Won't be able to achieve much as long as the devs idea of picket ship is "pure PD".
Stellaris Dev Diary #79: Ship Component & Balance Changes
- Thread starter Wizzington
- Start date
-
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.
I'd love to see high-tech hull sections that give additional component slots, relative to the low-tech versions. Like a better Destroyer hull with a second Auxiliary slot, or a corvette with one more small defense slot.
I still have brutal difficulty with economy management. i dont know how the AI manages to have massive fleets with plenty plenty of research, minerals, credits, etc coming in. I've seen many an empire have far greater fleets with seemingly a much smaller amount of territory. If someone could point me in the direction of tutorials meant for retards like me I'd appreciate it.
They should cost the same mineral-wise. The problem is that Stellaris assumes that industrial capacity is available in basically endless quantities - not an unreasonable assumption, given the setting - and raw materials, represented by minerals, is the bottleneck on production, which is inconsistent with scaling the mineral cost of newer components.
Instead, make components cost energy as well, representing the amount of processing required to produce it, and scale that instead. This not only makes more sense, but would make energy more important towards the end game, making things like Dyson spheres more important.
This could then be further developed, for example by using energy to hurry production.
The issue is a lack of depth - meaningful choices. Choosing between four different hull sizes is meaningless when one hull size is strictly superior. Choosing between five different weapons types is meaningless when three of them are worthless. Stellaris presents the player with lots of things to click on, but little in the way of meaningful choice.
Components already cost energy, namely the energy it takes to run a mine.
Their change to cut down on tier improvements difference is a good step in the right direction of having tech/research matter as well, while keeping the energy cost the same means you still can't overbalance weaponry & shield/armor on a ship.
I still don't understand why there is only one line of combat computers per ship type. Why not let the player decide whether they want to design their destroyers as picket, artillery, or frontline vessels?
As far as I know, PDX refuses even acknowledging this question.
I heard they used to exist but they were removed to enforce that each ship has a particular job.
They used to have an offensive & defensive computer with different stats, but they were all the same options for all ships. Thus, if you wanted fire rate on your artillery ship, you needed an offensive computer and it would charge in to soak all damage.
I'm trying to write down all possible tactics for ship 'designs' (artillery, broadside, carrier, torpedo boat,...) and maybe build a mod for those specific ones per ship size.
Wouldn't it be plausible to make the targeting algorithm more 'optimal', the higher it's equipped AI is?
The problem is that the "optimal" solution was actually bad, because "shoot all your guns at the one that produces the highest expected damage" means ships keep changing target and not removing enemy guns from the battle.
What are the chances of the combat overhaul changing this so that each weapon can target different ships?
...I actually think I would love to see idea standing behind that type of algorithm.
It's in the defines.
Basically, the ship works out the expected damage (accounting for evasion, armour, and weapon bonuses) for every target it can reach for every gun it has, and shoots all the guns it has at the one target that produced the best outcome for any gun. (Weighted by other factors like the size difference between the ship and target, range to target, and the last target it shot at)
There's quite a large weighting in the system for bonus shield damage (especially because of armour), so weapons with bonus damage to shield tend to be the one that produces the highest target score and so direct all the fire. Which means as soon as the shields on one target run out they find a new one that has shields. Regenerating shields make this even worse because the old target gets loads of shields back because it isn't being shot any more.
In 1.8 the weighting for the last target the ship shot at will be increased so ships should stick to their target more even with weapons with shield damage bonus.
XL weapons are exempt and pick their own target, and also pick the target the ship points at (though not necessarily what all the other guns shoot at).
This was also why Kinetic Battery/Artillery was the best anti-shield weapon to use, because it fires much more slowly than plasma and doesn't take over the target preference until its turn to fire, a ship with that gets to fire two volleys of plasma at a target, and because of focus fire that usually means it gets to do proper hull damage.