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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!

—

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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Newbee53 said:
as they haven't said, I'm assuming they only grow older. not younger. this is tied to them being talked about as 'growth stages' which would be weird if they reverted.
Click to expand...
Forget I said anything, realised that the growth modules can simply be removed automatically in the final stage rather than needing refit.
I had a damn brainfart.
 
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Alfray Stryke said:
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.
Click to expand...
May I suggest adding a "hibernation" feature so biological ships, making them temporarily disappear into a starbase, for decreased upkeep and naval capacity, so to mitigate suddenly becoming way over naval capacity for having filled up with the ones requiring least of it? The AI would probably benefit from it
 
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Ninking said:
May I suggest adding a "hibernation" feature so biological ships, making them temporarily disappear into a starbase, for decreased upkeep and naval capacity, so to mitigate suddenly becoming way over naval capacity for having filled up with the ones requiring least of it? The AI would probably benefit from it
Click to expand...

There should probably be some sort of penalty, so you can't just 'hide' your fleet till you need it

Hibernating it gives a -5% daily 'degen' of everything, to a minimum of 5%

So in effect when you unhibernate you need to get repaired back up from 5% to 100%
 
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SarahGabriella said:
Theyre meat based, why would lithoids be affected? They already got their own shipset. Plantoids also got their own shipsets.
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Might be because the lithoid shipset looks so biological that who knows if the devs would not turn it from mechanical to biologial? :cool:
As for the plantoids shipset, well... with all this MEAT there is a certain lack of a vegan option :p
 
Ninking said:
May I suggest adding a "hibernation" feature so biological ships, making them temporarily disappear into a starbase, for decreased upkeep and naval capacity, so to mitigate suddenly becoming way over naval capacity for having filled up with the ones requiring least of it? The AI would probably benefit from it
Click to expand...
Not necessary. All meat-ship growth--unlike fauna--is in the hand of the player. You actively choose to install the growth organ or not. You choose to install the starbase upgrade or not. Don't think a hibernation feature is necessary for living ships.

On the other hand, a 'mothball fleet' which could be called hibernate for live ships would be interesting. I don't think it would add much overall.
 
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Looking at all the screenshots of bio-ship components, it seems like they are a tad bit more powerful (in the last growth stage at least) than their alloy-ship counterparts, is this the case?
 
T5_k said:
Looking at all the screenshots of bio-ship components, it seems like they are a tad bit more powerful (in the last growth stage at least) than their alloy-ship counterparts, is this the case?
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. To start with, bio-ships have their own components, which means they can be balanced with their ships in mind. But more specifically.
  • Maulers are torpedo boats with their own point defense. They can't do damage until they close distance, and thus your mauler fleet will get wrecked before they get in range, which is shorter than actual torpedoes. This also means they will be easily countered by either artillery fleets or corvettes.
  • Weavers have no weapons of their own, able to buff and debuff ships. in the stream it was noticed that their buff weapons are relatively short range, leaving them upon to artillery fleets yet again. they will also get spill over attacks from the mauler brawl as corvettes try to run circles around their targets, and will occasionally reach out to the area weavers live in.
  • Harbingers are carriers with their own point defenses, or carriers and the energy torpedo slots. either way, they have the same weaknesses of carriers and artillery ships. Point Defense and high evasion plus Maulers and Torpedoes like anyone else. Interestingly they will also deal poorly with XL battleships and stingers thanks to their dependent on fighters. I should also point out that enough smaller ships will waist those ranged attacks. It is going to be a lot of firepower, however.
  • Stingers are basically artillery ships. They seem to have XL and L slots, or L and M slots. The second one is pretty much a battleship without the spinal gun. The first one is the most interesting, in that it has an actual minimum range. most L and XL weapons due, and that will cause the stingers to die to torpedo/mauler ships.
As a fleet, bio-ships are clearly going to be the most dependent on mixed fleets. Where you can get away with mono-fleets mechanical fleets--or two size fleets--pretty easily, it looks like you are going to need at least three of them to maximize your fleets.

Weavers obviously need something else to work, and their very existence suggests that they are the core the ship set is balanced around. this is also clear because in the stream they said they had to include a weaver in your starting ships, or you were getting killed by space ports. going with this being the intended balance:

Weavers plus Harbingers will die to corvettes or corvettes/destroyers thanks to the larger numbers, higher evasion, and the use of torpedoes. The same problem is worse for stingers/weavers as the minimum range will cause problems with corvettes with swarm computers. so, it looks like the Maulers will be necessary, though weavers-maulers-stingers might be able to wreck enough small ships to prevent the stingers from being closed on two quickly.

I think the common builds will be maulers and weavers plus whichever of the other two you prefer. you might mix the less liked one just to get ahold of the G or XL slot weapons.

The Weakness of the bio-ship fleets is the specialization of the individual ship classes. so if your opponent wipes one of your classes--thanks to weapon load outs--it looks like you will lose the fight. or at least lose a lot more ships.

Interestingly. Bio-ships at higher maturity levels will have higher navel capacity than fleet capacity. that seems to suggest an empire wide reduction in ship numbers--in comparison to mechanical ships--which might cause secondary problems for the bio-ship empire. while also making it easier to skip over fleet capacity upgrades.

While balance might be out when it launches, I don't think living ships are inherently stronger. they do seem to have a lot of weapons however.
 
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lxlTiagolxl said:
Might be because the lithoid shipset looks so biological that who knows if the devs would not turn it from mechanical to biologial? :cool:
As for the plantoids shipset, well... with all this MEAT there is a certain lack of a vegan option :p
Click to expand...
I wouldnt mind getting some plant based ships too. Tho lithoids are already well represented as rocks are minerals like steel etc., not biological matter.
 
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SarahGabriella said:
I wouldnt mind getting some plant based ships too. Tho lithoids are already well represented as rocks are minerals like steel etc., not biological matter.
Click to expand...
Tecnically lithoids are silicon based biological lifeforms, so they are made of CRYSTAL MEAT not simply rock or minerals:cool:
Stellaris even has LITHOID VEGAN OPTIONS, the precious rare crystals are several lithoids lifeforms, from fungi to corals:p
 
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MetalSaviour said:
Would be cool if machines with modularity would get the option to use living metal instead of food.
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Speaking of alternative food, in the case of lithoids it would make sense if they consumed Rare Crystals, which are also lithoid, and not simply raw minerals, but i think that a full diet would need something crazy like a lithoid planet type with a silicon based ecosystem that could then farm rare crystal same way as food, as such it's not gonna happen. As for adding only some crystal upkeep, it could be done maybe with some exclusive lithoid way of producing more Crystals, but it's also too niche to be done.
 
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