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

[Chester Rico]

Looks like I'm gonna lose a couple days of my life once again when this gets released.

EDIT: having played a lot of EVE, the changes make sense to me. I like the idea of small ships being hard to hit/track by large ships with big guns.

 

[PK_AZ]

(this and this and ofc that can only be put on a small corvette - but not on a giant battleship -> makes sense lel...)

If you are talking about torpedoes a.k.a. space shotguns, then it makes no sense to mount them on battleships, who are supposed to fight at distance (unless we have Banner-of-the-Stars-level torpedoes, of course, but they would reduce every class of ships to torpedo carriers). In popular culture torpedoes are weapon associated with light ships, especially against heavy ships, with AP and damage big enough to kill them (battleships just used XL-size guns, but torpedo boats were too small to mount them).
If you are talking about point defence and small weapons - well, I cannot disagree with you. I for one would love to use destroyers as my space infantry, and cruisers as heavy S-size gun platform. But the problem is that many other players would disagree. After reading few discussions I feel people for some reason doesn't understand that you can have many classes of the same hull size, any of them fulfilling different roles other than historical role of that hull size (for example all big guns battleships to kill enemy BBs, and escort battleships with tens of small guns). I don't agree with them, I don't like that change(at least on paper), but it's hard to blame Paradox for doing what players wanted.

 

[Grattons]

Historically the name "Destroyer" originally came from "Torpedo boat Destroyer", it just got shortened for convenience.
Circa Pre WW1 and WW1

 

[Guilliman88]

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.

As the dev behind crystallis ship modules expansion mod I am very happy with this!!! This opens up a lot better way to balance stuff. Can't wait!

@Wiz
While you guys are busy working in new slot types. Any chance to implement an injector system so that we can mod in additional types without having to overwrite entire ship/section vanilla files?


I'm aware this might be a massive undertaking but asking anyway .

 

[overthewall]

• ... 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...

Why is that? It seems very reasonable (for immersion&gameplay) to have risk of ftl-loss increase with damage received, while without totally removing the risk for undamaged ships. On a second thought, this was probably what Wiz intended to say and I'm just nitpicking stuff, as he didn't state the risk is the same for all, still that point is a bit vague. post away

 

[Wizzington]

Risk of FTL loss does scale with damage, it's just never 0.

 

[gozaus]

will election of federal president be implanted in 1.3?

 

[AnnaliseH]

One thing that gets on my goat, Devs, is where the player needs to completely remake the basic designs of his/her own ships every time one starts a new game. Why can't the ability to save ships in some basic form for use in new games in stellaris?

 

[spriggan02]

Hi there!

The changes sound really good to me (especially the sector management). Maybe i just haven't found it yet but what I would like in addition to the new ships-roles and formation system would be a sort of "Fleet designer". Basically a system to prearrange what ships (based on the current ship designs I have) my Fleet consists of, arrange them into a formation according to the different designs' roles and then maybe a functionality to "order" ships to be built that will fill up currently empty spots in that fleet-setup.

Thinking this further you could have specialized fleets with different roles (eg. a small recon fleet with an admiral that provides movement bonuses or a specialised defensive fleet or such)

Right now i find myself to have a 2 to 3 fleets with mostly the same set-up (eg 2 Battleships: Guardian/Carrier, Long range "sniper"; 2 different kinds of Cruisers, 3 Destroyer setups and 2 Corvette-designs each cosisting of a bunch of ships) and after each battle I have to go through the list and see how many of my 3 different destroyer designs have been taken out and which kinds of corvettes I have to "refill".

 

[Untrustedlife]

What I worry about right now is that in any engagement, you need to have enough counters to any enemy ship type. if you don't have enough destroyers to blow up their corvettes, you're screwed. If you don't have enough cruisers to blow up their destroyers, you're screwed. If you don't have enough corvettes to blow up their big ships, you're screwed. You only need to miss one type of ship to be utterly crushed. You can have an enormous bunch of destroyers, if you can't defeat the enemy cruisers or destroyers, you're screwed. This makes big players even stronger, since you can't possibly counter a fleet that's simply bigger than yours, it seems. There's also the big problem that when player A researches cruisers before player B, player B will be utterly crushed by player A because he doesn't have cruisers to counter the enemy DDs, while his DDs get blown up left and right.

So I see that you're trying to balance the fleet combat, but I'm worried that it will be TOO balanced, your entire fleet composition resting on a knife's edge where having a fleet that has just too many destroyers and too few cruisers, for instance, will mean utter defeat.

