Stellaris Combat Rebalance has a new meta. What is the Stellaris combat rework meta and how will things change in patch 3.6 for fleet combat? We will look at each ship class, the various roles it can now take and what impact they will have in the game. These are just my preliminary results, as this is still all in beta things may change come release, so do keep that in mind! But without any further ado…
Lets dive in and find out more!
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Chapters:
0:00 Preface
2:01 Corvettes
3:27 Frigates
5:25 Destroyers
13:05 Cruisers
18:33 Battleships
21:24 Titans
21:58 Defence Platforms & Starbases
24:10 Juggernauts
26:04 Armour & Shield Hardening
26:59 The Meta in 3.6
29:05 Changes Combat Still Needs…
Stellaris Version 3.6 beta
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And please comment with any feedback, any ideas or if you disagree!
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I like the idea of missiles and fighters having longer ranges. They should be able to hit enemy ships at much higher ranges than unguided projectiles or dissipation prone energy weapons. I also think that making plasma weapons brawler weapons as counterpoints to autocannons would be good, as disrupters acting on their own work well, but don’t synergize well with autocannons by not scraping off armor like energy weapons would. Having an energy brawling weapon would be good. Energy artillery weapons might be nice too, but actually just having kinetic artillery might be interesting.
I think minimum range is okay mechanically, but conceptually it’s questionable, especially with plasma weapons (though it could be explained with multistage projectiles or guided shells that kick in past a certain range with large or spinal-mounted projectile weapons but not with plasma weapons). Likewise, I understand the mechanics behind torpedoes doing variable damage, but logically any weapon powerful enough to severely damage a cruiser or battleship should vaporize smaller ships.
Having combat work mechanically to give smaller ships more longevity later in the game is good, but since Stellaris has many role-playing elements, the mechanics should not be immersion braking, which minimum range borders on and variable damage torpedoes wander into doing.
Definitely buff missile and SC range.
I wholly disagree with fights crossing into other systems. You pointed out why not to, turtling defenses would be unbreakable. Everyone would have hangars and then there is no point in moving.
It would make more sense with your ideas with the missiles – give missiles 150-200 range, and likewise give Strike Craft similar or a range launch.
Most of the other ranges work alright, but it could be a good idea to have distance calculate into accuracy. further away is harder to hit.
An actual carrier ship class like a separate Frigate class would be a better idea tho in my opinion. Have carriers launch fighters faster and with longer reach it could be piratical with an acc debuff at range to let missiles and fighters have a chance.
Why are autocannons and kinetic weapons in general less effective against armor?
From a realism sense a kinetic round would have much more penetration capabilities against armor, and a rapidly fired series of small kinetic rounds would just shred through armor and hulls. If shields were a thing then you’d assume they would put off some sort of radiation or manipulate photons in a way that wouldn’t be effected by kinetic rounds and would possibly even be effective at vaporizing the rounds
On the other hand lasers would seemingly be more effective at disrupting a radiation or photon based shield, but less effective at burning away advanced armors because it would have to literally burn away at it over time and keep firing continuously at the same spot to do real damage, some advanced armors may even be able to reflect lasers to some degree or absorb their heat up to a certain point. Also angled armors could spread out the footprint of a lasers contact over a larger area and thus reduce efficiency.
So like what gives? Why did they choose to make kinetics weak against armor? It’s like a pointlessly stupid swap when the gameplay mechanics/rock paper scissors of combat wouldn’t be changed at all by just swapping the two roles.
Additionally the gameplay standpoint sort of makes a lot more sense by swapping them. If kinetics and lasers swapped roles then an empire which has focused on the physics branch with shields and lasers but has neglected armor research will be countered by one which has focused more on engineering because their lasers will be less effective against the armor, and their shields will be countered by lasers. While an empire which has focused heavily on shields will also more strongly counter an empire which has focused more heavily on kinetics, able to vaporize more of their rounds. Therefore swapping the two weapon roles will incentivize both branches of research more heavily.
So Engineering technology has become even more important: armor has been buffed, autocannons now help to shred shields in the M-slot, kinetic artillery has been buffed, Flak is now needed for countering fighters, fighters are in an important but situational position.
All of this, and the Masterful Crafters civic has been nerfed from providing engineering research 🙁
@montuplays you mentioned that you thought battleships should have auras to increase their value, I have a bit of a spin off idea instead.
What about adding electronic warfare? It could be a fleet wide number which stacks based on the sizes of ship in your fleet, with small ships adding to the number less than large ships.
It could be compared to an enemy fleet, with a number of say 200 cancelling out an enemy fleets 220 and leaving their capability at only an advantage of 20.
This could then lead to various other buffs, and intel or society research along with alliances and ethic choices could all play a role in the types of enemy debuffs or fleet buffs this stat could provide.
It could be simple to code, simple to add, and put an extra layer into the game that wouldn’t add much headache or extra thought.
I have a bunch of ideas around this concept if you’re into the idea, but I’d be especially curious to hear some of your thoughts on this.
My idea:
Reduce the number of L slots on battleships by 1 or 2 and replace those with other slots.
