Stellaris Dev Diary #380 - Defenders in the Stars

[LayZboy]

Is there really only the 1 model for it, when the fortress of 1.0 are still lurking around somewhere in the game files?

 

[zetzet13]

What will be used as upkeep for the DSCs?

 

[Ajacoba]

...and with a small limit per system, while also being stationary.

The limit can go up to 30 or something
And your citadels will have just as many, each

 

[Miuramir]

I like the idea in general. I'm concerned with the reliance on L slots; until later in the game they may be problematic. A L laser is 90% Acc, 5% Tracking, range 80; a L mass driver is 75% Acc, 5% Tracking, range 100. While a S missile is 100% Acc, 25% Tracking, range 100. Against a typical beginning game corvette with 60+% Evasion, that's going to be less than 20% hit rate at range 100 for the station vs. 100% for the corvette. If they close in, the laser does a bit better with 35% but it's already taken some fire, fire that ignores the shields at that. Then if they continue to close, the L mass driver has a minimum range, where the corvette's weapons do not. So you're outranged if lasers, and underranged if mass drivers, and not likely to hit with either.

Theoretically, the station has some point defense to help defend, and the hangar slots to help attack back. But those are going to be easily overwhelmed by even a small corvette fleet. It looks like the starter cost is 1000 alloys, and it's not clear whether that includes the stuff on it, or you have to do that in a second stage or additional cost. I'm thinking the ideal attacker early on is Flak, Missile, Missile. At 103 alloys each you can get about 10 of these for the station cost, and they're mobile and reusable (and can retreat, be repaired, and return to fight another day); with 10 PD and 20 missiles total, vs. 9 PD and 3 hangars of Scouts. That may be kinda OK or not, depending; someone needs to run some sims. Against a typical early game attack of 20 corvettes, the numbers look a lot worse; 20 PD and 40 missiles. It's down to the sheer volume of hit points on the defender, with an attacker that can control the engagement.

But even a little tech improvement probably helps the attacker more. Basic swarm combat computer, ion drive, and basic afterburner takes evasion of the corvettes up over 70%. Getting Basic Strike Craft helps the defender, but once the attacker gets Frigates the balance shifts against even harder. The torps (max range 30) will reliably get it inside of the range of the L mass drivers (45 min), so you can design them mostly for laser defense. Three deflectors and a reactor booster still leaves them with 25% evasion, so only a 70% hit rate, attack of say 70 with 50% vs shields and 225 shields means they need an average of 9 shots to get through the shields, 1 more to get through the armor, and 6 more for the hit points; that's 16 shots with a L laser to take out one frigate. With cooldown about 5.7 that gives about 91 time units to take one out.

During that time the frigate gets 4-5 shots with the torp, doing about 125 base damage each, and presumably something higher than a 9x multiplier. Even at 9x and 4 shots, that's 4,500 damage to armor and then hull; and that's ignoring some damage from presumably a missile in the other slot. 20k hull sounds like a lot until you look at the attacker numbers. Yes, the attacker probably wants to bring some flack/missile corvettes as above to help saturate the defenses and deal with the fighters.

Looking at it another way, the tier I is pretty equivalent to three Artillery/Hangar cruisers with nothing in the back third (1 L, 2 PD, 1 H each). That combination isn't going to do well against corvettes and frigates, and the station has an even worse damage multiplier.

Feel free to do different back of the envelope calculations, but it looks like they would do considerably better off in the corvette, frigate, and even destroyer era if they traded some if not all of the L slots for more hangars, more PD, or some S and/or M slots (direct fire early on, and then swarm missiles later). Or perhaps even added some slots. 2 L, 3 H, 2 M, 2 S, 10 PD (36 S-equivalent) would be equivalent slotting volume to three cruisers (3 * 12 S-equivalent), for instance; and I think would be far more useful early on.

 

[verybad]

I'm thinking that if bio-DSCs are made, they should require food from either local planets or mobile bio-ships, or online bio farms/meat factories. If they have excess food they can grow, they might also be able to use a lot of excess food to move about the system farting their way across the place so to speak. Make them different though.

 

[Ajacoba]

I like the idea in general. I'm concerned with the reliance on L slots; until later in the game they may be problematic. A L laser is 90% Acc, 5% Tracking, range 80; a L mass driver is 75% Acc, 5% Tracking, range 100. While a S missile is 100% Acc, 25% Tracking, range 100. Against a typical beginning game corvette with 60+% Evasion, that's going to be less than 20% hit rate at range 100 for the station vs. 100% for the corvette. If they close in, the laser does a bit better with 35% but it's already taken some fire, fire that ignores the shields at that. Then if they continue to close, the L mass driver has a minimum range, where the corvette's weapons do not. So you're outranged if lasers, and underranged if mass drivers, and not likely to hit with either.