Not particularly, hearing these changes makes me think of the Horse->Archers->Swordsmen->Pikemen->Horses Balance in the game age of empires, except more complex since you will have to design your units properly for the counters to work. More likely then not late game armies will have counters+Preferred units (which are then countered by the other player) (then repeat, until win) like the late game armies in age of empires, early game armies in stellaris will end up more like the millitia v archers v scouts balance in the early game in age of empires (except players will be designing there ships (likely corvettes plus cruisers ) for different roles until they get the hard counters.


It will probably end up pretty welll balanced, but spamming/zerg rushing will still probably work with many many (extemely unprofitable) losses. (Eg the skirmisher spam in age of empires, again) so new players will try to spam and not play well and senior players will have much more balanced armies.

Its much better then what we have currently which is just "spam tacheon lances".


i expect to see a lot more smaller battles, rather then the current curb stomp or war lasts infinitely long problem.

 

[Midn8t]

• 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.

there should be a dedicated Carrier class, and each ship class should have more then one size with with sizes being dedicated as for ship roles

I personally think you should be able to free form ship designs like in GC make them anything you want put anything you want on them, if you want corvettes be more useful then larger ships the best way to do this is with maintenance cost along with fleet logistics fleets can be X size larger ships that are more power take up more logistics space in the fleet ships that are small take less room in the fleet. so choice could be 64 Corvettes or 32 destroyers or 16 Cruisers or only allowed 8 battleships would make a good difference also along with carrier class then other way to control issue if a ship being a super ship is with cost, energy let someone build ship that super ship take out 100 smaller ships so what cost of that ship should equal out same as having 100 smaller ships.

 

[SkyblastB1]

Great changes, especially the newly implemented role-like system.

What really concerns me is the way ships, or, better, ship-classes are defined.
What we call a 'corvett' is, in my opinion, more like a destroyer. So it should be:

- Corvett -> Destroyer
- Destroyer -> Frigate/Light Cruiser
- Cruiser -> Heavy Cruiser/Dreadnought
- Battleship -> Battleship
- (new) Carrier
- (new) Titan/Flagship

Regarding ww2 ship roles, a destroyer was a ship equiped with some light guns, flaks and tons of torpedos. Cruisers were meant to be a supportive ship, defending the fleet against aircraft and destroyer-ambushes. In this case, the above-mentioned changes make more sense than the original naming.

So, what is a corvett than? In Stellaris, it could be a carrier-stationed aircraft like fighters and bombers, but bigger, heavier, with more weapons and equipment (something like the Retaliator from Star Citizen).

 

[solidprice]

Nice!
Would be nice if you could build a very few flag ships that could ignore these rules so you can catch a few people off guard.
Flagships don't always have to be big.....

 

[Max Kudos]

Hi Everyone,

First post on here. Love the game so far and wanted to put in some humble suggestions or ideas.

• 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.

I wanted to make a suggestion that would involve all of these roles and add some more strategic depth. I noticed some complaints about corvettes being forced into a torpedo bomber role. Feels and looks odd given the model sizes aren't that much different in size. I humbly feel strike craft should be in this role. Others complaints that their super strong armored battle wagon is now hiding in the back. Why put heavy armor and shield on an arty piece? Seems odd for a range craft role given your fleet screen should be preventing the need for those things allowing you more speed to stay at range. I noticed another complaint about not being able to put small weapons to counter corvettes and strike craft with the above system. You could put them on the system below but then be helpless against destroyers, cruiser, and laughably other by battleships. So customization would be allowed but not in every case be effective.

So here is my humble suggestion for fleet mechanics.

Corvettes being fast and agile can provide excellent cover against ranged rockets/torpedoes (etc) and act as an excellent fighter screen. Pounding smaller strike craft to dust with.
Vulnerable to destroyers and battleships. Hard to hit by Cruisers.

Destroyers act as fast attack craft countering corvettes and engaging Cruisers and Carriers at close range. Engaging with speed and packing a punch. Some Anti strike craft but not as nearly as effective as corvettes.
Vulnerable to Battleships and cruisers at range.

Strike Craft Carries provide some anti fighter defense and carrying the swarm of strike craft into battles.
Vulnerable to all types of ships on its own.

Cruisers carrying large placements but light defense providing the long range artillery role. Designed to punish battle ships, carriers and destroyers ( on distance). These are your archers behind the line.
Vulnerable to strike craft, destroyers at close range,

Battleships provide a slow moving dominating presence on the battle field. Tanking for the fleet and decimating on engagement range.
Vulnerable to swarms of strike craft, cruisers allowed to keep at long range and other battle ships.

Strike Craft: Like army ants on a grasshopper.
Could add customization here. Adding wing leaders and armaments. Help to add countering to defense types based on enemy choices. No one weapon fits all large craft?

Bombers: Engage large craft with ease.
Vulnerable to fighters and corvettes.

