What's wrong with cruisers?

[klingonadmiral]

Fighters will be hard countered by destroyers, leaving the carriers vulnerable to the destroyers L weapons. Unless the Carriers are covered by Cruisers, which will need battleships to take them out, unless the Vettes get to the battleships first.

Destroyers are not as much of a hardcounter as one might think. Ten rounds of 80 Artillery Destroyers vs 20 Hybrid Carriers, same fleet cap and about the same resource cost for each fleet:

R1: Carriers hold the field. 3 carriers remain on the field at the end of battle while 9 retreated. 19 destroyers were able the retreat. Decisive carrier win.
R2: Destroyers hold the field. 45 destroyers remain standing, while 11 carriers were able to retreat. Resource losses end up about even while the destroyers would almost certainly take the higher war exhaustion. Slight destroyer victory.
R3: Destroyers hold the field with 48 standing. 12 carriers retreat. Like in R2, slight destroyer victory.
R4: Destroyers hold the field with 38 standing. 11 carriers retreat. Destroyers have won the battle but the carriers have won the resource war. Inconclusive.
R5: Destroyers hold the field with 46 stading. 11 carriers retreat. Slight destroyer victory.
R6: Destroyers hold the field with 42 standing. 11 carriers retreat. Slight destroyer victory.
R7: Destroyers hold the field with 46 standing. 9 carriers retreat. In say this is a clear destroyer victory.
R8: Destroyers hold the field with 42 standing. 8 carriers retreat. Clear destroyer victory.
R9: Destroyers hold the field with 45 standing. 14 carriers retreat. Inconclusive.
R10: Destroyers hold the field with 49 standing. 8 carriers retreat. Clear destroyer victory.

For a hardcounter I expect more than only sometimes coming out of a battle with what you were supposed to counter with a clear strategic advantage.

I'd actually not be surprised if carrier cruisers with scout wings are much more of a hardcounter. Far superior PD and damage output than destroyers, though ofc they also get hit more often.

EDIT:

Nope, carrier cruisers get absolutely wrecked.

 

[Akela]

I don't want to see missiles be just an early game choice, any more than they already are and certainly not like they once were. Missiles need to be viable all the way through the game, so designing in obsolescence isn't really a great option, in my mind.

'Designing in obsolescence' isn't quite what I was trying to suggest there. Marauder Missiles with no buffs (one T4 tech) would be equivalent to Gauss Cannons plus T4 sensors, combat computers and anything else I've forgotten - and superior to Gauss Cannons without all those extras. Essentially, each time you go up a tech tier you only have to research one tech and you're fully competitive damage-wise with the other weapons at that level.

There definitely are potential problems that need to be addressed: Proton Launchers, Kinetic Artillery and XL slots complicate things a bit (although there's no actual reason we couldn't make an equivalent for missiles), and I'm not sure how I'd handle repeating techs. There's also the aesthetic side - people who like missiles for thematic reasons might not be happy with them lacking any upgrade path. We're straying from the topic a bit, though, and this was more of a 'hey, this might be worth considering' idea than a 'here's the perfect solution' one, so I'll leave this short as well.

 

[Red Earth]

Anyone else irked by the best strike craft only having 80 evasion when corvettes can have 90?

Why is having a balanced fleet a desirable thing? With every other field of technology, it's fine that later techs make earlier ones obsolete - no one wants to find a way to make red lasers competitive with gamma lasers. What makes ship hull techs different?

Having played Master of Orion 2 for many years, I'm used to bigger ships being just plain better. However, having played Master of Orion 1 where bringing 400 ships with one gun was a viable alternative to one ship with 400 guns, I'm disappointed when there's only one viable ship size.

Perhaps if there was an overall decrease in dps? So that combat inevitably devolved to CQC, then ships/weapons that excel at medium or short range would have more of a role. As it is, artillery is everything.

I assume when a weapon with more damage than a targets shields/armour/hull hits it goes through them all. Perhaps if it didn't do overkill onto the next defence type.

The problem here is that corvettes are already hitting the cap for evasion and destroyers are easily able to get close to it.

My solution was to remove all tracking bonuses, replacing most of them with to-hit bonuses starting from a lower base accuracy. Tracking is then only a function of the weapon itself, that makes it much easier to balance weapon size vs. target size.

