New Ship Sections & Changes to Current Ones:

[Pillage]

Now, I don't know if this is just me, but I love customizing and diversify ships (which is part of the reason why I dislike the menacing ships). Not only would this just be a nice thing to have, but it could help shake up the kinda stale ship meta we have (or maybe not, I'm not sure). So, I've thought of some new ship sections (and changes to old ones). I'll be going ship by ship, starting with corvettes and ending with titans (yes, I made titan sections).

Corvette:
Core:
Artillery:
1 Medium
1 Small
This would fill a similar niche as the Missile Boat section, but trade reliability for range (as the medium weapon can't be shot down by pickets, but the missiles can).

Destroyer:
Bow:
Picket Ship (Changed):
2 Small
2 Picket
All of the other destroyer bow sections have a small slot equivalent of 4, but this one only has 3, so I added another picket slot.

Interceptor:
4 Small
This is a fairly simple section, just 4 small weapons. Now you can have a full destroyer of small weapons if it suits your fancy, which would be pretty effective against corvettes.

Missile Boat:
2 Small
1 Missile
This section is a missile boat section for the destroyer. It is similar to the gunship section, but trades reliability for range (again, missiles can be shot down by picket, medium weapons cannot)

Stern:
Missile Boat:
1 Missile
Another missile boat section, but this time for the stern of the ship.

Cruiser:
Stern:
Torpedo:
1 Missile
The cruiser only has 2 stern sections, so I decided to make a Torpedo Stern for the Cruiser.

Battleship:
Bow:
Broadside (Changed):
4 Medium
This is more of a design philosophy reason more than anything, but I think battleships should be entirely barred from having small weapons. I also think that this section overall was a bit messy, so I simplified it to just 4 medium weapons, if you still want the large weapons of the old broadside, you can mix this with an artillery section on a different part of the ship.

Torpedo:
2 Medium
2 Missiles
This is section lets battleships have missiles, which are strangely absent from both the battleship and destroyer in the base game.

Core:
Broadside (Changed):
6 Medium
This is another broadside change, where the section is simplified to be pure medium weapons, letting the player either have a full medium battleship or combine this with an artillery section somewhere else in the ship.

Carrier (Changed):
1 Medium
2 Picket
2 Hangars
This one also comes down to design philosophy concerning battleships and small weapons. The two small weapons of this section have been replaced with one medium weapon.

Torpedo:
4 Medium
2 Missiles
Another torpedo section for the battleship, but this time for the core.

Stern:
Torpedo:
1 Medium
1 Missile
Yet another torpedo section. If a battleship were to use all 3 torpedo sections, they would have 7 medium weapons and 5 missiles, allowing for pretty decent missile spam will still maintaining traditional weapons that can't be countered by pickets.

Titan:
Core:
Broadside (What we have now):
4 Large
This is the current core section for the titan, but I have a couple other ideas for what sections this ship could have

Artillery:
2 Extra Large
In the description of the Particle Lance and Tachyon Lance, it says that their usage is limited to battleships and titans, but we're unable to equip our titans with X weapons. If the titan broadside is 4 large weapons, then it'd make sense that the titan artillery section would be 2 extra large weapons.

Hangar:
2 Large
2 Hangars
Fallen empires are allowed to have hangars on their titans, so I decided to let player empires do the same.

Torpedo:
3 Large
2 Missiles
This is a torpedo section for titans. The missiles lets the titans be a little better against smaller ships, at the risk of those missiles being shot down by pickets. I realize that I've added missile sections to every ship, but currently only two ships have missile sections, the corvette and the cruiser. The increased usage of missiles in ship sections would encourage players to research missile techs a bit more.

Stern:
Broadside (What we have now):
2 Large
The current stern we have now, nothing special.

Artillery:
1 Extra Large
An artillery stern for titans. This also means that titans can have more X weapons than the Juggernaut of the player so desired.

Torpedo:
1 Large
2 Missiles
A torpedo stern for titans. A full missile titan would have 16 small weapons worth of large weapons and 8 small weapons worth of missiles.