Fighters: Crushing bombers and other fighters in attempt to gain area supremacy. Able to get to those hard to defend areas a corvette would be crushed in. Vulnerable to corvettes and other fighters.

Of course the combat system would probably need an overhaul but it would add a lot of depth to combat. Allowing things like range, speed and fleet positioning to become a factor. Timing for strike craft launches and target priority would create depth. Weapon specialization could become a thing. Weapon X is good at long range while ineffective at close range. Weapon Y is better at close range but wont reach long range. Mix that with shield and armor counters and there is even more depth.

Scenario: Player 1 is pounding Player 2's fleet at range with cruisers. Player 2 slips around battle ships with high speed destroyers carrying weapon Y. Player 1's cruiser is not able to effectively hit Player 2's Destroyer at all in close range using weapon X. The cruiser is in trouble. Fortunately, Player 1's cruiser's armor resistance is helping counter Player 2's weapon Y because in this instance Player 2 was fighting comps with heavy shielding and forgot to change to weapon Y armor penetration. This makes the rush last too long and allows strike craft and a battle ship from Player 1 to save the cruiser and bring down the destroyer.

Anyways, these are all just ideas and suggestions to add depth. Thanks for reading.

 

[Prince Ire]

You can still design unconventionally, like anti-corvette corvettes or long-range destroyers. Some unconventional designs won't be available though (like battleships that are strong against corvettes) because it would nullify the entire point of the roles.

Couldn't one simply design the modules so that a battleship strong against corvettes would be ineffective at normal battleship roles?

 

[JimboTheFuzzy]

I have to take issue with the changes to the fleets. I can't remember if it was in the interview with Quill18 or on the release day stream that Johann (apologies if I misspelled his name) said that he wanted Stellaris to have a big focus on exploration, with every game having new things to explore. With how research is laid out, it seems like he didn't just want that exploration to be of the galaxy, but of the possibility space you have as you combine things in-game. That's a major part of what drew me to the game. The current ship design system, where you combine ship modules that allow you to mount different amounts of components (weapons, armor, shields, etc) gives a very large possibility space. Restricting that as this patch proposes feels like the opposite of the promise of Stellaris. My view is that any restrictions of possibility space should be the last option considered.

I've been pretty isolated as I learn the game, by choice. I want to explore on my own, and avoid as much in the way of spoilers as possible. From reading this thread, there seems to be a lot of spam of Tachyon Lances (which I've never researched or seen come up, as I haven't done much with energy weapons yet) mounted on Destroyers. This got me thinking: Why are Tachyon Lances so good? My guess is because of how the combat engine currently operates, and from my observations with how battles function, they might need to gut a lot of the code there.

First, let me provide an example of a battle I had earlier. I had 80 corvettes with two T4 mass drivers and one T3 point defense. My ships had 100 shields and 300 hull points.I went to engage an enemy fleet consisting of 10 corvettes, 8 cruisers, and 6 battleships. Both fleets advanced towards each other, and the cruisers and battleships had more range, and thus fired first. The moment their shots hit, my fleet slowed to a halt, spread out into an attack formation, and then accelerated again. During the time this took, I got hit with an extra 5 volleys from their lasers. I took more as I acclerated back up, so my estimate is that I took 6 more volleys than I would have if my fleet had just charged straight in, and broken into formation when THEY had range. Each battleship had 4 X-Ray lasers and each cruiser had 2, along with each corvette having one.

The quick math from that says that I was getting hit with 50 shots per volley. That means the enemy got an extra 300 laser shots on my fleet. The post-battle stats said I averaged 30% evasion. If the formula I saw that said that the calculation is "Hit Chance = Accuracy - Evasion," then I got hit with 55% of those, which would be 165 lasers. Given that those do 18-30 damage (average 24), that means I got hit with 3960 damage. At 400 total HP per ship, let's round that to 4000 and say I lost 10 ships. That's 12.5% of my fleet during a glorified cutscene!

That problem explains the spam of tachyon lances. Whoever has more range gets free salvos at the enemy while their fleet shifts into combat formation. Assuming that tachyon lances have a fire rate similar to kinetic artillery, then you're going to get 3-4 shots off, per lance. Against the AI fleets that I've seen, you would probably average 50% of those hitting. So you're looking at a low end of 1.5 times the base damage of a tachyon lance. During what is effectively a cutscene. Also, just eyeballing things, all classes of engines have the same acceleration, which means the problem gets worse the more advanced your engines get, as a level 5 engine will take 40% longer to stop (although I might be wrong on that, as I haven't checked a frame-by-frame recording).