I would caution against that if the goal is to give cruisers a place in the fleet, as one of the only things a cruiser can have that a battleship can't is a picket combat role and computer, allowing for about +30 more tracking compared to a battleship.

This is the root of the disfavour for cruisers right now, they don't have enough evasion to be protected at all from L size or even XL size weapons, and only the same slot composition as destroyers. 2 destroyers can be set up as 2L/2M which is also the best a single cruiser can do. (I also agree that, in particular, destroyers need to lose that L slot)

With sensor tech being available for all ships and the top giving +15 tracking, any evasion less than 15 is basically 0.

For the current situation, I think instead of hard limiting slot sizes to ships, you should look at Guided weapons more closely. Have Missiles be the ultimate in anti-corvette, with 100% accuracy and tracking. Have Torpedos be the pinnacle of damage, being able to devastate large ships or stations. Buff strike fighter range to be system wide, so it can be the ultimate alpha strike. Now there is an option for every strategy that is better then its counterpart, but can be countered by PD. Now your torpvettes can slaughter artillery BBs, Destroyers or missiles cruisers counter corvettes, while torp cruisers have a good matchup against Carrier Battleships.

Technically nothing needs more than 90 tracking since that's the max evasion. Also I'd prefer other bonuses not become irrelevant due to base stats being at maximum. 60 tracking would be enough to reach max when coupled with a picket computer, which would allow for the cruiser to have never miss missiles.

 

[Tamwin5]

I think the problem really is that the dynamic of PD beats Guided beats Guns beats PD can't work whilst PD is implemented the way it is now.

The issue is that PD is a hard counter, so if it achieves critical mass and you bring guided weapons you inflict much fewer casualties than being on the losing end of either of the other two sides of the triangle. Which means that if PD is at all good guided weapons are always the wrong choice, because the consequences for betting on them and losing are always worse than just using a gun armed fleet.

Hard counters in a system of otherwise soft counters can't fit in with the rest of the dynamic the same as everything else, because they're too binary in effectiveness. Either they work absolutely or they don't work at all. But Stellaris doesn't have room for them to be off doing their own thing in a corner, because there are too limited a range of outcomes.

The problem is that currently the punishment for losing is much worse than the reward for winning the gamble. My proposal is to buff the reward significantly. You'll still be countered just as hard when you are countered, but if you win you can win BIG. Even if you buff the damage of guided weapons a ton, like 10x, it doesn't make a guided meta, but a PD meta, where everyone has to have PD on the off chance the opponent brings in a couple of Guided ships. If a ship with guided weapons can beat a fleet twice as big using only guns, guided will be useful. But the existence of PD will prevent it from ever being dominant (unless PD gets nerfed or can be countered somehow).

The other solution I saw in this thread that I quite liked was to make +tracking be a modifier on the base stats of a weapon, rather than a flat bonus. This would prevent L slot from being very effective, and basically completely prevent XL slots from hitting corvettes.

 

[Dragatus]

Anyone else irked by the best strike craft only having 80 evasion when corvettes can have 90?

I wasn't until you mentioned it and now I am.

 

[Balamut2227]

I wasn't until you mentioned it and now I am.

Evasion for corvets and evasion for strike craft are two diffirent things because regular weapon kinds can't hit strike craft at all.

 

[Dragatus]

Can't hit or won't target? Regardless, from what I've heard PD weapons will still shoot at spaceships if there are no missiles or strike craft in play, so the tracking is the same thing and by extension evasion must be as well.

 

[GloatingSwine]

The problem is that currently the punishment for losing is much worse than the reward for winning the gamble. My proposal is to buff the reward significantly. You'll still be countered just as hard when you are countered, but if you win you can win BIG. Even if you buff the damage of guided weapons a ton, like 10x, it doesn't make a guided meta, but a PD meta, where everyone has to have PD on the off chance the opponent brings in a couple of Guided ships. If a ship with guided weapons can beat a fleet twice as big using only guns, guided will be useful. But the existence of PD will prevent it from ever being dominant (unless PD gets nerfed or can be countered somehow).