Conclusion:
Some of these ship sections feel pretty wacky (and I'm sure some of you got a laugh out of the sheer amount of missile sections I added), but I would very much enjoy some diversity in our ship building, so that no two ships look alike. I'm sure a meta will settle in even if these sections are implemented, but this would give room for players to experiment with their ships and make ships that are truly their own. I know some of you are gonna think its silly for me to care so much about ship customization, and part of me thinks its silly too, but it'd be a nice addition.

 

[The Exile]

There is a mod that expands your available ship sections, many of them similar to what you are suggesting, as you gain ship technologies.

That is, you get access to the basic Destroyer sections with the Destroyer tech. But with each related tech -- the faster build tech, and the two +destroyer hull techs -- you get more sections to choose from. And it didn't just vary and expand the weapon selections, but also the armor/shield components as well, for instance an "armored bridge" section with few or no weapons, but instead double the armor/shield slots. And so on.

I think it neatly does what you're suggesting, while making otherwise humdrum techs much sought for. I'd love to see that be part of the core game, since like you I love playing with the Ship Designer, and more options there adds a lot of fun!

 

[Cordane]

This is more of a critique of vanilla Stellaris than your suggestion:

Battleship:
Core:
Carrier (Changed):
1 [/COLOR]Medium
2 Picket
2 Hangars
This one also comes down to design philosophy concerning battleships and small weapons. The two small weapons of this section have been replaced with one medium weapon.

Why do sections with Hangars (regardless of hull) need P-slots? Their Hangars already have SC that provide both anti-GW and anti-SC capability. Swapping out the 2 S-slots for an M-slot is a good start, but an all-Hangar section would be even better (as would a Hangar bow for Cruisers, double-Hangar bow for Battleships, and even a Hangar bow for a Destroyer!). I know there are mods that probably fix those, but again, vanilla changes/options would be preferred.

 

[Cordane]

OK, THIS one is actually about your suggestion:

Titan:
Core:
Artillery:
2 Extra Large
In the description of the Particle Lance and Tachyon Lance, it says that their usage is limited to battleships and titans, but we're unable to equip our titans with X weapons. If the titan broadside is 4 large weapons, then it'd make sense that the titan artillery section would be 2 extra large weapons.

<snip>

Artillery:
1 Extra Large
An artillery stern for titans. This also means that titans can have more X weapons than the Juggernaut of the player so desired.

I can't get behind this because of two reasons:

1. X-slot weapons were effectively designed to return Battleships to x6 the damage of a Destroyer. As weapon slots typically increase in damage for the same weapon type by x2.45 per increase (which is the square root of 6), you would normally expect the damage to increase by class by the same amount. Corvettes can carry an M-slot equivalent (G-slot) along with an S-slot, and a Destroyer goes up a size in each by having an L-slot and an M-slot available on the same hull. Cruisers don't go up in size, because their 1/3, 1/2, 1/6 hull sections break up the 2/3, 1/3 format set by the Destroyer (the Corvette doesn't have separate sections, so their hull doesn't effect any patterns). They end up with 2 L-slots and 2 M-slots maximum, leaving them at just x2 for doubling instead of x2.45 for a size increase (they make up for this by having both larger and more utility slots). Battleships have the same format, but they can squeeze in an X-slot to get part of a size increase to max out at one X-slot and 4 L-slots. If the Destroyer has x6 damage (of an S-slot) in its L-slot and another x2.45 damage from the M-slot, they total x8.45 damage. In order for the Battleship to get to six times the Destroyer's damage (x50.7), it would get only x24 from its 4 L-slots, meaning it would need x26.7 from just the one X-slot. A straight size increase (x2.45) from the L-slot only gets it to x14.7, so it would instead need to be multiplied by x4.45 to even out. A Mega Cannon averages 112.5 damage per day (before versus-defense multipliers) versus its requirement tech, Advanced Railguns, which averages 30.0 DPD for an L-slot), or x3.75 damage (plus more favorable versus-defense multipliers). While this isn't dead-on, it's close enough to make me think I'm heading in the right direction.
2. X-slot weapons are "balanced" by them being forward-fire-only spinal cannons - while I suppose you could design the Titan X-slots to be fixed-broadside weapons (but that's at odds with its forward-fire-only Titan-slot weapon), more likely you would want those on turrets to bring them to bear as often as possible. This would require them to be downgraded to be more balanced on a Titan, but could that be done without downgrading them for Battleships at the same time?

