Stellaris Dev Diary #41 - Heinlein patch (part 2)

[Dalinski]

Rock - papers - scissors with tech +
Rock - papers - scissors with ship class +
Rock - papers - scissors with with formations = SWEET BABY JESUS!

 

[percydanvers]

Couple interface suggestions:

1) Make player able to change ship building order in Spaceport

2) More informative headbars on incoming diplomatic request windows. Currently I can not understand what incoming message is about, until I read all text. Just simple headbars like «trade offer accepted», «trade offer rejected», «peace offer», etc. Also, complex information about AI Empire, when mouse pointer hovered over their Logo (see attached screenshots) — enemies, allies, rivals, relation, etc. (it is big problem, when someone invite you to alliance, and you have no idea who are his friends and enemies).

3) Be able to see battle statistic of specific ship or class in you fleet. I look through it in the end of the battle, it is important to understand what weapon types more effective. It will be much more info, if I be able to understand how different ship classes with specific weapons acting in the battle.

4) New split options for your fleet. «Remove ships of specific class» button in split dialog, and «Remove ships of specific type». So you will be able to select, as an example, all corvettes, or specific class of corvettes. Very handy. (see attached screenshots).
Make word «class» in Fleet info window dark gray (not red). Red should be class by itself (easy to catch with an eye) — valuable info. Word «class» - it is not info at all… I think it should not distract your attention. (see attached screenshots)

5) Planet info window should provide more information about what sector it belongs to, and level of happiness on that planet. Also, total empire happiness should be displayed in the top bar near resources icons. (see attached screenshots).

6) «Hide all old weapon items» button in ship designer screen. Why do I need to look at Red laser (level 1), when I have Gamma laser (Level 5)? I use only latest weapons in my ships, and never use outdated ones. So why do I need them? They only distract my attention... I want be able to hide them from weapon list — leave only actual models. (see screenshots attached).

7) When you build Battlestation — show it sensor radius BEFORE you build it.

8) Specific fleet maintenance info in fleet window. When I select specific fleet, sometimes, I want to know how much it costs to me (for instance: is captured mother Prethoryn ship with supporting swarm costs something to my budget or not?). Also, more deep info when you hover mouse pointer (how much all ships of specific class costs in this fleet). This suggestion actual for EU4 game too

9) Special interface design for different species (actually, it is an Idea for new DLS). Remember Starcraft? When you play Zergs — you have stylish alien interface, Protos and Terrans have their own… So why not make unique interface design for each specie? I mean Art style (window borders, buttons, etc) but not to change structure of course. This will add deepness and individuality for all species (things current game lacks). Also, draw diplomatic windows for specie you empire dealing with in that specie style. If you play Humans, you will use current (human) interface, but when you send or receive diplomatic request from Plantoids, diplomacy screen will be decorated with leaves, thorns, lianas, whatever…

View attachment 200656 View attachment 200657 View attachment 200658 View attachment 200659

To 4 I would add the option to detach damaged vessels. Detaching damaged ships for repair must account for 90% of my usage of the "create new fleet" button.

 

[Dalinski]

Thank you for clarifying that.
I always found it odd that there were S and L point defense weapons, but not M sized.

Kinda hope that you'll end up boosting platforms, its kinda sad how even fortresses are easily blown up right away.

Awesome how that kind of sounds like you can make an Anti-Aircraft Crusier

 

[TheGrinningMan]

Oh no... am I going to actually have to consider military strategy beyond my old standby of "have an industrial economy big enough to just keep hurling meat into the grinder until the other guy collapses"?

 

[enpi]

I am sceptical about the ship changes.

Why not developing roles which the ships have in strategic gameplay instead in tactical gameplay?

For example
-corvettes are speedy and have some special modules which enable them to patrol space, bomb planets and combat pirates...
-destroyers have more punch combat wise and some special modules which can seek and destroy stealth ships and they can escort/protect/screen capital ships
-cruisers are your cheap expendable ships of the line, you want them produce in masse if you an average empire, because they are superior to Corvettes and Destroyers in direct space combat.
-battle ships are your luxury capital ships. They are superior in combat to cruisers but you only can affort a certain amount of them if you are an average sized empire, due to the extraordinairy cost, production time and maintenance.

You should not forget that capital ships should in game reality be better than corvettes in their main combat role. To obtain them later in the game I have to spend alot of tech points and infrastructure. So why should a cheap covette which tech is free be part of a rock-paper-scissor cycle?