That's still a degenerate system though, if the consequence of having guided slots and meeting PD is terrible, and the consequence of having no PD and meeting guided slots is also terrible, then the consequence of having PD and only meeting gun slots needs to be equally terrible otherwise there are no choices, you bring the threshold level of PD always.

The aim is to put interesting choices before the player, if one answer is always right then you haven't done that.

That's the problem with fleet design right now, there are answers which are always right.

I would caution against that if the goal is to give cruisers a place in the fleet, as one of the only things a cruiser can have that a battleship can't is a picket combat role and computer, allowing for about +30 more tracking compared to a battleship.
With sensor tech being available for all ships and the top giving +15 tracking, any evasion less than 15 is basically 0.

I also removed all but L and XL gun slots from Battleships except for hangar modules.

Though I probably left some tracking on computers, with cruisers having less than destroyers and corvettes not getting any (I used the one-per-ship model because that was always better for differentiating them).

Sensor tech no longer got +Tracking, it got +Chance to hit.

(All of this is lost to a hard drive erase and reinstall now, but I also rebalanced all weapon damages to cut down alpha damage, change the weapon bonuses completely, and increased all ship HP to allow disengagement to persist as a mechanic into the later game instead of everything getting one shot and never getting disengage chances).

 

[Millbot]

There are several issues that dog cruisers.

-Corvettes are probably too good for their value. Sure you hit a point where battleships end up being the bulk of the fleet because of their hp and L & XL slots. Problem is it certainly feels like the value of corvettes ensures that in most cases mono-corvette fleets or corvettes fleets with some destroyer support can carry you until you can field battleships.
-The large customization options actually work against trying to have multiple hull type fleets. Cruisers don't really have any strong setups that are just unique to them so some other hull type can just be kitted with components the player wants. If the devs ever revisit ship combat, they should look into restricting a few components so that only one hull type can bring it, so that they're are some incentives to build mix fleets.
-Penetration weapons are definitely an issue. IIRC cruisers don't exactly have enough hp where it's worth bringing them out against fleets kitted with penetration weapons. This is also why you get the current meta where it's either mono-battleships or mono-corvettes. You either hope your ships are beefy enough to do significant damage and bail out or you hope they can dodge long enough to do significant damage before getting one shot.

Sure the third issue is almost a none issue in single player. I'm not sure the AI every bothers will builds setup to render both shields & armor irrelevant. The problem is the second is does crop up in single player. That issue crops up in that there just isn't a point sinking resources into cruisers, outside of rp, since other hull types can do what cruisers offer and that the player is either better of building more corvettes to upgrade, build some destroyers that can be good supports with the upgrade option or saved for battleships and the occasional Titan (Titan probably has the best design concept because it brings stuff to the table that other hull types can't).

 

[klingonadmiral]

A fourth problem of cruisers is their survivability. Corvettes become pretty quickly something you can absorb rather serious losses with as they are dirt cheap, and sooner or later Destroyers will be largely the same. BBs are never something you'd want to lose in great quantities until the endgame, but on the other hand BBs are really, really good at retreating instead of blowing up.

Cruisers will take massive losses because they'll be hit by pretty much everything in the universe while they don't have the HP pool to take such hits with some success.

One idea might be to give cruisers a mix of M- and L-support slots.

(Titan probably has the best design concept because it brings stuff to the table that other hull types can't).

Now if only they'd fix the AI of admiral ships =/

 

[Tamwin5]

That's still a degenerate system though, if the consequence of having guided slots and meeting PD is terrible, and the consequence of having no PD and meeting guided slots is also terrible, then the consequence of having PD and only meeting gun slots needs to be equally terrible otherwise there are no choices, you bring the threshold level of PD always.

The aim is to put interesting choices before the player, if one answer is always right then you haven't done that.

That's the problem with fleet design right now, there are answers which are always right.

Currently, the supposed counter to artillery Battleships, Corvettes, don't counter them. Hence there is always a right answer: only build Battleships. For my suggestion, even if the counter is poor, it still exists and is better. Furthermore, PD isn't a have it or don't, it's granular. So the rock paper scissors would be complicated. Heavy Guided would beat light PD, because even with some shot down the guided would have a higher DPS. And if you invest heavily enough into PD to ensure that even a full guided fleet is on even footing with you (not even the fully counter threshold), you would lose to a fleet with no guided and less PD.

