Stellaris Titans: the AI cheat code that we want

[Solicitius]

Gather around children of the galaxy: it’s story time.

Fun facts: in my current game as Fanatic Materialist, I’ve 2 separate Awakened empire, which aren’t warring against each other (Yet). One is a technological regulator (and I’m not their friend apparently: my superior research speed and lack of moral qualms made them go apeshit, apparently, or lizardshit, considering they are reptiles).
The other is a xenophile meddler, who awakened to defend the galaxy from the Scourge after it was defeated, and it is a promoter and enforcer of peace and love for all the galaxy, like it or not (they even have a heart in their banner).
Being the superpower that I am, I conquered my half of the galaxy minding my own business: care not, want not, said the AI and I’m inclined to believe it. I mean, I built it!
No one is allowed inside my border and life is happy.

Up until 2450 (circa), when I decided it was time to test the might of the Awakened empire fleet.
Usually I’m very cautious in declaring war: I prefer to bleed the enemy with a war for one planet, and steamroll it later conquering as much as possible, more than testing the unknown.
So, I set my sensors and aim to a planet of the technological regulators, declared war and sent half of my entire fleets (5 stacks of 40K each) to bleed the enemy forces as soon as they exited FTL.
Only, to receive a stack (among the others) made of 2 single titans. No other ships, no carriers or thing like that.

But 2 titans made up a stack of 100k.

And lo and behold, a single shot from their primary cannon annihilated a cruiser from full health and full shield, little brothers of this babe:

I won in the end, but I had to send in the second half of my fleet and lost 2. Granted, the enemy had a score of stack between 40k and 200k to oppose mine, but in the end, I lost 50 battleships and 107 cruisers.
And I’m not even mad: I mean, it was awesome. It took 10 years just to rebuild my fleets!
Of course, after such a battle, I researched the hell out of the wreckages, just to discover 2 disappointing things:

1) Awakened empires don’t have extradimensional weapons anymore. Which is a pity, considering it’s the only weapon I miss from the all tech tree…

2) Titans use laser weapons. Yep: the wreckage left behind are “large titan laser”. And considering how much damage it delivers, I think it’s set to bypass the hell of any defence (as it should be!)

And we want it.
So please Paradox, made Titans an available research and vessel to use, to be obtained only from wreckages: cap it at one for each empire, so that we can’t spam them (Awakened empire of course should continue to build as many as they want). Made it cost 25k minerals to build one, but give us 18 weapons slots to fill as we please most (two or three should be large titan weapons).
In short, please, give us a single flagship to be proud of.

Here below, some possible archetype for titans of every kind of phylum (feel free to contribute and agree):

Mammalian Titan: Ankylon Titan from Soase

Reptilian Titan: Star destroyer from Star wars

Avian Titan: B2 stealth bomber from RL.

Arthropoid Titan: Xindi Insectoid warship from Star Trek.

Plantoid Titan: Amarr Titan from Eve Online

Molluscoid Titans: Sovereign from Mass Effect.

Fungoid ... no good ideas yet.

 

[jalapen0]

mods

 

[Prince Silvermane]

From the weapons_components.csv file:

TITAN_LASER;300.00;-300.00;4000.00;6000.00;0.75;0.00;0.90;30.00;45.00;180.00;150.00;0.85;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00;

The titan laser deals 4000-6000 damage, ignoring 90% armor and deals 25% less damage to shields. It has 85% accuracy and 0 tracking. That means more or less it can one shot everything. The one exception would be an extremely high shield tank which might be able to get enough shields to take one shot. I've made Battleships with 3000 shields before, which after the shield damage penalty would be able to tank a hit.

 

[legionof1]

Actually it 4-6k base damage. Remember 25% from repeatable tech. Actual performance is something like 5-7.5.

 

[TheStoneSpaceMarine]

From the weapons_components.csv file:

TITAN_LASER;300.00;-300.00;4000.00;6000.00;0.75;0.00;0.90;30.00;45.00;180.00;150.00;0.85;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00;

The titan laser deals 4000-6000 damage, ignoring 90% armor and deals 25% less damage to shields. It has 85% accuracy and 0 tracking. That means more or less it can one shot everything. The one exception would be an extremely high shield tank which might be able to get enough shields to take one shot. I've made Battleships with 3000 shields before, which after the shield damage penalty would be able to tank a hit.

