Decouple ship types from tech

[George The Eco]

My proposal is very simple.

Unlock all ship types from the start. (Up to and including battleships, titans and juggernaughts are a different question)

Why?
1. It doesn't make sense the a civilisation that has figured out FTL can't think to build ships of different sizes for different purposes (RP benefits)
2. It allows for more diverse fleets from the start. (Assuming the proper balancing is done to encourage this)
3. I believe it allows for easier balancing between the ship sizes, since they can be built to fulfill roles in stellaris fleet combat from the start of the design process.

I would replace the current techs with "ship size" techs, representing an increased ability to build larger and more powerful vessels. Using proper costs for these new ships it could also serve as a means by which to reduce the size of late game fleets, by allow smaller yet more powerful fleets. Each ship size would basically unlock more slots.
Imagine an early game corvette having 1 weapon slot, and an early game battleship would have say 4. Later game corvettes might be more powerful than early game battleships.

An additional change which would fit in nicely with this, but is not necessary for the idea is to have the size of ships you can build depend on the size of your shipyards.

 

[Zergor]

I was always in favor of some new component "hull" that increases the base hull hp and basic stats of the ship. I could understand that the devs may not want to unlock too many weapon slots because slots are represented on the ship and so that would require to change the models. Going with your idea of having all ships sizes at the start each time a new ship size would have been be unlocked, a new hull upgrade would be instead. Ships with upgraded hulls would cost more, have better stats across the board (more health, more damages, better bonus from components) and take more fleet upkeep (only for empire fleet upkeep, the size for their fleet limit wouldn't change, for readability one should be renamed as they become decorelated) .

I find it important that while economies scale, total fleet size shouldn't as the game can't handle many ships and fleet battles become unreadable with doomstacks (and separating the cost of fleet for the group and the empire would allow to keep only 2 or 3 fleets limiting the number of admirals while having 2000 fleet cap).

 

[Losttruppen]

I've wanted this for a while.

The current system really hurts the AI, particularly since the Tech changes last year and if you play with the Tech Cost slider at all: most AI will just stack Corvettes forever, and they won't dismantle them, so unless they lose them in a war they just stagnate in Fleet Power. This has massive run on effects on their Diplomacy and Threat calculations resulting in them doing weird things. It also incentivizes Cruiser rushing and rewards any AI that lucks into drawing and "choosing" Destroyers then Cruiser Hulls which is almost pure RNG.

It also sucks for Players if you just fail to draw those Techs, or had to choose something else and then they never seem to come up again.

I would personally open up just the Hulls though, and add in the specialty Hull Sections as Tech choices(and maybe add some more) so that while you can get year 0 Battleships, they wont have say XL or Carrier slots right away.

 

[HFY]

A compromise might be to let everyone start with Corvettes + Cruisers.

Then Destroyers appear as an anti-capital advance, and Battleships appear as an artillery advance, and carrier sections start to appear as an anti-Corvette advance.

Then there should be a number of ways to specialize your fleet.

- TorpVettes and TorpStroyers should beat artillery.
- Artillery should beat Carriers.
- Carriers with a picket should beat small ships.

You might be able to specialize your empire by focusing on large ships, small ships, artillery, explosives, carriers, etc. or some other slice of the strategic pie beyond your admirals and their RNG traits.

======

- Interceptor Corvettes & Destroyers should beat TorpVettes & TorpStroyers
- Destroyer artillery should dodge-tank other artillery but fall to anything with M or S weapons
- Cruisers might be useful generalists but need to be paired with specialist ships to really shine
- Destroyers might have several very specialized configurations (anti-capital, anti-corvette, point defense, artillery, etc.)
- TorpVette needs to be a thing now that torpedoes are awesome
- I only build two kinds of Battleship normally so I'd be fine with just an Artillery configuration, and a Missile + Carrier configuration

 

[Harvey Gomez]

You can build all ship types from the beginning but only those ships that have sufficient engines will actually fly. Makes sense that in the early game only the smallest ships will fly as they are the easier to fit engines on. More research is needed to figure out how to configure an engine to work on larger vessels. And then there's the weapons. Weapons are powered by engines so on larger ships that have more weapons you need a more powerful engine to not only make the ship fly but also power it's weapons and eventually shields.