Also in Stellaris, you can retrofit ships. So when an enemy is invading with a PD heavy fleet, you could just drop ALL your PD and have a significant advantage. If they have a PD light fleet you could either go for no PD/Guided or Heavy Guided. The size of hull for a ship also matters in terms of what roles they can fulfill (well). Corvettes are good for Guided or PD, Destroyers are good for PD or Guns, and Battleships are very good at Guns or Strike craft(if those are on par). Cruisers can be kitted out to fill any role.

But even if my suggestion fails at that one task (making a rock paper scissors option) it succeeds at another (preventing Mono-Fleets). The Meta would be a moderate amount of PD (likely on corvettes or Destroyers, but possibly on cruisers), and a majority of Battleships. You'd have capital ships and escorts. So even in the worse case, it's an improvement.

 

[Deinhardt]

Since cruisers are in a odd spot and ground combat is boring at the moment. Cant we try to fix two problems with one stone? Hear me out here.

Currently ground combat is a dull part of the game. Spam armies and tidal wave drop them whereever you want to conquer things. Now I imagine that invading a planet is a logistical and strategical nightmare and challenge for anyone wanting to do such things. Even landing operations in our world are a huge undertaking and are often a coinflip away from complete failure.

So I was thinking. Why dont we create a new section for cruisers (and maybe battleships) and/or modify the hangar and carrier sections aswell? Make cruisers with such sections a necessity for ground landing operations and ontop of that, give them a new Weapon module, which they can use in space combat. "Boarding Torpedos", "Teleporting Boarding parties". You get the drift.

The idea here is to give cruisers the means to make an impact outside of space combat and aswell give them a unique way of fighting in space. The Launching torpedos may not directly kill a ship, but would seriously hamper the fighting effectiveness of a targeted ship. Boarding parties could stop enemy battleships from using their X weapons for example or extend the recharge time.

This is just a idea to add to the game and I doubt it would fix the overall dillemma that is facing the space combat aspect of this. As many other users have pointed out. Some weapon slots are simply superior to others with how the game works currently.

Support sections could add more reasons to build cruisers in the game or give them a reason to exist atleast. They should be the working horse of your fleet. The jack of all trades. The backbone of your fleet.

Overall it seems though that evasion, tracking, speed and weapons range are things that need to be looked at more closely though and rebalanced for all the different weapon types. The long range shooting meta is a fun aspect, but clearly all forms of space combat should be viable.

Maybe they need to add a system of "light" and "heavy" attack, like there is in hearts of iron. I know that this is theoretically in the game with the evasion and tracking mechanics, but those can get off the charts so quickly that even your X-Weapon hits a fast moving corvet point blank. Generally I think that the space combat is in need of a big overhaul or atleast some major changes and hard caps maybe.

 

[Dragatus]

One thing that could be done in regard to gun balance is to push them into two directions: alpha strike and sustained damage. If a gun is oriented towards alpha strike it'll have higher range and higher damage, but also a much longer cooldowns so that it actually has a lower DPS. By using them you'd be making a gamble that you can quickly destroy the enemy before the lower DPS starts taking it's toll.

Sustained damage weapons would be the exact opposite. Lower range, lower damage, but also much lower cooldowns so that ultimately they have higher DPS. When using these weapons you'd be making a gamble that you can survive long enough for your superior DPS to turn the tide of battle.

I envision lasers and mass drivers as balanced weapons that sit somewhere in the middle. Autocannons and plasma could be sustained damage weapons while proton/neutron launchers and kinetic battery/artillery would be alpha strike oriented instead of being strictly better as they are now. And the X slot weapons could be alpha strike times two.

 

[Tamwin5]

Since cruisers are in a odd spot and ground combat is boring at the moment. Cant we try to fix two problems with one stone? Hear me out here.

Currently ground combat is a dull part of the game. Spam armies and tidal wave drop them whereever you want to conquer things. Now I imagine that invading a planet is a logistical and strategical nightmare and challenge for anyone wanting to do such things. Even landing operations in our world are a huge undertaking and are often a coinflip away from complete failure.