In MOO2 you had all 4 above ship hulls in your arsenal from the beginning on, so it made more sense to balance the types against each other. In Stellaris it makes not that much sense IMO because each advanced hull costs also alot of tech resources to develope and a higher level spaceyard to construct. Thats why it should be better than the earlier hull.

 

[Juboboman]

Can we expect any extended beta since this seems to be such a huge patch? Looks great though, can't wait.

 

[iaokim]

Do you feel there is a gap because there are ship roles missing, or do you feel there is a gap because there is a gap? I don't think it's a good idea to add ship sizes *just* to add more ship sizes.

I think there is certainly room for a 4 section ship class above battleship call it a titan/flagship or whatever and make it limited to 1 or only a few per fleet so it stands out from the rest

 

[Variant]

Also to follow up -
Wouldn't doing FTL emergency drives in that way effectively get rid of battles that occur in neutral territory? I kind of like how sometimes battles occur directly in between our territories as opposed to in one or the other, where the advantage always goes home because of platforms and stations. It's a great way to test fleet effectiveness - to just fight other ships. If each fleet always has the option to essentially use a delayed teleport home, that seems a little unbalanced. Even if it takes them a long time to get home, that could still win them an advantage. I've often had more success waiting for my attacker's ships to get in range of my defenses and duke it out for a second before I send my fleet in, effectively turning the same situation to two completely different results upon a second play from that load point.

 

[PirateJack]

I think there is certainly room for a 4 section ship class above battleship call it a titan/flagship or whatever and make it limited to 1 or only a few per fleet so it stands out from the rest

That's pretty much what the flagships are supposed to be, I think.

 

[lightvsdarkness]

Even with the last changes, a corvette meat shield (backed up by destroyers with tachyon lances...or the closest tech you have...and just enough battleships for the aura bonuses, or two of each when you can afford it, if you're paranoid like me) is still the way to go and it will continue to be until targeting changes dramatically. Because of the current targeting system, a single corvette can take an entire fleet's salvo, which, in the late game, this is all a battleship can take making a corvette just as useful as a battleship for taking damage; with torpedoes, this is even worse, multiple salvos may be launched at a single corvette, and all the 'extra' torpedoes just disappear after it is destroyed, making torpedoes virtually worthless as they stand now. Corvettes may be easier to destroy with the latest tweaks, but corvettes surviving a salvo is just a bonus, they are there to be destroyed, their real purpose is just to force the enemy to waste massive amounts of damage on them, due to overkill with the current targeting system, and distract the enemy long enough for your damage dealing ships to have an effect.

And if things do go badly and you run out of corvettes, just FTL out of there, you may have lost the battle, but you'll probably have seriously damaged the enemy while keeping the core of your fleet (the expensive bit that takes a long time to build) in tact, in less than a year you can have new corvettes and be ready for battle again, against a significantly diminished foe. On the plus side, in theory at least, this is the only thing that undermines the prevalence of the Mahanian decisive-battle doctrine in the game (whoever wins the first major fleet engagement wins the war), in practice, it just further weakens the AI.

To counter Mahanian decisive-battle doctrine they could make it cheaper and faster to build ships during wars, more so if you don't have many of them. Also maybe the less of your fleet capacity you are using cheaper ships become.

 

[percydanvers]

I'm kind of worried about the changes to how ships work. My favorite strategy is to have one huge fleet with ships that are good at only one thing working together with eachother, and then a few taskforces of battleships that are jacks of all trades and masters of nothing, that I send on little raiding expeditions through enemy territory (which is unbelievably fun). My biggest fear is that the ships will be so forced into one specific role that you can't make these fun specializations for your ships. Now that my ships might be randomly destroyed if they retreat I'm not really going to be able to do this hit and run fun anymore.

I'm also just sad because in my current game I literally have a ship class I named "corvette killer."

 

[Bugnr01]

Is it just me who thinks that it would be more natural if the roles of crusers and battleships would be changed? For the long range support role you just need a ship large enought to mount a large/long range weapon but with weak or no existing defensive abilitis. A Cruser should be able to fill this rule.
And a battleship with its massiv hull and large amounts of weaponery sounds more suitable for close combat and taking damage.

 

[maledwarfwarior]

Instead of locking specific weapons and other bits to specific ships, perhaps it would make more sense to have different stats for each size class? It could be as simple as a percent modifier on the stat type, like we currently have with evasion. Hypothetical example below

Corvettes now have a huge penalty to range + damage, lack larger weapon mounts, but move quickly and of course have evasion. Use them to target the enemy's mining stations and other lightly/unarmed stations. If we get boarding as a DLC, corvettes should be the ship of choice. These aren't war-ships, and researching destroyers should be a priority even for peaceful nations.