How is this any different than what we have right now?

 

[Losttruppen]

You can build all ship types from the beginning but only those ships that have sufficient engines will actually fly. Makes sense that in the early game only the smallest ships will fly as they are the easier to fit engines on. More research is needed to figure out how to configure an engine to work on larger vessels. And then there's the weapons. Weapons are powered by engines so on larger ships that have more weapons you need a more powerful engine to not only make the ship fly but also power it's weapons and eventually shields.

How is this any different than what we have right now?

I'm confused what you mean by this; you can build Battleships with T1 Thrusters and Power components and you certainly can't build them from the beginning as they require access to Tier 4 Engineering Research(18 or more Techs finished in that branch) and at a base cost of 16000.

 

[treb]

My proposal is very simple.

Unlock all ship types from the start. (Up to and including battleships, titans and juggernaughts are a different question)

Why?
1. It doesn't make sense the a civilisation that has figured out FTL can't think to build ships of different sizes for different purposes (RP benefits)
2. It allows for more diverse fleets from the start. (Assuming the proper balancing is done to encourage this)
3. I believe it allows for easier balancing between the ship sizes, since they can be built to fulfill roles in stellaris fleet combat from the start of the design process.

I would replace the current techs with "ship size" techs, representing an increased ability to build larger and more powerful vessels. Using proper costs for these new ships it could also serve as a means by which to reduce the size of late game fleets, by allow smaller yet more powerful fleets. Each ship size would basically unlock more slots.
Imagine an early game corvette having 1 weapon slot, and an early game battleship would have say 4. Later game corvettes might be more powerful than early game battleships.

An additional change which would fit in nicely with this, but is not necessary for the idea is to have the size of ships you can build depend on the size of your shipyards.

To add to this it makes no practical sense that a species wouldn't apply previous naval knowledge to a fleet of ships in space. I think a better way to model it is to have the ships available to begin and tactics would change as you unlock techs and weaponry. Early game might favor light nippy pocket battleships/battlecruisers that are adept at hit and run tactics supported by torpedo boat escorts and corvette screens and as tech advances you move onto more dedicated roles before you end with the full on dreadnought artillery battleships and carriers supported by cruisers and pickets.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Stellaris combat lacks working size-counters until the mid-game, with no ships to mount H,G,X weapons you can't run fun themed builds early (or encounter any fun AI fleets), and the result is huge swarms of identical corvettes fighting in a big ugly blob. Personally I hate how hard to read these fights are since the removal of the combat speed statistic that used to keep opposing fleets apart longer. Fights look very messy and confusing without any space between the aggressors, made so much worse when corvettes are the only ships in a fleet. The current situation is that identical early game builds result in identical wars every single game (to me at least).

Ideas:
Ship sizes not yet unlocked are limited in number based on your naval capacity (like how Titans or Offspring ships work)
Ship weapon slots not yet researched all have weaker prototype versions (like the Scout Wing)
Ship Construction as a Core component - increases ship base cost, stats and slots, with repeatable techs also increasing cost and stats (fewer, more expensive ships late game) - high tier ship Construction could require larger shipyards, could be a requirement for higher tier components, and could provide a qantity vs quality choice, each ship size technology also becomes a Ship Construction technology so new ship sizes are valuable no matter your ideal fleet composition.
AI personality types could start with themed fleet compositions

Result:
You can play like normal with just a corvette swarm, that'll probably be best and easiest to afford.
Or,
You can invest in a couple of carriers with scout wings (and little else) for your first war to hunt enemy corvettes, or build some anchorages for the naval capacity and try for a full early long-range battleship fleet (that can't hit moving targets but could be good for the alpha-strike if the enemy has a cruiser or two) or you could just add a simple siege frigate design with Prototype Launchers or Crude Torpedoes to help with starbases and any enemy battleships.

Adding Ship Construction as a Core component also means that ship costs scale the entire game along with your alloy income, so you don't have to build a dozen fleets that follow each other while bombarding performance and devastating the framerate.

