Suggestion Advocating More Powerful Ships

[KINGOAL]

I got an interesting idea of the ships amount and I also have read other thread about this topic but I still want to write them down. Of course, the first consideration is about our cute engine~
Most players will have a huge amount of ships which makes the game performance bad. In the game, you have to keep so many ships if you are going to build a very powerful navy, and those ships may suck your CPU(at least I did ;P).

Firstly, my suggestion is very simple: add more levels of ships to upgrade. For now, we have four types of warships to use, but for instance, the battleships have 1K millitary power per ship, if you want to maintain 100K navy, you need 100 battleships to do that.
However, if we can get eight types of warships to upgrade our navy, perhaps we can call them titan or super battleship and 2K or 8K per ship needing more naval capacity, we just need 50 or even less ships to create our powerful navy, reducing the total amount of ships and giving us better performance of engine.

Besides, as another thread has mentioned, "longer build times make that a decisive battle even more decisive". Building your huge navy needs time and it is hardly to recover during a war, which makes the preparation of an attack or denfense more important. More huge ships like titan can also make your single battleship more significant. We can feel the importance of our hardly built ships and spend more time to give them the one and only name and take more care of them. Wow, it can help us to enjoy our battle than before.
Okay, I just have these thoughts above for now. My best wishes for the bright future of Stellaris~

CONCLUSION: Less but More Expensive and Powerful ships can reduce the total amount of ships and improve the engine performance later in the game. Those small amount but unique ships can also bring us extra fun.

 

[Gyrvendal]

Stellaris is designed so that all ship types remain viable throughout the game, meaning even if you add Titans and Dreadnoughts it doesn't mean that corvettes, destroyers, etc will become useless and the fleets will still be huge.

One "easy fix" would be to make destroyers better than corvettes in every way, cruisers better than destroyers, etc... Then players would only ever build the largest ship type, reducing overall ship count. I hate that solution though as it would make fleets even more bland than they are now...

 

[Summin Cool]

What about increasing the strength of each ship across the board with a proportionate increase in mineral cost?

 

[Riftwalker]

or after you have battleships researched, eventually you can research "non descriptive larger ships tech"

in which your industrial base can support larger ships and so you just upsize each class of ship, this would double their fleet cap and increase their cost, but put them in about the same role as before, they simply have it more concentrated. This could maybe happen a third time where they have triple normal fleet cap and what not.

it'd require balancing obviously, as there is an innate advantage to having your fleet power be more concentrated since each individual ship is harder to take down.

 

[zukodark]

I dislike the notion of having too many new ship classes, as it would be bad to balance unless you want to do it the "make smaller classes useless" way. I'd much rater just have them increase everything in power and cost, decreasing the overall fleet cap in the progress.

Early game, a single corvette would be a lot more significant, mid-lategame, you'd have a limited amount of battleships, likewise. Then add Titan class (and as the only new class) which would serve as the significant ship even after that. They could make it objectively the best ship class, but with only a few buildable, ever.

 

[KINGOAL]

I dislike the notion of having too many new ship classes, as it would be bad to balance unless you want to do it the "make smaller classes useless" way. I'd much rater just have them increase everything in power and cost, decreasing the overall fleet cap in the progress.

Early game, a single corvette would be a lot more significant, mid-lategame, you'd have a limited amount of battleships, likewise. Then add Titan class (and as the only new class) which would serve as the significant ship even after that. They could make it objectively the best ship class, but with only a few buildable, ever.

But basically, balance is not a such difficult task,doesn't it? For the naval fleets' combat are almost about the 'millitary power account number'.

Of course, you just mentioned an important point that you don't want smaller classes useless. Yeah, that is important too, you are right. However, the upgrade I said is not just mean adding new classes, smallar classes can be upgraded either. It's very likely to what has #3 said, you can develop your technology and unlock more usable units for the same class, which will strengthen your fleet but also increase its demand of naval capacity and cost.

The basic idea of my words is that the increase of fleet's millitary power does not means more ships in your fleets, and that's the main point because my computer can not hold that LOL.

 

[KINGOAL]

What about increasing the strength of each ship across the board with a proportionate increase in mineral cost?

YEAH! Yes, that is the main point and it is not just about adding new classes of warships. You are very intelligent LOL.

The solution can be adding extra build and maintain cost and, more importantly, increase its demand of naval capacity. Perhaps can be some new technology to unlock different and high-rank unit of ships, we can choose it to upgrade the ships but it will increase cost and capacity demand.

 

[KINGOAL]

Stellaris is designed so that all ship types remain viable throughout the game, meaning even if you add Titans and Dreadnoughts it doesn't mean that corvettes, destroyers, etc will become useless and the fleets will still be huge.
One "easy fix" would be to make destroyers better than corvettes in every way, cruisers better than destroyers, etc... Then players would only ever build the largest ship type, reducing overall ship count. I hate that solution though as it would make fleets even more bland than they are now...

Right, that's a problem. Maybe the solution can be increasing cost and demanding naval capacity?

For example. In 2250, you have naval capacity of 100, so you build 20 cruisers, 20 corvettes and 10 destroyers. 100 years later, you have naval capacity of 1000, but you may have still 20 cruisers, 20 corvettes and 10 destroyers but of course, they are not likely to 100 ago and become more powerful.

If we don't want our fleets to be bland and not funny, the difference of different classes should be more apparent and unique. More classes can be a solution though it may really bring some troubles. It's ok, just an idea.