So I was thinking. Why dont we create a new section for cruisers (and maybe battleships) and/or modify the hangar and carrier sections aswell? Make cruisers with such sections a necessity for ground landing operations and ontop of that, give them a new Weapon module, which they can use in space combat. "Boarding Torpedos", "Teleporting Boarding parties". You get the drift.

The idea here is to give cruisers the means to make an impact outside of space combat and aswell give them a unique way of fighting in space. The Launching torpedos may not directly kill a ship, but would seriously hamper the fighting effectiveness of a targeted ship. Boarding parties could stop enemy battleships from using their X weapons for example or extend the recharge time.

This is just a idea to add to the game and I doubt it would fix the overall dillemma that is facing the space combat aspect of this. As many other users have pointed out. Some weapon slots are simply superior to others with how the game works currently.

Support sections could add more reasons to build cruisers in the game or give them a reason to exist atleast. They should be the working horse of your fleet. The jack of all trades. The backbone of your fleet.

Overall it seems though that evasion, tracking, speed and weapons range are things that need to be looked at more closely though and rebalanced for all the different weapon types. The long range shooting meta is a fun aspect, but clearly all forms of space combat should be viable.

Maybe they need to add a system of "light" and "heavy" attack, like there is in hearts of iron. I know that this is theoretically in the game with the evasion and tracking mechanics, but those can get off the charts so quickly that even your X-Weapon hits a fast moving corvet point blank. Generally I think that the space combat is in need of a big overhaul or atleast some major changes and hard caps maybe.

For a ground overhaul, I could totally see strike craft becoming a major factor, adding in an "air layer" where fighters can duel. Adding a Boarding torpedo slot for Guided or a Teleporter Auxiliary slot is also an interesting idea. I image that being boarded would be an increase in the cool down of all weapons, and a decrease in disengagement chance. Since it would be a per-ship debut, it would be most effective against Battleships, as they are 8 fleet cap in one ship. Giant ships, such as Titans or a Collusus would have an innate resistance to boarding, requiring ~4 times the amount of boarding for the same effect. Unfortunately, Corvettes would be the best for boarding with that system, as they have the highest density of both Guided and Auxiliary slots per fleet cap. You could restrict those options to only be for Cruisers or above, or perhaps instead make boarding be done using craft, and use a Hanger slot.

Ultimately, while your ideas do have some merit, I don't think they will accomplish the goal of giving Cruisers real purpose.

 

[GloatingSwine]

One thing that could be done in regard to gun balance is to push them into two directions: alpha strike and sustained damage. If a gun is oriented towards alpha strike it'll have higher range and higher damage, but also a much longer cooldowns so that it actually has a lower DPS. By using them you'd be making a gamble that you can quickly destroy the enemy before the lower DPS starts taking it's toll..

With the disengage mechanics the way they are, alpha will always be better than DPS unless it's really rubbish. That's the real benefit of the super high damage weapons already, the fact that they actually destroy the enemy ships, denying them the retreat and reinforce and usually functionally winning a whole war with the first battle (always been a problem).

"High alpha" just shouldn't exist, no ship should lose more than 10% of its hull from any weapon with a meaningful chance to hit it.

 

[Cordane]

The equivalent for S slot are PD. There are also auto cannons, which are small slot only.
The equivalent for M slot are Guided
The equivalent for L slot are Hanger

If you want to make Guided more viable late game, buff torpedos.

Point Defense and Autocannons are not advanced versions of a Mass Driver – they’re specialists that do at least comparable, and usually significantly, better damage in their specialty to the base weapon, but far inferior damage outside of their niche with worse range to boot. I pointed out Kinetic Launchers as advanced weapons because they are clearly better than L-slot Mass Drivers (e.g., Kinetic Artillery vs. Gauss Cannon). Against a full-shields, no-armor base Cruiser with Tier 5 utilities, the KA chews through it in about 2/3 of the time for the GC; flipping it around to all-armor still has the KA getting it done in ¾ of the time. Oh, and it’s doing it at greater range and in bigger chunks (to avoid disengagement). The equivalent for an S-slot would be something firing out to range 60, with either a similar bonus pattern to KA or even one less gimped versus armor. Sure, the advanced options are costlier in power, resources, and techs, but the limitations of slots and fleet capacity become more important later on.