Now I do have suggestions that talk about X-slot weapons as turrets, but those are part of larger efforts to create a flat set of improvements (usually at only x2 per increase) from S- to M- to L- to X- to D- to T-slots (double-X, triple-X). Those are also part of efforts to have Cruisers move up to L- and X-slots, Battleships to X- and D-slots, and Titans to D- and T-slots, primarily - the suggestions allow for the classes to get larger and/or more specialized, and would let each move up another slot size, including Titans to (quadruple-X) Q-slots. Lastly, I offered an alternative spinal-cannon option with multi-section Cannon weapons (start with a Bow Cannon slot, add a Core Cannon and it increases the effectiveness of the Bow Cannon, and similarly adding a Stern Cannon to the earlier sections) to still give an outsized punch but only against much bigger/less Evasive targets.

 

[Pillage]

This is more of a critique of vanilla Stellaris than your suggestion:

Why do sections with Hangars (regardless of hull) need P-slots? Their Hangars already have SC that provide both anti-GW and anti-SC capability. Swapping out the 2 S-slots for an M-slot is a good start, but an all-Hangar section would be even better (as would a Hangar bow for Cruisers, double-Hangar bow for Battleships, and even a Hangar bow for a Destroyer!). I know there are mods that probably fix those, but again, vanilla changes/options would be preferred.

I do have a couple in this list that are just changed versions of pre-existing sections, and those are identified by a (Changed) next to them. I think the reason hangar sections tend to have PD weapons is because strike craft AI can be unreliable against multiple targets, which missiles and opposing strike craft add a lot more of. The PD serves as a guarantee that even if the strike craft don't do their job, the ship is still protected against those types of attacks.

 

[GOLANX]

I do have a couple in this list that are just changed versions of pre-existing sections, and those are identified by a (Changed) next to them. I think the reason hangar sections tend to have PD weapons is because strike craft AI can be unreliable against multiple targets, which missiles and opposing strike craft add a lot more of. The PD serves as a guarantee that even if the strike craft don't do their job, the ship is still protected against those types of attacks.

I didn't think it had much to do with functionality, Battlestars cover their flight pods in flak cannons, and historically Carriers focus on Using Anti-air weaponry, because enemy warships would never be close enough for the carrier to shoot at them and you don't want them that close either. Enemy aircraft would be the only things that could get past the escorts so a little PD is good to take them down

 

[Pillage]

1. X-slot weapons are "balanced" by them being forward-fire-only spinal cannons - while I suppose you could design the Titan X-slots to be fixed-broadside weapons (but that's at odds with its forward-fire-only Titan-slot weapon), more likely you would want those on turrets to bring them to bear as often as possible. This would require them to be downgraded to be more balanced on a Titan, but could that be done without downgrading them for Battleships at the same time?

The balance of turret X weapons is up for debate, but its not something unheard of within stellaris. The Juggernaut features 2 X-size turrets, so the idea that they're balanced by being restricted to forward fire is called into question. Additionally, the Juggernaut is capable of defending itself against smaller opponents through its medium weapons and strike-craft, as well as being limited to 3 (one for you, one for the fed, one for the GDF). A full artillery titan would have no defenses against smaller opponents, and titans are capped at 1+N/200=T (N is naval capacity, T is titan cap), hitting a hard cap of 20 titans at 3800 naval capacity, with 60 X turrets between all of them. Battleships have no cap, so it makes sense to have their most powerful weapon come with restrictions, since you can have as many of it as you want. TL;DR, you have a limit on artillery titans, but not spinal mount battleships, so its okay to have X turrets on the artillery titans.

 

[Cordane]

The Juggernaut features 2 X-size turrets, so the idea that they're balanced by being restricted to forward fire is called into question.

X-slot weapons are "balanced" by them being forward-fire-only spinal cannons...

There's a reason why I used quotes there - it's because X-slots are not at all balanced. If you want to go with the argument that it doesn't matter whether it's balanced or not because it's on a limited-quantity ship, I'm not going to entirely fault you for that stance, but it holds far more water when talking about the 3 Juggernauts than the 20 possible Titans.