Theoretically, the station has some point defense to help defend, and the hangar slots to help attack back. But those are going to be easily overwhelmed by even a small corvette fleet. It looks like the starter cost is 1000 alloys, and it's not clear whether that includes the stuff on it, or you have to do that in a second stage or additional cost. I'm thinking the ideal attacker early on is Flak, Missile, Missile. At 103 alloys each you can get about 10 of these for the station cost, and they're mobile and reusable (and can retreat, be repaired, and return to fight another day); with 10 PD and 20 missiles total, vs. 9 PD and 3 hangars of Scouts. That may be kinda OK or not, depending; someone needs to run some sims. Against a typical early game attack of 20 corvettes, the numbers look a lot worse; 20 PD and 40 missiles. It's down to the sheer volume of hit points on the defender, with an attacker that can control the engagement.

But even a little tech improvement probably helps the attacker more. Basic swarm combat computer, ion drive, and basic afterburner takes evasion of the corvettes up over 70%. Getting Basic Strike Craft helps the defender, but once the attacker gets Frigates the balance shifts against even harder. The torps (max range 30) will reliably get it inside of the range of the L mass drivers (45 min), so you can design them mostly for laser defense. Three deflectors and a reactor booster still leaves them with 25% evasion, so only a 70% hit rate, attack of say 70 with 50% vs shields and 225 shields means they need an average of 9 shots to get through the shields, 1 more to get through the armor, and 6 more for the hit points; that's 16 shots with a L laser to take out one frigate. With cooldown about 5.7 that gives about 91 time units to take one out.

During that time the frigate gets 4-5 shots with the torp, doing about 125 base damage each, and presumably something higher than a 9x multiplier. Even at 9x and 4 shots, that's 4,500 damage to armor and then hull; and that's ignoring some damage from presumably a missile in the other slot. 20k hull sounds like a lot until you look at the attacker numbers. Yes, the attacker probably wants to bring some flack/missile corvettes as above to help saturate the defenses and deal with the fighters.

Looking at it another way, the tier I is pretty equivalent to three Artillery/Hangar cruisers with nothing in the back third (1 L, 2 PD, 1 H each). That combination isn't going to do well against corvettes and frigates, and the station has an even worse damage multiplier.

Feel free to do different back of the envelope calculations, but it looks like they would do considerably better off in the corvette, frigate, and even destroyer era if they traded some if not all of the L slots for more hangars, more PD, or some S and/or M slots (direct fire early on, and then swarm missiles later). Or perhaps even added some slots. 2 L, 3 H, 2 M, 2 S, 10 PD (36 S-equivalent) would be equivalent slotting volume to three cruisers (3 * 12 S-equivalent), for instance; and I think would be far more useful early on.

Corvettes get absolutely shredded by fighters though
Also the tech comes online late enough that Corvettes shouldn't be relevant anymore anyways

 

[Juboboman]

Super excited for this! Between the notbajor origin and the citadels I'm getting real ds9 vipes. I approve

 

[TeHb Z Shadow]

I'm thinking that if bio-DSCs are made, they should require food from either local planets or mobile bio-ships, or online bio farms/meat factories. If they have excess food they can grow, they might also be able to use a lot of excess food to move about the system farting their way across the place so to speak. Make them different though.

DLC bio part here are enemies, not the star base itself. You even can't use organic ships with this origin, it's clear that bio ships are enemies to them.
UPD: New origin is "peak" of using this starbase. All other guys are just "coping" it.

 

[Scanz]

Hey Devs. Any plans to impovment cosmo-fights like in
Amazing Space Battles mod ?

 

[Ajacoba]

Also as we know from the previous diaries on meat ships everything that's not one of the 4 shown ship classes gets build as is and doesn't grow

 

[Ckri]

View attachment 1282244

Initial sketches of the deep space citadel. Artist: Lloyd Drake-Brockman​

We decided to go with something like option B. This design became more refined as I worked on it, and as it was fleshed out into a three-stage structure. Here you can see an early look at the 3D blockout for the concept art.