Destroyers are just that. Being the first type of dedicated warship it will rip through corvettes, but is a glass cannon. With more damage and fire-rate it can hit far above it's weight class, but suffers from a range penalty and lacks the speed and evasion to reach longer range ship classes without sheer numbers. Armor and shields are sacrificed due to technical limitations early game, and cost effectiveness late game. In large numbers they are extremely cost effective, but are all but guaranteed to suffer exceptionally high losses before being able to fire a shot.

Cruisers are warships that are designed to be adaptable. A cruiser can be designed around a BFG for long range bombardment, or be covered in smaller guns star-destroyer style for dealing with smaller ships.

Battleships much slower, but giving them a large buff to armor, shields, and range. They can excel in the beginning of a fight, targeting small enemy ships before they can open fire. Or you can use massive numbers of small class weapon mounts and wade into battle with enough hp and mitigation to outlast the enemy (or your smaller ships) while using their range bonuses to make up for small weapon class slots having pathetic range.



Finally, another way to help balance ship classes is to modify the size class modifiers for different weapons to a larger degree, as well as possibly new defense types. At the moment the biggest difference between two small lasers and one medium is range versus accuracy. Example below:



Lasers all have very long range, but large lasers have more damage and armor penetration in exchange for a worse power to damage ratio. If you have zero-point reactors, you will love these.

Disruptors now ignore shields and armor, as they disrupt molecular bonds. The bane of ships relying on heavy armor and shields to survive. They have an innate percent penalty to damage and range, making their effective base damage and range low but any percentage bonuses a larger buff. However, they require extreme power draw that means that they will have very little juice to spare for shields before higher tier reactors become available. A destroyer using these will do massive damage, but will need to get very close and will probably take large losses just reaching the enemy. A battleship will do very little damage (baring buffs) but may as well shoot with maps instead of sensors.

Plasma is split into plasma shot, a slow moving shot that can be fired at long distances but is slow and no course correction for high damage, and plasma thrower, which is a flame thrower in space. A lone plasma shot at long range will probably miss, but their high damage and range means using large numbers of ships armed with them means SOMEONE is going to hit their target. Larger canons shoot huge bursts with a slow RoF that wreak havoc on tight formations, while smaller canons benefit from "American Marksmanship" (AKA praying to the gods of probability and firing enough shots one of them is going to hit).

Plasma throwers are very different. Essentially they constantly spray a ship in high yield unstable plasma for a rapid fire, low range weapon with extremely fast RoF, moderate damage, and medium armor/shield penetration. Larger mounts have slightly more damage (damage being limited by the hull size of the other ship), but mostly benefit from a much longer range and the ability to hit through smaller ships through sheer quantity of plasma. Great for dealing with large fleets of ships with low hull points (AKA destroyer spam)

Arc Emitter... I have no idea what to do other than the current large amounts of damage variation. More random effects would be cool, but random range doesn't work and random fire-rate doesn't either. Perhaps they have variable armor/shield penetration? Other than that, make the damage range even bigger (ranging from "static shock" to "enough to electrocute a living planet". More of them effectively lowers RNG by rolling more dice, but bigger ones offer bigger rewards for high rolls.

Lances are for fleets emphasizing using the biggest ships they can. They can only use large class and higher mounts, meaning that cruisers have to be built around them and battleships can be built around even bigger ones, they fire a constant stream of long range death. No shield and lower armor penetration than it's laser cousin, it relies on massive range, perfect accuracy, and it's extreme dps to melt ships before they enter firing range. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of massive power draw making it extremely vulnerable when the enemy. You need high tier reactors to even power the thing, only the finest reactors will leave room for armor and shields.

Kinetic artillery is the lance's mass driver cousin. With enough damage to one-shot most corvettes at max tier, it suffers from not being able to hit them with a extremely low accuracy and slow fire rate. This gun is designed primarily for battleships killing other battle-ships, as even the lowest evasion rating will make dps drop like a rock. On the bright side, it has a much lower power draw.

Mass drivers have two advantages over other weapon types: They require very little power, and they are dirt cheap. They have a mediocre rate of fire, do mediocre damage, have poor range, but that doesn't matter when you field twice as many ships for the same cost... right?

Auto-cannons make of the BRRT of your fleet. They aren't cheap, and have the same damage of their mass driver cousins, but have extreme RoF and moderate armor/shield penetration thanks to their sheer speed. These more power than a mass driver, but less than any energy weapons.