The X-slots aren't restricted on Battleships to forward-fire-only because they happen to be the best weapon on the ship - it's because it's the only thing they could do to try to justify the ludicrous step up in damage. (And don't say, "well, they also have to research another technology," because a Kinetic Battery is only a 17% increase in base damage over an L-slot ARG, while the Mega Cannon is almost 53% higher damage (base, and after the x2.45 size increase).)

 

[Pillage]

If you want to go with the argument that it doesn't matter whether it's balanced or not because it's on a limited-quantity ship, I'm not going to entirely fault you for that stance, but it holds far more water when talking about the 3 Juggernauts than the 20 possible Titans.

Alright, let's do some math then.

Using these two ship designs as our standard, Battleships are worth 2.5k Fleet Power and Titans are worth 8.7k.

If you were to build an entire navy of 3800 out of nothing except these battleships and titans, you would have 20 titans and 435 battleships (that's 21.75 battleships for every titan btw). If we multiply our ship counts with our ship strengths, these are the numbers we get:

Titans: 174 thousand fleet power
Battleships: 1.0875 million fleet power
Combined: 1.2615 million fleet power

If we do some more math, we find out that titans make up 13.793103448276% of the entire navy's fleet power and 8.4210526315789% of the navy's capacity. For a ship type that makes up less than 15% of a navy's fleet power and less than 10% of the navy's capacity, does it really matter that much if they're able to use X weapons?

 

[Pillage]

Plus, Juggernauts can defend themselves from smaller ships using medium weapons and hangars. A full artillery titan is incapable of reasonably defending itself against anything smaller than a battleship.

 

[Cordane]

Alright, let's do some math then.

Using these two ship designs as our standard, Battleships are worth 2.5k Fleet Power and Titans are worth 8.7k.
<snip>
If you were to build an entire navy of 3800 out of nothing except these battleships and titans, you would have 20 titans and 435 battleships (that's 21.75 battleships for every titan btw). If we multiply our ship counts with our ship strengths, these are the numbers we get:

Titans: 174 thousand fleet power
Battleships: 1.0875 million fleet power
Combined: 1.2615 million fleet power

If we do some more math, we find out that titans make up 13.793103448276% of the entire navy's fleet power and 8.4210526315789% of the navy's capacity. For a ship type that makes up less than 15% of a navy's fleet power and less than 10% of the navy's capacity, does it really matter that much if they're able to use X weapons?

Swap out the two Kinetic Artillery in the front of the Battleship design for a Giga Cannon, and tell me if the ship strength jumps.

Plus, Juggernauts can defend themselves from smaller ships using medium weapons and hangars. A full artillery titan is incapable of reasonably defending itself against anything smaller than a battleship.

Additionally, the Juggernaut is capable of defending itself against smaller opponents through its medium weapons and strike-craft...

A full artillery titan would have no defenses against smaller opponents...

You've brought this up twice in response to me - why is this meaningful? One of the most powerful effects of both Juggernauts and Titans is their auras, which I'll admit could be used by a fleet of just themselves but are far more likely to multiplied out over an entire support fleet that would do 99% of the defense of the Juggernaut/Titans anyway. Letting Titans move their secondary batteries up to X-slots is not some great sacrifice, so don't try to couch it as such.

 

[Pillage]

Swap out the two Kinetic Artillery in the front of the Battleship design for a Giga Cannon, and tell me if the ship strength jumps.

I did run a test, it jumped to 2.9k - 3.1k, average of 3k.

You've brought this up twice in response to me - why is this meaningful?

Because an artillery titan can be brought down by a corvette swarm, a juggernaut can repel a corvette swarm, albeit with some minor difficulties.

One of the most powerful effects of both Juggernauts and Titans is their auras, which I'll admit could be used by a fleet of just themselves but are far more likely to multiplied out over an entire support fleet that would do 99% of the defense of the Juggernaut/Titans anyway.

That's... called fleet design. Having an entire fleet of titans leaves the titans vulnerable. But if we want to use that argument, then battleships shouldn't have all large weapon sections, since they can be paired with other ships to entirely negate the disadvantage of not being able to hit smaller targets. Of course players would use other ship types to cover the weakness of each other, that's just common sense.