 

[Luinthoron]

1. It doesn't make sense the a civilisation that has figured out FTL can't think to build ships of different sizes for different purposes (RP benefits)

I would replace the current techs with "ship size" techs, representing an increased ability to build larger and more powerful vessels.

So... Not being able to build ships of different sizes is a problem, so as a solution you propose ship sizes locked by tech?

 

[grommile]

Artillery should beat Carriers.

Artillery with good screening, sure.

Artillery without screens should be fed its own spleen by carriers.

 

[Jay Sherman]

So... Not being able to build ships of different sizes is a problem, so as a solution you propose ship sizes locked by tech?

I think the proposal is that the tech gives you a "bigger" battleship, with more slots, not that it gives you a ship class (e.g. unlocking battleships after unlocking cruisers) since those would be unlocked by default.

 

[Meneye]

I would've completely agreed with you earlier, but I think the empire objectives in 4.0 giving the tech to unlock ship types might make it less needed.

If the AI is going to have access to the same rewards objectives will give, there's a good chance we'll see more diverse fleet comps regardless.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

To add to this it makes no practical sense that a species wouldn't apply previous naval knowledge to a fleet of ships in space.

I think the logic behind the techs is that you need to unlock the capability to build ships that big that actually work in space, not that it hasn't occured to anyone that maybe you could build bigger ships.

 

[HFY]

I think the logic behind the techs is that you need to unlock the capability to build ships that big that actually work in space, not that it hasn't occured to anyone that maybe you could build bigger ships.

Might be nice if some levels of armor material unlocked a new hull, like they do for colony construction slots.

 

[Jay Sherman]

I think the logic behind the techs is that you need to unlock the capability to build ships that big that actually work in space, not that it hasn't occured to anyone that maybe you could build bigger ships.

Empire sees the first leviathan: "you're gonna need a bigger boat"

 

[treb]

I think the logic behind the techs is that you need to unlock the capability to build ships that big that actually work in space, not that it hasn't occured to anyone that maybe you could build bigger ships.

the issue there is wouldn't the then biggest ship you can build be the battleship?

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

My proposal is very simple.

Unlock all ship types from the start. (Up to and including battleships, titans and juggernaughts are a different question)

Why?
1. It doesn't make sense the a civilisation that has figured out FTL can't think to build ships of different sizes for different purposes (RP benefits)
2. It allows for more diverse fleets from the start. (Assuming the proper balancing is done to encourage this)
3. I believe it allows for easier balancing between the ship sizes, since they can be built to fulfill roles in stellaris fleet combat from the start of the design process.

I would replace the current techs with "ship size" techs, representing an increased ability to build larger and more powerful vessels. Using proper costs for these new ships it could also serve as a means by which to reduce the size of late game fleets, by allow smaller yet more powerful fleets. Each ship size would basically unlock more slots.
Imagine an early game corvette having 1 weapon slot, and an early game battleship would have say 4. Later game corvettes might be more powerful than early game battleships.

An additional change which would fit in nicely with this, but is not necessary for the idea is to have the size of ships you can build depend on the size of your shipyards.

I'm not sure about this, FTL travel is THE holy grail of sciences if it's ever achieved, and if we're going to be realistic then under that logic if a species has figured out FTL then why couldn't they just start buidling a Dyson Sphere right away? One may argue that building a Dyson Sphere might be more achievable than FTL.

 

[treb]

I'm not sure about this, FTL travel is THE holy grail of sciences if it's ever achieved, and if we're going to be realistic then under that logic if a species has figured out FTL then why couldn't they just start buidling a Dyson Sphere right away? One may argue that building a Dyson Sphere might be more achievable than FTL.

honestly from what we know something like a Alcubierre drive is more practically obtainable than a Dyson sphere, i mean the current models suggest something like 700kg to a jupiter mass of exotic matter is required to create a warp bubble, wheras a Dyson sphere is lightly gong to take multiple solar masses of conventional matter to create and upkeep

 

[klingonadmiral]

Empire sees the first leviathan: "you're gonna need a bigger boat"

The best way to kill most Leviathans is to swarm them with Torpedo Corvettes, funnily enough.