Its only me that like option "A" like a lot moreee

The final dessing is cool but just wondering

 

[Critical Ethics]

The limitation — or soft cap, if you will — is that they are immobile and cost the same resources as fleets. So basically, there’s no real reason to choose static defenses over fleets if you can still afford to build fleets, both in terms of naval cap and alloys.

It’s the good old opportunity cost — mostly meaningless and only relevant when you’re already losing.

So if they are a direct resource competitor against fleets (which are mobile), and citadels are capped by an arbitrary system limit, then there are only subjective reasons to build them over a fleet.

That's what I meant by it being a winsmore. Are you winning? Build this and win more.

These defenses would only become truly useful if we also applied the same limits to fleets. And all UX problems you’ve prophesied are solvable — and have already been solved in other GSG games.

I can't tell if you're saying that enforced per-system fleet combat widths are an obviously silly idea and as such you think there should be no enforced per-system limit on the stations, or if you are actually arguing for enforced per-system fleet combat widths.

In either case I want the exact opposite to them having more placement freedom. I want a a per-system and a per-empire limit and then they can make them super wicked awesome without turning building manual-placement-only space structure everywhere into a mandatory part of the game. Again.

e: Or make it like the starbase cap where you can build X + (systems you own/Y) and going over results in ramping costs. Or have them east starbase cap and have the tech give you a bit more starbase cap. I'm easy.

 

[Xaelyn]

I was hoping these would function as fortress worlds, habitats always seemed too fragile for using them as fortresses to make sense thematically, but these purpose built structures would be perfect. Sadly it seems that these will hold out for all of 5 seconds like regular starbases and fortress worlds or habs will still be needed if you want to slow any relevant enemy down. At least they can replace the obligatory if mostly useless chokepoint bastions and free up a bit more starbase cap for astro-mining bays.

 

[Mech_infect]

It looks like tall empires will get more opportunities to defend themselves. (and they still lose significantly to wide empires in economy, development, resource inflow and population growth)

It's a pity that you have to build separate defense bases, and I can't upgrade the starbase of the required system to a super-defense-megastructure. There is something artificially limiting in this.

 

[stilgarpl]

Super excited for this! Between the notbajor origin and the citadels I'm getting real ds9 vipes. I approve

Even more DS9: Evolutionary predators/malleable genes are described as "not having typical organs" and changing their body to fit the job. Just like Changelings from Dominion.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Why the claim that defense platforms are expensive and squishy?

They have a base cost of 60 alloys (like a destroyer), a build time of of 60 days (like a Corvette) and a base health of 3000 (like a battleship)

According to the wiki

Sure, they have no evasion chance, but battleships only have 5% evasion

Defense platforms have the cost of me having to manually rebuild all my defense platforms after a fight and that's far, far more than I am willing to pay. Going to grab Unyeilding in every playthrough now but I would prefer if they weren't locking a basic UI element behind an entire tradition.

 

[Dlin369]

How many citadels can you have in a system at maximum?

 

[LystAP]

Since this is a empire that has a megastructure focused origin, would they have any bonuses to constructing megastructures? Considering that they have already started on putting together one before even getting full FTL.

 

[Anonim97]

Similar but not identical, but still has a one-to-many connection logic, unlike the one-to-one connections of wormholes or many-to-many connections of gateways.

How will this system affect the performance?

I remember that L-Gate system was very taxing for performance due to all the pathfinding configuration. It was so much, that you have introduced the option to disable L-Gates.

Will this system cause similar problems? Or has performance of the base game (and/or pathfinding) improved so much, that it won't cause visible difference?

 

[Ajacoba]

That's what I meant by it being a winsmore. Are you winning? Build this and win more.

I can't tell if you're saying that enforced per-system fleet combat widths are an obviously silly idea and as such you think there should be no enforced per-system limit on the stations, or if you are actually arguing for enforced per-system fleet combat widths.

In either case I want the exact opposite to them having more placement freedom. I want a a per-system and a per-empire limit and then they can make them super wicked awesome without turning building manual-placement-only space structure everywhere into a mandatory part of the game. Again.

e: Or make it like the starbase cap where you can build X + (systems you own/Y) and going over results in ramping costs. Or have them east starbase cap and have the tech give you a bit more starbase cap. I'm easy.

I don't think citadels will be mandatory, given that they have the same issues as bastions

Unless you specialize in them (with Eternal Vigilance for example) they won't be too impressive, also if your playstyle is rapid expansion or just neverending expansion in general you will probably move your borders faster than you fortify them

They're probably "mandatory" for pacifists and people who don't think they have to paint the entire damn map