 

[Cordane]

I did run a test, it jumped to 2.9k - 3.1k, average of 3k.

Because an artillery titan can be brought down by a corvette swarm, a juggernaut can repel a corvette swarm, albeit with some minor difficulties.

That's... called fleet design. Having an entire fleet of titans leaves the titans vulnerable. But if we want to use that argument, then battleships shouldn't have all large weapon sections, since they can be paired with other ships to entirely negate the disadvantage of not being able to hit smaller targets. Of course players would use other ship types to cover the weakness of each other, that's just common sense.

Wow, strawman much?

I brought up the issue with Titans and supporting fleets as an end result of my questioning whether having X-slots as turrets was disrupting the precarious balance of the weapons in the slots, which in vanilla are set as forward-fire cannons. Your first defense of that is that the Juggernaut has two of them, which I agreed was somewhat reasonable, because you pointed out that a given empire can only have effectively 3 at a time (and then only if you're both the federation president and the custodian of the Galactic Community). I then followed that up by saying a 1-3 ship exception is not at all the same as up to a 20 ship exception.

But your next argument was that it's OK for Titans to make the choice to go all Artillery because they would then be vulnerable to smaller ships, like it was some meaningful trade-off. It's not meaningful, first of all, because no one would have an entire fleet of nothing but Titans, Artillery sections or not (other than as a "hold my beer" challenge) - they would always have a support fleet of Battleships, Cruisers, and on down. Second, if Tracking bonuses worked the way they should, the vanilla all L-slot sections would already be incapable of defending a Titan against (almost certainly max-Evasion) Corvettes, so moving up to X-slots, even if they were turrets, would be no more of a disability in a fight like that than before. (Actually, because Tracking bonuses currently are broken for L- and X-slots, those weapons still do quite a decent job of getting hits in on max-Evasion Corvettes and pasting them on every hit, so they are not only fine with L-slots, they're still good with X-slots.) It unbalances things because it's a massive advantage (additional >50% damage output beyond the normal size increase) with little drawback - it's not a choice, it's a certainty (like "Cake or Death?!"). So it shouldn't be viewed as a meaningful trade-off, somehow justifying the option being available.

The strawman comes in when you say that my argument would lead to suggesting that Battleships should lose their all L-slot sections because they too would have a support fleet. Having a support fleet would absolutely make it possible for Battleships to go as big as they can with their guns, because they don't have to worry about defense against smaller ships, same as with the Titans. Sure, in a more legitimate Tracking situation, it would be a bad idea for a fleet to be entirely composed of all L/X-slot Battleships or for any support ships to also be heavily L-slotted, but that's an edge case on top of a correction that would precipitate other changes, both in code and in usage by players. There would still be plenty of situations where a Battleship would be well served to go all-Arty.

Sorry, I skipped over the ship strength issue, had something on my mind: The jump you're showing on the Battleships for swapping out one third of the weapons from L- to X-slots was 20%. Even after that jump, the Battleships are at not quite a 3 to 1 deficit to the Titans, per ship. But if you were then to swap in X-slots onto the Titans, the jump might be ... what? If the Perdition Beam is equivalent to four L-slots or two X-slots, then for a Titan with a T-slot and three X-slots, the X-slots make up 43% of the weapon loadout. If the Battleship jump was 20% for 33%, then it would be approximately 26% for 43%, or 11.0K ship power for the X-slotted Titan. The ratio would be 3.67 to 1, instead of 3.48 to 1 before the X-slots were factored in.

Also, couple of questions: Maybe I was looking at it incorrectly, but did your photo not show an aura on the Titan, and would that impact your stated ship strength? And why did you decide to show your percentages of fleet power and naval capacity with 12 digits after the decimal - did you just copy & paste out of Calculator and forgot to trim, or were you trying to make a point with that?

 

[evilcat]

Ships modules i miss:
Cruisers:
Bow: H (so we can have full carrier if that is what we want)
Stern 2P (Stern is a great place for pickets guns)

This should help to make cruisers more viable not just low tech BS.