Since we have 6 energy weapons and three mass driver weapons, I'll add more so you can have as much variety without resorting to beam-spam.

Flak Cannons, shotguns in space! These shoot large bursts of flak that make evasion useless, do high damage in an area, and can be used as point defense. Their slow rate of fire and negative armor penetration are considerable draw-backs, as not only can torpedoes survive a direct hit (baring significant differences in tier) armored targets may as well laugh at flak cannons.

Dumb-Dumbs (name is bad, better one requested) this auto-cannon variant fires expanding rounds that wreak havoc on shields and hulls, while also preventing their regeneration. An excellent counter to ships abusing hull and shield regeneration. Unlike the standard auto-canon, however, they have negative armor penetration and are even more expensive.

Phased auto-canon, this auto-cannon variant fires rounds FTL that cannot be dodged, can function as point-defense, and ignore armor. Their effectively instant travel time also gives them the edge in damage over the standard auto-canon. Unfortunately, shields interfere with the mechanism to bring them back into physical space making them large paper-weights until they are brought down. The FTL mechanism also greatly increases cost and power draw.

Missiles: These need a rework, as they either are overpowered or can't penetrate the point defense. Standard missiles now fire more quickly, go faster, use no power at all, but have no armor/shield penetration and much less hp. Larger versions fire multiple missiles at once, with no changes to the missile itself. Point defense shouldn't stop all of the missiles now, but it should (hopefully) soften the blow.

Torpedo: These sacrifice speed and fire-power for the HP of a strike-craft and high armor. Conventional point defense won't do much, requiring armor penetrationg point defense (like a phased auto-cannon) to destroy mid-flight. Unfortunately, they can potentially be out-run by smaller craft and said phased auto-cannon will tear them apart. Also use no power and only fires more torpedoes with larger mounts.

Swarm missiles: Closer to a mirv now. Rather than firing a lot of missiles at once, now that larger weapon mounts do that be default, these deliver a lot of smaller missiles that are fired outside of conventional point defense range. these each have 1 hp, and low damage, but have total armor and shield penetration.

And now, new missile variants since there aren't enough.

Eclipse missiles are special large class and up weapons. They effectively shoot missiles that detonate to spray the area in homing mines. The sheer number make it effectively an AoE weapon, and hitting them with point defense simply cause them to release their payload early. Kinetic artillery total battle-ships, Lances can deal with any ship given enough time for larger ones, but Eclipse missiles will make anyone spamming small ships weep.

Phased missiles, like the phased cannon, are missiles with a FTL launcher. While also useless against shield enemies, once shields are down nothing can stop them from doing catastrophic damage regardless of armor. Unfortunately, needing to put a FTL drive in the cannon makes them the only missiles with a (rather significant) power draw and this drive also caps the RoF to a crawl.

Shielded missiles are torpedoes with shield instead of armor. That's it.

And, new point defense!

Laser point defense for use against torpedoes, lower RoF (since the damage is already low) but much longer range. It can snipe a missile coming out of the launcher, but slow RoF and the same damage as conventional point defense make it deal with the same number of missiles at max range, and none at point blank. Slow RoF and dmage come from a specialized anti-armor laser.

Burst point defense, for when you need to shoot down a missile with another missile. Essentially a small heat-seeking missile that explodes using large ball-bearings as shrapnel. It will melt shields, and clear missiles in an AoE, but is point defense vulnerable to point defense.

 

[Barry777]

This is my first time playing a game like stellaris and I enjoy the fact the devs are tweaking the game with so much thought and look forward to the new changes but there are still a few problems I don't see mentioned here.

1. The game is boring once you have half the galaxy. Instead of 1 crisis event there needs to be all three with a 300 year gap between them and that double in difficulty from the one before it.
2. Sectors. Why do all my spaceports override what I have built in them when I them put into my sectors? This is a serious issue and needs to be fixed, I am sick of wasting influence just to use spaceports closer to the front line.
3. The new ship slots need to fix the issue that was present with the old ones, with more options. It was painful to go from a LM to a MMM and still have the exact utility slots. This includes science, construction, transport and fortresses etc.
4. A higher tier of weapons. Any weapons such as the lances, artillery and advanced torpedos that only use the large slots need to have a new research option to allow you to not only scan them but to research them. That way there can be war penalties or preventers when you go up against an enemy with a lower tier of weapons (of course the penalty for the lower tier is that you don't have the weapons and you can cheat by destroying one ship and giving in just to get the tachyon lances). There also needs to be a higher level of weapons too, up to a level 5, so research doesn't become useless too early in the game.
5. Scanning options. You should be allowed to keep scanning systems after you swap star charts so that you can keep doing little missions. I have noticed that I get nothing if I swap star charts too early and I really enjoy scanning objectives.
6. Super random enemies. essentially buffed up mining, void clods and crystal entities. About halfway during the game (maybe with advancement into the higher tier idea).
7. Shield draining effect for the kinetic artillery, the smaller stuff has it so give it to the bigger guns too.