Missiles are not advanced options for M-slots – they are clearly specialists relative to other M-slot direct-fire weapons. They take advantage of defensive configurations in their favor (e.g., no PD, mostly shields) and fail hard when defenses are against them (e.g., relatively heavy PD, little to no shields). Hangars still have difficulties in operating efficiently due to inbound flight times (also shared by Missiles), turn radii, and Flak, and I’d be hard pressed to choose whether they act as a cousin to GW or they are their own beast.

If guided weapons are their own type, then where is their Kinetic Artillery-equivalent? You might say Torpedoes, but being slower and less evasive than Missiles means they take more damage (even relative to their higher hull points) passing through a PD envelope. They don’t have as good of range and they aren’t much use against anything smaller than a Cruiser, along with higher power cost. Their advantages are in burst damage and their versus-armor bonus, which are big, but in all, I think it points them out as being more specialist than an advanced option. You suggested buffing them, but where do you apply those buffs? Individual survivability might work in the current environment, but is that enough?

I might be willing to look at Swarmer Missiles as an advanced M-slot option only because of their immense survivability vs. PD, but only if I was to accept the current PD situation as viable moving forward, which I do not. I’d even be interested in switching Photon & Neutron Launchers (back) to GW to give them an L-slot advanced weapon, but that would likely face significant pushback (although energy weapons absolutely don’t lack for other advanced options at most slot sizes). A shielded cruise missile as an X-slot option might work, or even as an L-slot if nothing else fits. I’d prefer to see some alternate damage types rather than just the same thing larger or smaller.

I also don’t think that kinetics have enough options, even beyond the S-slot option I gave above. Energy seemed to get all of the fancy stuff, including all but one missile and one SC from recovered techs. Finding something else to get variety in mechanism and effect would be interesting and hopefully useful.

 

[Dragatus]

Swarmers have good survivability, but damage is a bit low. It's roughly comparable to X-ray lasers and advanced railguns. IMO they're most useful in the role of distracting PD so torpedos can get through unhindered (at least for the first volley).

With the disengage mechanics the way they are, alpha will always be better than DPS unless it's really rubbish. That's the real benefit of the super high damage weapons already, the fact that they actually destroy the enemy ships, denying them the retreat and reinforce and usually functionally winning a whole war with the first battle (always been a problem).

"High alpha" just shouldn't exist, no ship should lose more than 10% of its hull from any weapon with a meaningful chance to hit it.

The way I originally imagined it the damage and CD would be balanced in such a way that DPS would be the inverse of alpha strike. So if an alpha strike weapon has 2x damage it would have to have 4x CD in order to have 50% of the DPS. Using current damage values that would mean for example that the CD of kinetic artillery would have to go up by 50% to put it somewhere around 9 days, while giga cannons could fire only once every 90 days. Which means that in practice you can fire them off once per space battle.

Seeing the actual numbers that may be overdoing it a little. But X weapons being something that you can usually only use once or twice per battle might make them less of necessity and more of a calculated risk.

 

[Tamwin5]

Point Defense and Autocannons are not advanced versions of a Mass Driver – they’re specialists that do at least comparable, and usually significantly, better damage in their specialty to the base weapon, but far inferior damage outside of their niche with worse range to boot. I pointed out Kinetic Launchers as advanced weapons because they are clearly better than L-slot Mass Drivers (e.g., Kinetic Artillery vs. Gauss Cannon). Against a full-shields, no-armor base Cruiser with Tier 5 utilities, the KA chews through it in about 2/3 of the time for the GC; flipping it around to all-armor still has the KA getting it done in ¾ of the time. Oh, and it’s doing it at greater range and in bigger chunks (to avoid disengagement). The equivalent for an S-slot would be something firing out to range 60, with either a similar bonus pattern to KA or even one less gimped versus armor. Sure, the advanced options are costlier in power, resources, and techs, but the limitations of slots and fleet capacity become more important later on.

Missiles are not advanced options for M-slots – they are clearly specialists relative to other M-slot direct-fire weapons. They take advantage of defensive configurations in their favor (e.g., no PD, mostly shields) and fail hard when defenses are against them (e.g., relatively heavy PD, little to no shields). Hangars still have difficulties in operating efficiently due to inbound flight times (also shared by Missiles), turn radii, and Flak, and I’d be hard pressed to choose whether they act as a cousin to GW or they are their own beast.

