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

[InfiniteGremlin]

What I hope gets added, to go along with the balance changes, is more information about how my fleets are performing and what the estimated composition of enemy fleets looks like. Basically, more complexity is great, but I'm going to need some kind of fleet composition tab to keep track of it all.

The current end-of-combat readouts are pretty useful, but I'd like to be able to see that kind of information before I go to war, so I can at least guess at how I'll do. Or at least see where my exact weaknesses are in the current war, so I have an easier time guessing the right counters without having to memorize everything about the combat relationships at once.

 

[FieldMedic]

Seems like you're sacrificing the player's ability to design the ships they want because you couldn't get the balance right and now we're getting stuck with shoe-horned, rock-paper-scissor ship roles.

So now instead of building battleships that do different things I'll just have one design that does the:

• Battleships are artillery and carrier ships that provide long-range fire support.

the best given the available technology.

I'm probably in the minority here but I'm somewhat disappointed with this change in direction.

 

[Schroom]

I'd love an option to merge infantry ships, science ships and construction ships with the main fleet, so I don't risk on having them trapped all alone in a system when the main fleet that is supposed to protect them, has already jumped to the destination.

 

[Solaknir]

"Well, that's kinda what happened historically."

Id have to disagree. Historically Battleships became obsolete with long ranged missiles and carriers. They, however, always carried different kinds of artillery and anti air (from big sized main artillery, over secondary middle and lower sized one, to said AA). Which is kind of the point of the ship designer in my eyes, allowing for different setups for your ship. If you made battleships weak against strike craft and bombers, Id be completely ok with that, or even against torpedoes. Taking the variety out of the designing however would take away most of the fun of the game for me.

I dont have a good solution for the issue of course, Im not a game designer nor a genius. But I think there should be a workaround way to preserve the options given by the ship designer, while lessening the effect of the "meta-design" for each ship ..

 

[Yodarkore]

So... GUI need rework (where is that damn planet finder!!!), AI lacking endgame punch, sector AI inefficient to the point I do not play vanilla anymore but only with (self made) mod that put core sector planet cap to above 500 for both the player and the AI, and the most urgent patch is rebalancing warfare in a rock paper sissor maneer? Hum...

I'm a 4x veteran and I do really like spending time in ship designer to create multiple variants for the "just in case" situations, and getting some very situationnal designs depending on what i can see the (potential) ennemy is using. Now no more customization??? Beside that, the ship designer needs an overall upgrade, as said above, its very clicky to find and upgrade weaps and utilities, a "hide obsolete stuff" button is really needed there..

Altough I admit fleet battle need polishing, as other players already outlined it the "disengage" behavior to untrap my big fleet engaged with a single mining station or small distract fleet is a real must, i'm very curious how this MIA retreat will handle: My fleet is on other side of the galaxy, i have to retreat and *poof* fleet disapears for several months to reappear right next homeworld or i'm misreading??

My primary wish for a fleet battle revamp, is to let us move the fleet while in fighting, in order to be reactive to that new defending fleet that just entered the system while all my fleet is busy killing that damn wormhole station, just a silly example.. I feel i'm gonna miss that rangefinder mod...

And my secondary wish is a full ground battle revamp too! Vanilla ground battle is really basic and quickly done, for a task which is supposed to mobilize million troops each side to invade a whole world...

Edit: i do play a modded version, mix of alpha mod, new ship classes, and personnal custom defines to improve AI effiency in MP with my roommate and i really enjoy having 6+ more ships classes than vanilla, to design whatever suits us, from escort to dreadnought, I was considering a weapon overall revamp and adding more weapon tiers to fit the quick tech game pace that fits the game than limiting classes to only one role...

 

[flyer88]

In my opinion the changes are going in the right direction but these nice ideas will only affect wars between opponents which have nearly the same power.

There should be a way to counter doomstacking also, to give smaller empires the possibility to win wars with strategical decisions. Something like the suppliy Limit in EU4, which costs some ressource or effectivity if the fleet is bigger than the max supply value of the nearby planet.

 

[maledwarfwarior]

I'd love an option to merge infantry ships, science ships and construction ships with the main fleet, so I don't risk on having them trapped all alone in a system when the main fleet that is supposed to protect them, has already jumped to the destination.

Nevermind that, why can't we have armed versions of the above?! There are crystals that want to aggressively probe my face, semi-sentient gas clouds that make tesla blush, and I'm sending out unarmed science and construction vessels?! Why can't I make my science vessel armed? I would love to make fleets of warships with peace-time uses like the Federation in star trek. And considering how dangerous the unknown is, having a few disruptors and kinetic artillery batteries just in case is completely justified.

 

[Pelldom]

Or even if the Science and/or Construction modules were available for Warships?

 

[physics1915]

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.