I think these are something to think about but numbers 2 and 7 needs to be done immediately.

 

[Kliwarrior]

Destroyer spam to counter corvettes can be in turn countered with aggressive use of cruisers. The idea is to have shifting fleet compositions depending on what your enemies are using.

It seems to me that this approach is good in a MP game.

In a SP, player vs. AI, the "corvettes beat battleships" seems to be there just to be sure that a "evenly balanced" AI fleet performes with enough dignity.

Perhaps the true role of corvette (border patrol, trade protection, quick raiding..) will arrive in a future DLC/patch.

Anyway, every imorovement (like the others described in the DD) is a big step forward

 

[Chargone]

On resupply:
It'd make a lot more sense, rather than randomly getting Slower when they're further away from your own territory, if ships just flat out didn't go further away from supply points (mostly planets) you control than the range at which they could turn around and make it all the way back without running out. Which would leave where your ships could go being determined in basically the same way as your borders.
Doesn't matter if the limit is fuel, ammunition, food, whatever. Your ship can go that far away and still get home.

Right There is your reason to capture enemy planets, it extends your range. No inexplicable "we have enough fuel, but we're just going to go slower in the middle of enemy territory for no apparent reason", no keeping track of complicated supply systems, you just have a supply range which says "ships can go X far from owned planets". Heck, you could even affect how useful a given ship type was by having corvettes, destroyers, cruisers, and battleships count this up separately and then limit the fleet by whichever was worst, if you wanted.

(seriously, why would you go Slower if you found yourself in the middle of enemy territory? )

Edit: now, some sort of maintenance factor which you had to go home to sort out periodically? That would be a thing which would make sense if it caused your ships to go slower. sort of like low key attrition, but not really because it doesn't actually kill off your ships.

 

[BrokenSky]

Do you feel there is a gap because there are ship roles missing, or do you feel there is a gap because there is a gap? I don't think it's a good idea to add ship sizes *just* to add more ship sizes.

Dedicated Heavy Anti-Capital ship (i.e. one module taking up two destroyer module slots with a single XL slot [basically the whole ship is built around a single giant gun]- probably unlocked by some tech a bit later than battleships. Actually having extra modules unlocked by later tech would probably help with this).

 

[Bob_the_Insane]

I am happy that something is being done in this area. Currently there not enough strategy and almost no tactics around the naval conflict in the game beyond having a big enough economy to pump out loads of ships and put the best weapons on them. You can fight above your weight in the game with a little spying and optimizing you development and load out to take advantage of the neighbors design choices but that is about it.

I do hope to see some flexibility in the optimization of the ships to their roles, particularly the cruiser and the corvette. As long as the corvettes are not just relegated to being torpedo boats and I can also develop long range cruisers if I want to i think this is overall a very good direction..

 

[polymorfhsacarose]

Thank you for overseeing the shipmodels by introducing a flagship. I did suggest this in other threads happy if this get implemented. May i suggest also new type of cruiser model that have more speed (extra slot for Subluminal Drive) tradeoff weaker ablillity to put armour/shield as default.

 

[AnnaliseH]

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. This is the second in a multi-part dev diary about the 'Heinlein' 1.3 patch that we are currently working on. This week's dev diary will be focusing on a series of changes made to ship design and fleets that we call the Fleet Combat Overhaul.


Dedicated Roles
One frequent critique of the ship types in Stellaris is that they don't really have roles - besides corvettes being unable to mount large weapons, there is basically no difference in what type of weapons can be mounted on what type of hull, meaning that there is no actual reason to use a proper mix of ship types - often the best strategy is just to find a single effective design (such as all-corvette fleets on release version or the currently popular destroyer tachyon lance fleet). To address this we sat down and thought about what the roles of each type of ship should be, and came out with the following:

• Corvettes are fast, agile ships that excel in taking out capital ships at close range.
• Destroyers are screens for your capital ships that excel in taking down corvettes and countering missiles and strike craft.
• Cruisers are close-range capital ship brawlers that tank enemy fire and engage enemy destroyers and capital ships.
• Battleships are artillery and carrier ships that provide long-range fire support.

