Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries
Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Stellaris 54047 Bug Reports 37337 Console edition 1311 Suggestions 21668 Tech Support 3203 Multiplayer 392 User Mods 4793 Stellaris AAR (After Action Reports)
Status
Not open for further replies.
Previous dev diary Next dev diary
Show only dev responses

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

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).

Note that the changes listed in this DD are not fully done, so some of them may not show up in below screenshots.
iUSvWHQ.png

S0eS3HZ.png

TAqi5VO.png

DD980B8.png

apVYe0u.png


That's all for this week! Next week we'll talking about yet more features and changes coming in Heinlein.
 
Last edited:
  • 262
  • 51
  • 14
Reactions:
Sort by date Sort by reaction score
Paul Aldo said:
Sure, but try that, the enemy will just order their fleet to stand still while their artillery are wrecking those small lasers battleship. It's viable, just isn't practical. And of course, this is all hypothetical.
Click to expand...

a battleship would carry a number of weaponry because they have the mass to mount a number of weaponry including large and small turrets and have the power to fire this weapons.

in space the biggest ship will win.
 
  • 6
  • 4
Reactions:
GuildenSpur said:
Yeah ask the Japanese and the Germans about the believe that big ships could never be sunk by a tiny craft, aircraft in this example, or subs and so on...
The aircraft was one of the factors these big armored ships were no longer invulnerable.
How do you think those big guns are going to track a fast moving target? They don't. That's why you have ship roles.

Wether it's Navy or space, big guns turn way slower than smaller guns, big ships are slower than small craft and so on. Still works the same in space.
Click to expand...

i understand the desire to compare space combat to navy but's it's not.

this is how a weapon of the future basic looks like.

this is still prototype would be more compact and smaller in near future.

you see the idea of WW2 turrets are in the duster.
 
  • 2
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
Sooo
Basically you will implement the Stone, Paper, Scissor System that was allready announced in the pre release Dev Diaries with some tweaks.

Looking forward to see how it works out :)
 
Wouter445 said:
i understand the desire to compare space combat to navy but's it's not.

this is how a weapon of the future basic looks like.

this is still prototype would be more compact and smaller in near future.

you see the idea of WW2 turrets are in the duster.
Click to expand...

Ehhm, what i am seeing are turrets - well they look different then the WW2 ones - but basically they have all the core functions:
Top Mounted (on the Ship)
Rotateable 450°+ (around axis and up/down)

So what do you think makes them vastly different form WW2 turrets?
 
  • 2
Reactions:
Soranya said:
Ehhm, what i am seeing are turrets - well they look different then the WW2 ones - but basically they have all the core functions:
Top Mounted (on the Ship)
Rotateable 450°+ (around axis and up/down)

So what do you think makes them vastly different form WW2 turrets?
Click to expand...

I think a race that can travel amount the stars can build really good servo's don't you think????.
other droids and robotics would have a hard time fighting in stellaris.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Hum question: is there plan for ship to try to retreat as they are being pounded? I would really like they have some sense of self preservation (a sort of settings: fleet orderly retreat when lost x% of its power, ship try to individually escape if at x% hull damage). It would seem reasonable for my BB to try escape, without having to have all the rest of the fleet to follow. That would also avoid the problem we have now, where a lost battle often mean the end of the war for the AI (although they won't capitulate until you sieged those bloody planets...).
 
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
Wouter445 said:
I think a race that can travel amount the stars can build really good servo's don't you think????.
other droids and robotics would have a hard time fighting in stellaris.
Click to expand...

Can't these same super intelligent beings produce super powerful weapons that will fit on smaller ships, weapons powerful enough to in fact destroy your super big ship? The more our technology advances, the less important size is becoming in creating ships. The US Navy isn't mounting those laser weapons of the future on super heavy battleships that are in development, they're putting them on missile cruisers and aircraft carriers. Again, there is a reason why battleships have become obsolete. You can argue that space ships will need size for other reasons, habitability, other future weapons that are simply too big for smaller ships (the Stellaris paradigm), but simple mass to negate other weapons is extremely inefficient now and likely will be in the future. We're too good at designing destruction.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
Oh well is nice have another Fix patch, but with all respect when we gonna get a content patch? there is a Massive Big Black Hole in the space of Stellaris. Not only diplomacy, spy mechanics, there is a lot of post about the missing things of the core-vanilla game, etc; is like the game dont have a solid sci-fi soul-lore, maybe is why no matter what ethos we chose the game feels the same. Sorry is my opinion.
 
  • 2
  • 2
Reactions:
With the introduction of fleet supply, abstracted by distance to controlled territory, it seems logical to introduce fleet tenders and supply ships which could help mitigate the impact. Central to most military sci-fi is the need for supply, repair, and how to protect the fleet supply train (e.g. Lost Fleet, Honor Harrington, Terms of Enlistment). It would introduce additional tactical significance to fleet position and maneuvers to protect vulnerable supply ships or destroy the enemy's with fast attack ships or fighter wings.
 
