    • on_hit: apply effects to target on hit. Scope = ship (target), from = ship (shooter)
    • hide_damage_values_from_tooltip = yes/no # If yes, it will hide Damage and Average Damage from weapon component tooltip (default = no)

Next Week​

Next week we’ll be looking at Ascension, Traditions, and Advanced Governments. See you then!

PRIME CUTS FROM ART!​


They're made out of meat.


Meat?



Meat. They're made out of meat.



Meat?


There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat.


That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars.


They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines.


So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact.


They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.


That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat.


I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat.


Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.


Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea the life span of meat?
 
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Alfray Stryke said:
Later growth stages are more expensive (in both cost and upkeep) but have more hp and different speeds and base evasion.



Yes, one of the disadvantages of biological ships is in the early game they don’t have long range weapon solutions.



They should prioritise targets that aren’t affected, but the buff/debuffs duration should be reset if a ship is targeted multiple times.



This is one of factors we considered to try and balance them, long range weapons with debuffing capabilities were tested during development but rejected.



  • Maulers can have swarm or picket computers
  • Weavers can have computers to focus on buffing or debuffing
  • Harbingers can have computers for either carrier or artillery (in case you want them to make better use of energy torpedoes)
  • Stingers can have computers for either artillery or line behaviour.



The majority of their cost and upkeep is food instead of alloys and energy.
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I see, thanks for the replies!

I guess I would need to try them before having a definite saying on it. But balance wise it still seems a bit on the losing side at earlier stages of the game, which is usually one of the most important to secure the upper hand.

On a different note, I wonder how much will a Juggernaut cost in food, I am expecting several thousands, I bet the number will be funny xD
 
I am huge fan of MEAT SHIPS, and I think we all expected them to be OP at launch but HOLY SH*T

With all due respect are you sure making a run of the mill MEAT battleSHIP more powerful than the FE Battleship is a sound balance decision?

At that point you run MEAT or you just lose...
 
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If we can have either meat ships or metal ships, depending on the shipset we choose, what happens when I vassalise and annex an empire with the other sort of ships and then want to upgrade their ships to be current?


__
And : "Look mommy, I'm a Tyranid!".
 
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If you're using a biological shipset, will the technologies also unlock upgrades for fauna ships the way existing voidcraft techs do? If so that solves one of my long standing issues with fauna ships needing so much investment into engineering.
 
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Critical Ethics said:
Bioships have distinct roles with relatively fixed loadouts or being limited to 3 core sizes (plus juggernauts and titans) are things I've been saying for years are what are needed to allow for designing ships that are actually fun.

Unfortunately either of these would lead to player revolts if applied to the general shipsets any time soon. Hopefully all the fun we'll be having with our cool meat ships will finally sway that tide.


E: oh wait there's four ship sizes. Eh, still, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
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player revolt seems like a lot, but I really do think mechanical ships staying more vestal than meat ships makes a lot of sense. Especially as they will be default for new players who will be more able to deal with unlikely events, or just have fun with different types of weapons and builds.

On the other hand, nothing stops you from adding more specific roles to different ship classes while also keep those roles wide enough to allow versatility.
 
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Newbee53 said:
player revolt seems like a lot, but I really do think mechanical ships staying more vestal than meat ships makes a lot of sense. Especially as they will be default for new players who will be more able to deal with unlikely events, or just have fun with different types of weapons and builds.

On the other hand, nothing stops you from adding more specific roles to different ship classes while also keep those roles wide enough to allow versatility.
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They've been trying for nearly a decade!
 
Critical Ethics said:
They've been trying for nearly a decade!
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Have they? While tweaking of normal ships have happened here and there. I don't know if they've actually spent more than one update actually trying to add to much specialization. And then, they only had normal ships to work with. Now having two mechanics for ships, you can use one to reflect the other. which makes it easier. After all, one of the reasons meat ships can be without to many long-range weapons, is because metal ships have a lot of long range potential.
 
Does having MEATSHIPS mean you can’t use mechanical ships at all? Does this mean that like hives alloys (instead of CGs) are disabled?

Also can they be cloaked? Thinking of using Cloaked maulers against Cetana
 
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Huskermax5 said:
Does having MEATSHIPS mean you can’t use mechanical ships at all? Does this mean that like hives alloys (instead of CGs) are disabled?
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I think the stream showed they were still making alloys. You don't need many, but some componets might require alloys--on top of base food costs--as well as other resources.

you choose meatships at empire creation. So yes, having them will prevent you from building regular ships. It doesn't appear to stop you from using them--from federations or events--so you can use them sometimes.
 
Newbee53 said:
I think the stream showed they were still making alloys. You don't need many, but some componets might require alloys--on top of base food costs--as well as other resources.

you choose meatships at empire creation. So yes, having them will prevent you from building regular ships. It doesn't appear to stop you from using them--from federations or events--so you can use them sometimes.
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Any idea about cloaking?
 
Red Death said:
Agreed with the rest of your comment. But they were quite explicit in saying that all growth stages of one class have the same fleet command size, even though they do grow in naval capacity usage.
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Is this balanced? I mean, with Admiral bonuses, this scales far harder than normal fleets.
 
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Letharion said:
Are there any synergies between meat ships and space fauna in regard of mutations/components/techs
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I am curious about this too. I wonder if you have bioships, will space fauna still interest you? Or will they be less desirable. Perhaps the choice between bioships and space fauna is competitive with each other. I do hope there is a certain interaction; either antagonistic ( kill fauna to gain bioship improvements research) or cooperative ( fauna are friendly towards bioship or having first bioship then will get cost reduction in managing fauna.)
 
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