It might help a little, but a human player is going to keep on top of things and destroy the new ships before a proper fleet can be assembled. The problem is that with the 'big gun battleship' model, a Mahanian decisive battle is the logical strategic outcome; especially considering that staying in port as a fleet-in-being isn't really practical in a space game where all military activity during the war depends on the fleet. To counteract this you'd have to move away from the big gun battleship model, this could be done with stealth fleets or other units better suited for hit-and-run tactics, such as carriers with much, much longer ranges than currently exist. Better planetary defenses would also help, space stations are quite weak and planetary-based space defence is purely defensive. Once you've destroyed the enemy fleet, you pretty much have free reign, it would be nice if planets were more heavily fortified so that even after destroying the enemy fleet, you still need significant fleet resources to take a planet. Right now the only limitation to occupying planets is your tolerance for micromanagement.

 

[Pelldom]

I don't understand the "realism" of not allowing something like a Battleship to use all Small weapons. wouldn't that allow for more varied options? Perhaps each weapon mount (small/medium/large) should be slightly different for each hull size?

For example,
a S mount on Battleship/cruiser might reduce the range but on a Corvette it increases slightly.
a L mount on a Battleship increases range but on a destroyer it increased to-hit chance.

Just a thought.

 

[maledwarfwarior]

In my opinion the changes are going in the right direction but these nice ideas will only affect wars between opponents which have nearly the same power.

There should be a way to counter doomstacking also, to give smaller empires the possibility to win wars with strategical decisions. Something like the suppliy Limit in EU4, which costs some ressource or effectivity if the fleet is bigger than the max supply value of the nearby planet.

A simple solution is the introduction of AoE weaponry. Keeping defense statons with loads of AoE weapons and the currently implemented mine-field aura will counter spamming large amounts of cheap ships. Add one single station with a FTL inhibitor in the center to make absolutly sure they have to break through your multi-layered defense. ATM I consider large ships superior to smaller ones. If you merge the stats of three small ships into a larger one, that ship can take on the previously said smaller ships and focus fire one down to lower DPS mid-fight. Not to mention that doing so comes with a huge advantage in range to make it possible to do this before the enemy can enter firing range.

The real problem is people stacking regenerating hulls and crystal forged plating to make ships that regen faster than some fleets can inflict damage (I myself am guilty of this in single player, but was playing a game without wars of aggression in an extremely hostile galaxy). The wolverine style of ship defense means you don't even need to stop at port to repair, you can keep going and by the next battle you have fully recovered. If you are losing a battle, emergency FTL and regen after having taken out some of the enemy's ships. Guerilla warfare shouldn't be done with capital ships. I propose dedicated anti-regen weapons. In fact, I already have in a previous post on this page. Dumb-Dumbs is a terrible name for a terribly inhumane weapon, but using it on a ship isn't so bad.

 

[maledwarfwarior]

I don't understand the "realism" of not allowing something like a Battleship to use all Small weapons. wouldn't that allow for more varied options? Perhaps each weapon mount (small/medium/large) should be slightly different for each hull size?

For example,
a S mount on Battleship/cruiser might reduce the range but on a Corvette it increases slightly.
a L mount on a Battleship increases range but on a destroyer it increased to-hit chance.

Just a thought.

An even simpler solution, as I outlined in a previous post, is to give each ship class a percent modifier to specific stats. Like a battle-ship has a bonus to range, destroyers become glass cannons and so on.

In that post I also proposed giving different weapon types different bonuses from specific mount sizes and making different weapon types extremely different instead of "slightly more damage and less armor penetration". Combining the two should make any fleet type beatable with a natural rock paper scissors (long range firepower beats short range glass cannon which beats tank which beats long range firepower)

 

[MrMarbles]

I like these changes

On the flipside, there hasn't been much talk of the Knife's Edge Problem:

Wars are decided by one decisive battle, and in that battle, once you tip on either side of the knife's edge, you get wiped in seconds while inflicting little to no damage.

For example, the first few seconds you can seem evenly matched, but suddenly you're up/down a few hundred fleet supply, which increases the winners margin, which lops off another few K of the loser's supply, increasing the margin, and so on. Something like this should happen, but the speed at which the loser dps drops off a cliff makes wars a lot less interesting. I don't know of a good way of dealing with this, but it should at least be theoretically possible to inflict some kind of damage with an inferior fleet, maybe with surgical strikes or bonuses for small fleets.

EDIT: Just realized, by having a lot fewer slots for Lances, the Unbidden and Prethoryn crises are going to get A LOT harder.

 

[Pelldom]

An even simpler solution, as I outlined in a previous post, is to give each ship class a percent modifier to specific stats. Like a battle-ship has a bonus to range, destroyers become glass cannons and so on.