  • 4
Reactions:
Merrivale said:
Can't these same super intelligent beings produce super powerful weapons that will fit on smaller ships, weapons powerful enough to in fact destroy your super big ship? The more our technology advances, the less important size is becoming in creating ships. The US Navy isn't mounting those laser weapons of the future on super heavy battleships that are in development, they're putting them on missile cruisers and aircraft carriers. Again, there is a reason why battleships have become obsolete. You can argue that space ships will need size for other reasons, habitability, other future weapons that are simply too big for smaller ships (the Stellaris paradigm), but simple mass to negate other weapons is extremely inefficient now and likely will be in the future. We're too good at designing destruction.
Click to expand...

thing is weapons need energy, energy ain't unlimited the larger ship the more energy it can produce so doing carry automatic more destruction.
the most effective energy we know is fission, the larger the star the more energy it produce.
 
  • 2
  • 2
Reactions:
Merrivale said:
Can't these same super intelligent beings produce super powerful weapons that will fit on smaller ships, weapons powerful enough to in fact destroy your super big ship? The more our technology advances, the less important size is becoming in creating ships. The US Navy isn't mounting those laser weapons of the future on super heavy battleships that are in development, they're putting them on missile cruisers and aircraft carriers. Again, there is a reason why battleships have become obsolete. You can argue that space ships will need size for other reasons, habitability, other future weapons that are simply too big for smaller ships (the Stellaris paradigm), but simple mass to negate other weapons is extremely inefficient now and likely will be in the future. We're too good at designing destruction.
Click to expand...

His arguments are based on his disbelief over evasion, so evasion isn't a thing, that future weapons are 100% accurate no matter what, so the bigger, the better.

Forgetting that future ships also move at sizable fraction of light speed and having 1 huge ship isn't better than having 10 ships at the same size when combined, because if you lose 3 of those 10, you still have perfectly functional 7 ships while if you have 30% of your huge ship hull damaged, it significantly hampers ship's function. This is why it's getting pointless. Moving on..
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Paul Aldo said:
His arguments is based on his disbelief over evasion, so evasion isn't a thing, that future weapons is 100% accurate no matter what, so the bigger, the better.

Forgetting that future ships also moves at sizable fraction of light speed and having 1 huge ship isn't better than having 10 ships at the same size when combined, because if you lose 3 of those 10, you still have perfectly functional 7 ships while if you have 30% of your huge ship hull damaged, it significantly hampers ship's function. This is why it's getting pointless. Moving on..
Click to expand...

exactly, i rest my case so people can also post something
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Am I missing it? But before you made a destroyer spam and now everyone will use X-Y-Z ship spam? The difference is that before you cliked on Tachyon Destroyer 10 times and now you click on various ships but still in the same pattern.
That, kinda, do not solve problem of tactics, where victory could be gained via maneuvers and strategic actions, instead of fielding victory ship combo. I highly doubt that will solve doomstacking issue with one big decisive batle and spammability of faceless zerg ships.
 
  • 5
  • 1
Reactions:
It would be nice to have some tech or whatever to know what kind of weapons and defense the enemy are using before engaging them (or having to zoom on the hull).
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Paul Aldo said:
His arguments are based on his disbelief over evasion, so evasion isn't a thing, that future weapons are 100% accurate no matter what, so the bigger, the better.

Forgetting that future ships also move at sizable fraction of light speed and having 1 huge ship isn't better than having 10 ships at the same size when combined, because if you lose 3 of those 10, you still have perfectly functional 7 ships while if you have 30% of your huge ship hull damaged, it significantly hampers ship's function. This is why it's getting pointless. Moving on..
Click to expand...
That's it! They should not insert this ridiculous limitations with corvettes torpedoes and stuff. Damaged ships fight less efficiently, so damaged big ship will have less small guns working. They can balance stuff with other things like battleships have troubles navigating battlefield and getting close enough to enemy ships to fire *effectively*. So we can have formations and battlegroups during battle...
Why Paradox thinks they had to make crazy limitations?
 
  • 3
  • 2
Reactions:
So basically we're getting rock, paper, scissors with shattered retreat in space.
 
  • 5
Reactions:
Real space warfare will probaby be fought by swarms of small autonomous AI drones at ranged where sensor lag is a serious concern and the one able to change vector in random directions as fast as possible wins. A large manned ship would just get pricked to death by the swarm due to having neither the manoeuvrability nor the reaction time to actually hit any of the swarm.
Good thing is, Stellaris is a game, not a realistic space combat simulator, so real space combat is mostly irrelevant as any measure of realisticness is immediately subordinate to the Rule of Cool.
 
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
If Endless Space and Galactic Civilizations taught me something it is that there is nothing worse for space combat than Rock-Paper-Scissors principle. It is THE worst design decision developers could follow.
 
  • 10
  • 4
Reactions:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back