Good grief. Are we meant to be able to defeat these things?

 

[Prince Silvermane]

Good grief. Are we meant to be able to defeat these things?

Well it has a very long cooldown and high windup... Consider it just a hard cap of how long you can fight a titan because each shot is almost guaranteed to kill one Capital ship.

 

[Pchang]

Lots of corvettes with plasma cannons and disrupters will eventually take one down. Mix in a lot of destroyers with the 1 Kinetic artillery for better results.

 

[Rabbit Burgher]

My fleets are normally corvette swarms as well as a few battleships, cruisers and destroyers (In my last game roughly 500, 50, 25, 20) so it wasn't too hard to take titans down without being destroyed, I just lost quite a few corvettes.

Also, I believe it was mentioned that they plan to add buildable titans at some point.

 

[hagagaga]

That's not a Star Dreadnought. That's just a normal Star Destroyer.

 

[Slingshot82]

That's not a Star Dreadnought. That's just a normal Star Destroyer.

That's no moon...

 

[Solicitius]

My fleets are normally corvette swarms as well as a few battleships, cruisers and destroyers (In my last game roughly 500, 50, 25, 20) so it wasn't too hard to take titans down without being destroyed, I just lost quite a few corvettes.

Also, I believe it was mentioned that they plan to add buildable titans at some point.

I would very interested in the sauce of this.

Also, I've found the perfect titan for Molluscoid.
Only Fungoid left:

Molluscoid Titans: Sovereign from Mass Effect.

 

[Solicitius]

That's not a Star Dreadnought. That's just a normal Star Destroyer.

My mistake: can you forgive a trekkie for trying to reach the other side?
After all, we both have the same cross to bear: J.J. Abrams.

 

[Pchang]

We can make mods based on this art, but Paradox can't because copyright

 

[Solicitius]

We can make mods based on this art, but Paradox can't because copyright

They are just ideas, to be used as inspiration at most.
Feel free to contribuite

 

[Rabbit Burgher]

I would very interested in the sauce of this.

The source: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...llaris-dev-diary-50-the-journey-ahead.978042/

 

[scaper12123]

I absolutely agree, and it's been hinted that the devs want to make titan ships (and similar FE ships) researchable and constructible. Heck, anything to draw out the research of the game to give an advantage to empires that prioritize science is a great thing.

BUT, I feel like there should be some sort of special system with which the player researches and discovers this sort of stuff. A titan ship wouldn't be easy to build and maintain, and it certainly shouldn't be easy to research, nor do I think it should be possible to reverse-engineer it. Maybe something more convoluted than a single research project. Maybe a set of projects in each form of science that you have to research before unlocking the final piece of the puzzle.

 

[Solicitius]

The source: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...llaris-dev-diary-50-the-journey-ahead.978042/

Thank you for sharing!!!!

 

[Solicitius]

I absolutely agree, and it's been hinted that the devs want to make titan ships (and similar FE ships) researchable and constructible. Heck, anything to draw out the research of the game to give an advantage to empires that prioritize science is a great thing.

BUT, I feel like there should be some sort of special system with which the player researches and discovers this sort of stuff. A titan ship wouldn't be easy to build and maintain, and it certainly shouldn't be easy to research, nor do I think it should be possible to reverse-engineer it. Maybe something more convoluted than a single research project. Maybe a set of projects in each form of science that you have to research before unlocking the final piece of the puzzle.

In SoaSE, the Titans could be only construncted after completing 5 different researches and via a specific structure.
Granted, it didn't have the same research tree of Stellaris, but it could be food for thoughts.

 

[bronze Void poison]

Xindi Insectoid warship fits better with Fungoids shape than with insectoids strangly but other wise I agree also if we could have ships painted in out empire colours it would look cool

 

[Solicitius]

Collector's Ships for Arthropoid? I dunno... it seems as something is lacking