But that only addresses half of the problem. The other half is doom stacking. Why does this happen? Because the moment you commit to a battle, you have to either kill everything, or hit the Emergency FTL button. I sent out a raiding fleet of 15 corvettes to hit a wormhole station an enemy had. However, when I engaged the wormhole station, a mining station also joined the fight. So I had to kill that. But when I closed on that, a research station got included. The result was that I had to kill everything in that star system before I could leave. Unless I hit the Emergency FTL button. Which I did, shortly after the 8k enemy fleet showed up.

Now, why does this happen? I've noticed that when I give everything bombardment computers, the combat formation is a line. The positioning I tend to see is corvettes on the outside, destroyers and cruisers in the middle, and battleships in the rear. The proposed change will make corvettes (and to a lesser degree, destroyers) much more like flanking ships that move in to take out the artillery, and battleships are the artillery, with the cruisers and destroyers acting as a force to keep away the flankers. This sounds very familiar to me. To the point where Stellaris seems to be abstracting the EU4 battle system by creating a "virtual province" around the combatants, and anything within that province is part of the battle. Which explains the shift into battle formation: The ships are trying to line up a la EU4. The proposed dev diary seems to be suggesting that rather than trying to make the combat system fit the feel of Stellaris, the devs are trying to force the ships into EU4 unit roles.

Given that the battles give me the sense that they're using EU4 code, I can make an analogy of the current system to EU4: Imagine how things would change if you got 6 Fire phases before the first Shock phase in any battle, provinces didn't have a supply limit, and you had to completely siege down a province before you could leave it. The strategies and army compositions would start to look a lot more like the current state of Stellaris, wouldn't they?

I don't know if the seeming shift towards EU4 in terms of design is even a conscious one on the part of the devs, or just a result of them spending so long working with that series that it's started to be a default thought pattern for them. But making Stellaris into "EU4 in space" is the worst thing that could happen to it.

If I had to provide some quick fixes that would address the symptoms without needing a full code rewrite, I would make it so that civilian stations don't trigger the province effect (or provide warscore, if they do), thus allowing you to run from battle with them via a move order. Also, there should be a delay before reinforcements can lock a fleet in combat (I have a 2k fleet versus a single corvette, enemy brings in an 8k fleet the day before I destroy the corvette, I can try running from the 8k fleet as they shoot at me). Perhaps always making it possible to try and run, but while you're running away, you get half-range weapons? Finally, ensure that an engine that goes 40% faster has 40% more acceleration (this may already be fixed). Also, perhaps some range-based accuracy calculations (eg 120-range weapons are less accurate once you get under 80 range, then even less accurate under 40) would help to diversify things more naturally. Finally, and most critically, fix the battle formation issue.

To those speaking of adding more ship types to fill more roles, I think the Stellaris devs were focused on treating the ship classes on a basis of size, with the roles being defined by the ship components that exist. Based on what you do, that Battleship could be a carrier, or an artillery piece, or a short-range brawler. This is good, because it's a wider possibility space. Personally, I would be open to the idea of a variant cruiser that gets treated as a battleship in terms of size and otherwise has the cruiser's base armor and HP, but it gets a fourth section (same with the Battleship, although I'm not sure how to scale it up). Trading evasion for modules on the bigger ships seems like a decent idea (although it wouldn't fit destroyers or corvettes).

My other thought is to address the changes to the module sizes on ships. I would suggest keeping the component slots on the ships themselves as Small, Medium, Large, and Hanger. However, I would change how the components themselves fit into the slots. For example, your standard point-defense wouldn't be limited to small slots. As an example, if you put it in a small slot, you get one gun. Putting it in a medium gives you two, and a large gives you four. This expands the possibility space rather than restricting it, and the last thing Stellaris needs is fewer possibilities.

 

[General HaNor]

I've been out of the loop, I stopped playing to focus on Hearts of Iron....Did you ever do anything about AI fleets attaching themselves to player fleets, regardless of everything else.

This was the most annoying AI behavior.

 

[Agamemnic]

Please also be more transparent with the new ship auras. The game doesn't specify which auras stack and which don't. One can only figure it out via testing or externally in forums and the like.

 

[Grand Stone]

Please also be more transparent with the new ship auras. The game doesn't specify which auras stack and which don't. One can only figure it out via testing or externally in forums and the like.

This could be said for the entire game. It's unclear (to me at least) how shield regeneration for example

 

[Sir Garnet]

Very interesting.

Can you create battlecruisers in the classic mold? . . . hunters of cruisers and destroyers (in this game strucure) heavily armed, fast, not heavily armored?

Historical development (often mirrored in sci fi as well) was in leaps forward that upset the balance damage and protection until countered or outmatched, with some paradigm changes in the process. Such as the way steamships outclassed sail, and ironclads outclassed them - with that brief era a century and ahalf ago where ramming was considered a tactic until armament to better penetrate armored ships was deployed.

Just accumulating incremental levels or somewhat generic components is easy to set up but does not have the right feel.