If guided weapons are their own type, then where is their Kinetic Artillery-equivalent? You might say Torpedoes, but being slower and less evasive than Missiles means they take more damage (even relative to their higher hull points) passing through a PD envelope. They don’t have as good of range and they aren’t much use against anything smaller than a Cruiser, along with higher power cost. Their advantages are in burst damage and their versus-armor bonus, which are big, but in all, I think it points them out as being more specialist than an advanced option. You suggested buffing them, but where do you apply those buffs? Individual survivability might work in the current environment, but is that enough?

I might be willing to look at Swarmer Missiles as an advanced M-slot option only because of their immense survivability vs. PD, but only if I was to accept the current PD situation as viable moving forward, which I do not. I’d even be interested in switching Photon & Neutron Launchers (back) to GW to give them an L-slot advanced weapon, but that would likely face significant pushback (although energy weapons absolutely don’t lack for other advanced options at most slot sizes). A shielded cruise missile as an X-slot option might work, or even as an L-slot if nothing else fits. I’d prefer to see some alternate damage types rather than just the same thing larger or smaller.

I also don’t think that kinetics have enough options, even beyond the S-slot option I gave above. Energy seemed to get all of the fancy stuff, including all but one missile and one SC from recovered techs. Finding something else to get variety in mechanism and effect would be interesting and hopefully useful.

When I was talking about slots, I was referring to the slot cost for a hull type. Each normal slot type (S, M, L, XL) is valued at twice that of the previous. In a cruiser you trade 2M for 1L, in a Battleship you trade 2L for 1XL. A PD slot has the equivalent slot cost as an S, a Guided slot the equivalent of an M (or 2S), and a Hanger the equivalent of an L.

I'd say that Autocannons actually ARE an advanced version of the mass driver. At max level they have 10% more accuracy, 25% more tracking, and deal 16% more base damage. They also have better bonuses against Shields and Hull. The problem is that in this Alpha-Strike Meta, their role is pretty useless, as they are only available in small slots. They also suffer from high fire rate making them virtually always cause disengagement.

TBH, the "Kinetic Artillery" equivalent of Guided should be the Hanger slot. Long range and high damage. A carrier should be able to have Bombers doing runs before the Artillery ship gets in range. Torpedos I'd buff in damage, range, and/or speed of travel.

I do agree that kinetics seem to have far fewer options, and it's a shame. On the other hand, there are plenty of different "space energy weapon" tropes, while the "gun in space" is very similar. Also to remember is that the engineering tree is overloaded, while the physics is the highest of the three. Adding more Kinetic weapons would complicate that, unless is was some sort of "warp excellerated" projectile. Which, tbh, is a sci-fi trope Kinetic weapon that doesn't currently exist.

How would you add proper alternate damage types? Stellaris weapons seem to be limited by the game engine. There is no splash damage, there is no pierce.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

How would you add proper alternate damage types? Stellaris weapons seem to be limited by the game engine. There is no splash damage, there is no pierce.

Funny story, that. I was convinced that there weren't any splash damage weapons myself, but a while back I remember seeing someone demonstrate that the FE Titans do, in fact, have some sort of splash damage on their Titan Beam weapon, where it can take out multiple ships in one hit. I'm not 100% positive about that being the case, but it was compelling enough to remember.

We really could do with weapons that have special effects, though, like AoE, DoT, pure debuff (weapons that slow down the enemy, reduce their RoF, that sort of thing). But, then again, probably a mess to balance.

 

[mrt1212]

Funny story, that. I was convinced that there weren't any splash damage weapons myself, but a while back I remember seeing someone demonstrate that the FE Titans do, in fact, have some sort of splash damage on their Titan Beam weapon, where it can take out multiple ships in one hit. I'm not 100% positive about that being the case, but it was compelling enough to remember.

We really could do with weapons that have special effects, though, like AoE, DoT, pure debuff (weapons that slow down the enemy, reduce their RoF, that sort of thing). But, then again, probably a mess to balance.

Wait, youve created an action RPG where your ship is the PC