In that post I also proposed giving different weapon types different bonuses from specific mount sizes and making different weapon types extremely different instead of "slightly more damage and less armor penetration". Combining the two should make any fleet type beatable with a natural rock paper scissors (long range firepower beats short range glass cannon which beats tank which beats long range firepower)

Oh! I do like that idea! Good suggestions. Sorry I didn't see your post earlier on in the thread

 

[maledwarfwarior]

It might help a little, but a human player is going to keep on top of things and destroy the new ships before a proper fleet can be assembled. The problem is that with the 'big gun battleship' model, a Mahanian decisive battle is the logical strategic outcome; especially considering that staying in port as a fleet-in-being isn't really practical in a space game where all military activity during the war depends on the fleet. To counteract this you'd have to move away from the big gun battleship model, this could be done with stealth fleets or other units better suited for hit-and-run tactics, such as carriers with much, much longer ranges than currently exist. Better planetary defenses would also help, space stations are quite weak and planetary-based space defence is purely defensive. Once you've destroyed the enemy fleet, you pretty much have free reign, it would be nice if planets were more heavily fortified so that even after destroying the enemy fleet, you still need significant fleet resources to take a planet. Right now the only limitation to occupying planets is your tolerance for micromanagement.

One solution is to encourage the AI to make much more use of FTL inhibitors and surrounding them with defense stations (after buffing station combat stats). That should buy time to create a brand new fleet. I doubt Mahanian doctrine accounts for being physically unable to advance unless you take out an extremely heavily entrenched fortification, where most sane generals would surround them and go around IRL. Another solution would be an expansion allowing the player to hire mercenary armies to hold the line while the navy rebuilds.

 

[maledwarfwarior]

Oh! I do like that idea! Good suggestions. Sorry I didn't see your post earlier on in the thread

No problem, I'll quote it here to make things easier.

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.

EDIT: messed up the quote at first, this time it's actually working.

 

[FelixNix]

IMO, there should also be a supply lane type thing, like in HoI. Keep your fleet supply lanes open, otherwise they loose supply, and are easier to defeat, in turn making combat more strategic, which will eliminate a bit of what I see people complaining about here. I would like to see a little more strategy and depth myself, and this could be a good addition. It can go along with the introduction of civilian ships, as you can see those keeping supply open. This would add a good spot for stealth ships doing hit and run on supply lanes, while requiring you to keep a few "seekers" with stealth finding tech to keep your supply lanes open. You can also eliminate the need for supply progressively over time by adding modules for things like ship mounted hydroponics, a waste re purposing module, ship mounted fuel processor, things like that. More support modules would be very nice, and vary tactics better.

It'd also be nice to get things like capitol ships, Superheavy battleships that have no power against corvettes/destroyers, but can tear through Battleships and stations, and fit multiple support modules, giving good bonuses to the fleet it's attached to. Could even add a module that reduces supply requirement for all ships near it, because it produces supply itself. (edit:just re-read the original post, planned flagships already doing most of that) Just a few Ideas.... although I do like most of what's being done with this update, because right now, I just use 20 or so battleships of different types in my fleets, and steamroll everything. Could've just reduced the accuracy of large ships overall, and increased the evasion and accuracy of the small ships, but this works too.

 

[physics1915]

One solution is to encourage the AI to make much more use of FTL inhibitors and surrounding them with defense stations (after buffing station combat stats). That should buy time to create a brand new fleet. I doubt Mahanian doctrine accounts for being physically unable to advance unless you take out an extremely heavily entrenched fortification, where most sane generals would surround them and go around IRL. Another solution would be an expansion allowing the player to hire mercenary armies to hold the line while the navy rebuilds.

They'd have to considerably reduce the cost and/or increase the capabilities of stations. Right now, if the AI built up effective outposts like that, they'd spend so many resources they'd hardly have much of a fleet at all and they'd probably only be effective against hyper-drive civilizations. Perhaps a change could be made to FTL inhibitors so that they can block transit through a portion of the strategic map, but even then stations would have to be far more cost effective for a static-defense to be practical.

 

[ashbery76]

I hope creature weapons have something more about them.Apart from mining lasers early by the time most of their weapons are available you already have better weapons.Maybe normal weapons needs to moved down the tech system as you get too many too fast imo.

 

[Variant]

I agree with everyone in that I'd rather battleships not be nerfed on point defense/small weapons roles. I really like the idea of just loading a massive amount of rapid fire weapons on one vessel and seeing how it adds up if I mix and match a variety of different weapon types. Ship design is probably one of my favorite aspects in the game, because thusfar I've felt like it compensates for the lack of direct control in combat. I may not have direct control in the instance of combat, but the thoughtfulness I put forth into building my fleets always feels like it pays off. I often have to pause the game and take a good fifteen to twenty minutes updating all my different ship types to the latest techs because I like to keep my options open, not just streamline down to one effective model.