Somewhat simplistically, you could say that corvettes are good against cruisers and battleships, destroyers are good against corvettes and strike craft, cruisers are good against destroyers/cruisers/battleships (depending on how they are designed) and battleships are good against cruisers, other battleships and fixed installations. This change should give each ship a clear purpose, while allowing for some flexibility within by purpose through the ship designer (for example, cruisers can either be tough battleship killers or fast attack ships that clear the way for your corvettes depending on design). It's worth noting that designs may not start with a dedicated role like this - at the very start, corvettes not have torpedoes and destroyers will lack the targeting that makes them such effective corvette killers. Their roles instead come fully into play as technology advances and capital ships enter the stage.

In order to make this specialization possible, we have made a few changes to ship design. First of all, we have added three new weapon slot types:

• Torpedo slots mount Torpedo and Energy Torpedo weapons, which are short range extreme damage weapons meant to take down capital ships. They can only be used by corvettes and cruisers.
• Point Defense slots mount point defense cannons, which is the primary defense against missiles, torpedoes and fighter craft. Destroyers can be designed to field large amounts of point defense weapons.
• Extra Large slots mount massive long-range weapons that can only fire in a fixed arc ahead, such as Tachyon Lances, Arc Emitters and Mega Cannons. These can only be mounted on battleships and take up the whole bow section.

We've also tweaked ship modules and retired a couple of modules that we feel did not fit the new design, so that it is no longer possible to make a 'corvette killer' battleship with huge amounts of small weapons, for example. While there realistically is no reason you couldn't mount small weapons on a battleship, going with a realism angle would simply put us right back where we are now, so we chose to sacrifice some realism for what we feel is better gameplay.


Utility Slot Rework
Another area we felt sorely needed some attention is the utility slots - right now there is often little meaningful choice, with the best strategy usually being to stack either armor or shields depending on ship size, enemy weapons and tech level. Most of the special utilities, such as shield capacitors or regenerative hull, are either woefully underpowered or extremely overpowered. To address these issues, we've made the following changes:

• The amount of damage reduction provided by armor now depends on the size of the ship, so a single piece of armor will do more for a corvette than for a battleship. This should make armor useful even for smaller ships.
• The 'special' utilities (crystalline hull plating, shield capacitor, etc) will use their own slot type that is limited by hull size, and so will only have to be balanced against each other instead of having to also be balanced against shields and armor.
• A new utility type, afterburners, provides additional combat speed, allowing you to design ships that can closely quickly with your opponents.

Misc Changes and Notes

• As part of these changes we're looking over the balance of every weapon in the game, especially strike craft, point defense and creature weapons.
• Combat computers will be changed from being universal to being based on ship type, so corvettes have specific corvette computers that focus on boosting evasion, while destroyers have computers that impove targeting, allowing them to keep up with corvette evasion better than other ship types.
• We're changing emergency FTL so that it sets the fleet as MIA, meaning that fleets that successfully escape combat will always be able to flee to friendly space rather than getting stuck and ping-ponged to death. To compensate, we're making it so every ship (no matter how undamaged) has a chance to be lost when you use emergency FTL, so it's always a risky maneuver.
• We're looking into creating a special class of flagships that are limited in number by your fleet size, and are the only ones able to use auras, instead of all-aura battleship fleets.
• We're looking at balancing the different FTL types and making it less hard to catch enemy fleets. Some of our current ideas is having fleet speed depend on how far away you are from friendly space (and thus resupply) and boosting the speed of warp.
• We're looking into fleet formations and some basic orders during combat (priority targeting, etc). At minimum the basic fleet formation will be changed to be more sensible (no more suicide corvette leading the charge).

That's all for this week! Next week we'll talking about yet more features and changes coming in Heinlein.

Yeah okay sounds good. But how about more ship types. You have the 4 types:

corvettes
destroyers
cruisers
Battleships

Carriers, for instances, have been included in the Battleships type when they should really be in their own type - Carriers. For example, the WWII Enterprise (or Lucky E as she was called) was not under the Battleship designation but under the Carrier Class designation as was all her sister ships. There were Light Carriers for the smaller Carrier ships and Heavy Carriers for the larger, Super Carriers for the very large carriers - like the Enterprises.

Even the Battleship Class could be further divided into Dreadnought, Titan, and etc...