 

[Dinkelman]

I think a good tweak is to adjust the fleet cap. Increasing it should give diminishing returns. As the cap gets larger, it should increase less. This could help the lag from the huge fleets, let the over fleet cap penalty come more into play, and also maybe help balance so that wars aren't as one sided. It could level the playing field a bit.

As an example, in the beginning your fleet capacity would be increased normally, but gradually as it grows the slower it grows. Maybe by the time it has reached a 1000 it increases only a tenth of what it normally would. I don't know what exactly is appropriate, and I don't know how to make the algorithm either, but it might just be a good system.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

or after you have battleships researched, eventually you can research "non descriptive larger ships tech"

in which your industrial base can support larger ships and so you just upsize each class of ship, this would double their fleet cap and increase their cost, but put them in about the same role as before, they simply have it more concentrated. This could maybe happen a third time where they have triple normal fleet cap and what not.

it'd require balancing obviously, as there is an innate advantage to having your fleet power be more concentrated since each individual ship is harder to take down.

That's not bad. Don't even necessarily increase the size of the ship, or the number of sections, but make it clear that their effectiveness is being more than doubled and give them a cool name that conveys they are from a more advanced time than the antiques you were previously flying. Possibly even give them exclusive access to a new tier of weaponry so that there are additional war techs to explore along with this.

 

[Drowe]

or after you have battleships researched, eventually you can research "non descriptive larger ships tech"

in which your industrial base can support larger ships and so you just upsize each class of ship, this would double their fleet cap and increase their cost, but put them in about the same role as before, they simply have it more concentrated. This could maybe happen a third time where they have triple normal fleet cap and what not.

it'd require balancing obviously, as there is an innate advantage to having your fleet power be more concentrated since each individual ship is harder to take down.

Unlocking more advanced ship types, that have higher fleet cap requirements while serving the same role as the standard types, is a good approach to reduce performance issues.

I agree with the previous poster though, the size doesn't necessarily need to increase, but it should be a very significant difference in power, doubling is not enough to make up for the difference in numbers you can field. I would even say this should be a significant difference, a Corvette sized advanced ship should in my opinion be able to stand up to a standard cruiser by itself, not necessarily win such an engagement but it shouldn't be an easy fight for the cruiser.

I think a way to achieve this could be, to increase the number of slots for each section, both weapons and utility/auxiliary, and increase hull points significantly, something like tripling or even quadrupling them. There may even be a way to mod that in.

 

[LordMagus]

Just use the NSC mod and be done with it. I got tired of battleship and cruiser meta, and in the mod the cruisers aren't the be all and end all of ship types. Ships larger than battleships don't have twice as many hit points, but they have more shields and armour slots and weapons, they're vulnerable to little corvettes with torpedoes.

 

[KINGOAL]

Unlocking more advanced ship types, that have higher fleet cap requirements while serving the same role as the standard types, is a good approach to reduce performance issues.

I agree with the previous poster though, the size doesn't necessarily need to increase, but it should be a very significant difference in power, doubling is not enough to make up for the difference in numbers you can field. I would even say this should be a significant difference, a Corvette sized advanced ship should in my opinion be able to stand up to a standard cruiser by itself, not necessarily win such an engagement but it shouldn't be an easy fight for the cruiser.

I think a way to achieve this could be, to increase the number of slots for each section, both weapons and utility/auxiliary, and increase hull points significantly, something like tripling or even quadrupling them. There may even be a way to mod that in.

Reduce performance issue is very important, yes, and such change in game can make single ship more meaningful than before.

 

[Brucesim2003]

Simple solution would be to make certain modules/weapons etc use fleet capacity. So yes, you can have a BB with all the bells and whistles, but it will take more logistics to keep it in action.

Simple method could be for every level above 1, a component uses an extra fleet capacity. A late game DD could use 20-25 capacity, for instance.

 

[Drowe]

Simple solution would be to make certain modules/weapons etc use fleet capacity. So yes, you can have a BB with all the bells and whistles, but it will take more logistics to keep it in action.

Simple method could be for every level above 1, a component uses an extra fleet capacity. A late game DD could use 20-25 capacity, for instance.

Bad idea with the current balance, since numbers trump technology. If higher tiered systems would increase capacity cost, then this would get compounded and there would be no incentive to build better ships at all. Currently, if two empires with the same fleet cap fight the one with better technology will likely win, with your system this gets reversed. It would require rebalancing all the systems to make that work. The higher lvl would need to make up for the lower number you can field, that means hull points, shield points and damage dealt would need to be at least double from lvl 1 to lvl 2, otherwise the math clearly favours higher numbers, and that is only to keep the balance roughly equal. Keeping things equal does not reward higher technology lvls so balance has to be shifted further towards higher tiered systems. So a maxed tiered corvette would need to be able to beat at least five, if not more, tier 1 corvettes by itself. If that's the case, you could much easier introduce a new ship type in the same category (T2 Corvette, etc...) that serves in the same role but is much more powerful than the base corvette. There would be no need to reprogram existing code, modders could probably achieve this already with little difficulty.

 

[Slynx]

we've tried solo Titan-class ship mod http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=829883009
and you know what? even with this new supersized ship(20 fleet cap!!!) we still used corvettes(lots of them!), cruisers and battleshilps (destroyers were off the table, cuz L(art)+M is just tile cheaper LLMMcruiiser, and 2P2S1M lost it's usefulness in our eyes)

Simple method could be for every level above 1, a component uses an extra fleet capacity. A late game DD could use 20-25 capacity, for instance.

then you'd simply use t1mass\t1AC\t1Plasma and compensate with numbers