Stellaris Dev Diary #271 - Ready? Fight!
We first discussed the combat balancing back in Dev Diary #257, and then provided some more information on our early work at PDXCon. Since then, weve done more experimentation and gathered some feedback before making more iterative changes. When we started thinking about doing the Combat Rebalancing experiment, we had to decide what it was, and perhaps just as importantly, what it was not.
We decided that the primary goals were to:
Some of the problems that we identified with fleet combat in Stellaris included:
The biggest changes include:
The roles for different ship sizes should become more valuable. The introduction of size based damage make Frigates and Cruisers potentially very dangerous to Battleships and other large ships. Frigates, however, are very vulnerable without a screen of Corvettes to protect them, Destroyers are the masters of Point Defense in Screen or cutting down those Corvettes and Frigates using the Gunship or Brawler roles. Artillery ships are vulnerable if something closes under the range of their guns, but with a screen that engages the enemy further away, they are free to blast away. Every ship role has a counter somewhere in the system, and mixed fleets that cover for deficiencies are thus generally much more difficult to hard-counter.
If you prefer to listen to a good summary, we have MordredViking here explaining everything using sounds made by flapping meat at us. [previewyoutube=VBqmTZk52Ds;full][/previewyoutube]
A Torpedo Frigate
Neutron Launchers and Missiles Cruiser
Different number of Aux Utility slots on the sterns.
That's going to hurt if it hits that Titan.
Shield and Armor Hardening counter Shield and Armor Penetration.
Good, I was hoping you would. As of the posting of this dev diary, the Stellaris 3.6 Orion Open Beta should be live on Steam, and will run until the end of the month.
As this build is still in hot and in development, expect to see many placeholder icons and TODO text here and there. Numbers are not necessarily final, and well be looking at data gathered from the Open Beta to potentially make additional changes. Known Issues:
[ 2022-10-13 11:00:50 CET ] [ Original post ]
written by Eladrin
Hello again!
This weeks topic is the combat rebalancing planned for the Stellaris 3.6 Orion update. Well begin with an exploration of the goals and intended scope of the changes, and then go into detail regarding what weve done.
Scope and Intentions
We first discussed the combat balancing back in Dev Diary #257, and then provided some more information on our early work at PDXCon. Since then, weve done more experimentation and gathered some feedback before making more iterative changes. When we started thinking about doing the Combat Rebalancing experiment, we had to decide what it was, and perhaps just as importantly, what it was not.
Goals
We decided that the primary goals were to:
- Shake up the meta and improve general space combat, while maintaining a limited scope.
- Provide benefits to having mixed fleets rather than unihull.
- Using the 3D Assets that we have, improve counterplay and ship design options.
Problems
Some of the problems that we identified with fleet combat in Stellaris included:
- Alpha strike artillery battleships dominate the late game. We added a bit of rock-paper-scissors when we improved Strike Craft, but due to the way repeatable technologies interact with combat, eventually all that matters is who has longer range.
- Disengagement mechanics further encourage overkill.
- Ships like Destroyers and Cruisers fall out of effectiveness almost immediately. The Point Defense niche of Destroyers isnt very valuable, and almost anything a Cruiser can do, a Battleship can do better.
- Command Limits dont really do their intended jobs.
- Doomstacks arent fun.
So What Did You Do?
The biggest changes include:
- Ship Roles can now be selected to auto-design ships that actually fulfill certain roles, such as Artillery, Brawler, Torpedo, and so on. If you do not possess any weapons that fulfill the selected role, itll do its best with what you have.
- Torpedoes and select other weapons now gain a multiplicative damage bonus based on the size of the target.
- Missiles have been moved out of the G slot back into S and M.
- Energy Torpedoes such as Proton and Neutron Launchers have been changed into G class weapons with a minimum range. Damage has been adjusted to be balanced as a Torpedo class weapon, and like the new Torpedoes, they deal increased damage to larger targets. Unlike standard torpedoes, they remain instant hit weapons for now.
- A new ship size called the Frigate, an advanced Corvette frame that delivers torpedoes, but is slower and less evasive. It's unlocked with the Torpedo technology.
- Added a minimum range to all Large weapons except Lasers
- Note: Currently ships do not yet back off if all weapons are unable to fire due to range.
- Strike Craft no longer intercept missiles, but will continue to fight each other.
- Flak Batteries now more strongly counter Strike Craft, while Point Defense now more strongly counter missiles and torpedoes. Strike Craft are more reliant on Shields, Missiles and Torpedoes are more reliant on Armor. Due to their ability to bypass shields, Strike Craft are very effective against other Strike Craft.
- Ship combat computers now ignore certain weapons for desired range purposes, and base their desired distance on the actual loadout of the ship. "Swarm" and "Torpedo" behavior will charge in, "Picket" and "Line" behaviors will attempt to stay at the range of their median range weapons, and "Artillery" and "Carrier" will try to stay at the range of their longest ranged weapons.This generally increases the desire for ships to remain at range if possible.
- Ships now get a limited number of Disengagement Opportunities per combat. All current drives provide 1 disengagement roll (except for Psi Jump Drives, which provide 2) once the ship takes hull damage below its disengagement threshold, and the Hit and Run war doctrine grants all of your ships an additional attempt. Civilian ships set to evasive will continue to try to disengage with each hit.
- Some sources of Evasion have been replaced with other effects.
- Everything else changed. Everything we know is wrong. Panic, and know despair.
TLDR; ELI5
The roles for different ship sizes should become more valuable. The introduction of size based damage make Frigates and Cruisers potentially very dangerous to Battleships and other large ships. Frigates, however, are very vulnerable without a screen of Corvettes to protect them, Destroyers are the masters of Point Defense in Screen or cutting down those Corvettes and Frigates using the Gunship or Brawler roles. Artillery ships are vulnerable if something closes under the range of their guns, but with a screen that engages the enemy further away, they are free to blast away. Every ship role has a counter somewhere in the system, and mixed fleets that cover for deficiencies are thus generally much more difficult to hard-counter.
If you prefer to listen to a good summary, we have MordredViking here explaining everything using sounds made by flapping meat at us. [previewyoutube=VBqmTZk52Ds;full][/previewyoutube]
Pictures Are Worth 1,000 Words, Right?
A Torpedo Frigate
Neutron Launchers and Missiles Cruiser
Different number of Aux Utility slots on the sterns.
That's going to hurt if it hits that Titan.
Shield and Armor Hardening counter Shield and Armor Penetration.
I Want To Try It and Provide Constructive Feedback!
Good, I was hoping you would. As of the posting of this dev diary, the Stellaris 3.6 Orion Open Beta should be live on Steam, and will run until the end of the month.
Please note that the 3.6 "Orion" Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.
Don't forget to turn off your mods, they will break.
As this build is still in hot and in development, expect to see many placeholder icons and TODO text here and there. Numbers are not necessarily final, and well be looking at data gathered from the Open Beta to potentially make additional changes. Known Issues:
- Many placeholder icons and some placeholder text.
- All new text will only be in English for the duration of the Open Beta.
- Ships do not currently back away if they are trapped within the minimum range of their weapons.
- Fleet Combat Rebalancing
- Ascension Path changes (for those of you that have Utopia)
- Other 3.6 Feedback
- And we have a thread for general discussion of the Open Beta.
Stellaris
Paradox Development Studio
Paradox Interactive
2016-05-09
Strategy Simulation Singleplayer Multiplayer
GameBillet
8.91 /
€
Game News Posts 537
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
Very Positive
(119848 reviews)
https://www.stellaris.com/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/281990 
The Game includes VR Support
Linux [153.28 M]
Stellaris: Infinite Frontiers eBook
Stellaris: Plantoids Species Pack
Stellaris: Leviathans Story Pack
Stellaris: Utopia
Stellaris: Nova Edition Upgrade Pack
Stellaris: Galaxy Edition Upgrade Pack
Stellaris: Anniversary Portraits
Stellaris: Synthetic Dawn
Stellaris: Apocalypse
Stellaris: Humanoids Species Pack
Stellaris: Distant Stars Story Pack
Stellaris: MegaCorp
Stellaris: Ancient Relics Story Pack
Stellaris: Lithoids Species Pack
Stellaris: Federations
Stellaris: Necroids Species Pack
Stellaris: Nemesis
Stellaris: Aquatics Species Pack
Stellaris: Overlord
Stellaris: Toxoids Species Pack
Stellaris: First Contact Story Pack
Stellaris: Galactic Paragons
Stellaris: Astral Planes
Stellaris: Expansion Subscription
Stellaris: The Machine Age
Stellaris: Cosmic Storms
Stellaris: Grand Archive
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Stellaris: Season 08 - Expansion Pass
Explore a vast galaxy full of wonder! Paradox Development Studio, makers of the Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis series presents Stellaris, an evolution of the grand strategy genre with space exploration at its core.
Featuring deep strategic gameplay, a rich and enormously diverse selection of alien races and emergent storytelling, Stellaris has engaging challenging gameplay that rewards interstellar exploration as you traverse, discover, interact and learn more about the multitude of species you will encounter during your travels.
Etch your name across the cosmos by forging a galactic empire; colonizing remote planets and integrating alien civilizations. Will you expand through war alone or walk the path of diplomacy to achieve your goals?
Main Feature
Featuring deep strategic gameplay, a rich and enormously diverse selection of alien races and emergent storytelling, Stellaris has engaging challenging gameplay that rewards interstellar exploration as you traverse, discover, interact and learn more about the multitude of species you will encounter during your travels.
Etch your name across the cosmos by forging a galactic empire; colonizing remote planets and integrating alien civilizations. Will you expand through war alone or walk the path of diplomacy to achieve your goals?
Main Feature
- Deep & Varied Exploration.
- Enormous procedural galaxies, containing thousands of planets.
- Explore Anomalies with your heroic Scientist leaders.
- Infinitely varied races through customization and procedural generation.
- Advanced Diplomacy system worthy of a Grand Strategy Game.
- Ship Designer based on a vast array of technologies.
- Stunning space visuals.
MINIMAL SETUP
- OS: Ubuntu 20.04 x64
- Processor: Intel iCore i3-530 or AMD FX-6350Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 or AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870 (1GB VRAM). or AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 or Intel HD Graphics 4600Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 12 GB available space
- OS: Ubuntu 20.04 x64
- Processor: Intel iCore i5-3570K or AMD Ryzen 5 2400GMemory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1GB VRAM) or AMD Radeon R7 370 (2 GB VRAM)Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 12 GB available space
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