Battleship is historically a weapons platform for all types of stuff. Even the most dedicated battleships in reality and or sci-fi has some amounts of secondary weaponry. Make 1 or 2 L slots on a battleship converted into 2 picket and 1 medium slots, that way battleship alpha builds go down in power but they get new ways to present themselves in an engagement.
Also as for making fighters more effective: Make them missile or torpedo carry platforms. They can be split into 2 categories; Interceptors and Strikers. Interceptors fight against enemy fighters and shoot down missiles while doing minimal against enemy ships while Strikers unload a salvo of torpedos or missiles before retreating and being released again. Like a ww2 type bomber/fighter scenario. That would make a full salvo run from a fighter group EEEXTREMELY scary while making them counterable enough.
Additionally; a screening type of combat computer can be added to corvettes and frigates specifically. It would make them hold position around your longer ranged ships and specifically target whatever comes close. Give them a freakishly high rate of power increase so that they can annihilate enemy Strikers trying to launch their missiles to your larger ships, that way you can actually roleplay as a carrier strike group, your smaller ships, rather than trying to suicidally engage and circle around the enemy battleships, would stay back and protect your high value targets. This way, if the opponent tries to be smart and forgo the screening duties in favor of more artillery ships, they'll get disintegrated by striker type strike crafts launching torpedos at them
There isn't much of a new meta as far as single player is concerned. There is a little bit of a change but not a big one.
The answer to everything is simple, carrier battleships which is what I was already using previously anyway. X weapon on the front, 2 carrier slots in the middle which also bring 2 point defense slots and a large weapon in the back. You have now a single ship that can deal with everything and because it's a battleship it's already survivable by nature as opposed to every other ship that breaks apart the moment they are hit by anything.
The only real problem I see is that Paradox forgot about one thing. They really screwed the laser weapons. Yes, the neutron launchers were moved to a torpedo slot, that's fine, but why do laser weapons not have a counter part to kinetic artillery? It stands to reason that if kinetic weapons have a dedicated large slot weapon, so should lasers. If not, players are going to be forced to make do with tier 5 lasers.
I'm still not clear what I'm supposed to do in the early game. Am I supposed to have a few of each type of "role" (brawler corvette, artillery corvette, etc) for a fleet or does it "depend"? And if it it "depends", how do I decided which "roles" are best?
My optimistic hope would be for the various hull types to have more influence on the ship stats/use cases. E.g. instead of having to make frigates a whole new class of ship, we could have perhaps just had a slow hull capable of carrying torpedoes which effectively creates the frigate as we have it now. Other hulls could have more utility slots (as we did receive in the beta), they could have variable speeds, modifiers to hull/armor/shields, and I wouldn't mind the option to have actual carrier ships in the late game rather than these hulls filled with flak and small weapon slots that will only see use when the enemy has already sealed your fate by closing in on your carriers. To have the 4 ship classes with loads of customization to make heavy corvettes that resemble light destroyers and create a spectrum of options just excites.
So really, with the changes, outside battleship carriers, is there a point of bothering with battleships with how they've basically been neutered?
So:
Corvette: Missiles (early to mid)
Frigates: Torpedo (early to mid)
Destroyers: Picket, Autocannon
Cruiser: Torpedo, Disruptors
Battleship: Kinetic Artillery
I really like your balancing ideas at the end of the video.
This is thorough, but I'm just looking for "this is a general fleet composition with these types of ships". Conciseness is someimtes better than being overly explanatory.
I think that there is no Most Effective Tactic Available (aka, META) is imo probably the best thing to happen to the game.
Now the devs just needs to balance things out.
How can you counter if you never know what your opponent AI or human are building on their ships?
Interesting! I very much do hope that they do increase the range on missiles and strike craft, as now the counters to them now seem to work as intended.
I guess I'm the only one who finds all this overly complicated and confusing. After 1500 hours in this game, it's time for me to move on.
I like how this update seems to make mixed fleets viable and not just battleships or vette spam in late game but because mixed fleets are now the way to go with even mixed hull designs within that fleet id really like it if you could save a preset for an entire fleet so that when youre making ships you can set starbases to make entire fleets at a time. like it would make 4 corvettes in a row, 4 frigates, 2 destroyers, and a battleship to make one preset "fleet" that you could tell it the composition of beforehand as a saved preset so its just one click to add all that to a ship building queue. just to make it easier for people to already have their fleet ready to go instead of having to spend time merging fleets and trying to figure out how many starbases should be producing each ship so that their fleets end up more or less balanced as they want them ship number wise.
I don't like your proposed adjacent system strike craft deployment, however I really like the whole system strike craft deployment. I also agree that missiles should be the longest range weapon in the game. Another change I would like to see is that all weapon projectiles, aside from lasers and things like Tachyon Lances and Arc Emitters, should have a travel time. The lasers can be balanced by reducing their maximum range. That way missiles stay useful even when the ships that are carrying them come into range of other weapons.
I assume shield hardening nullifies the strike craft bypass as well…
have you tested swarmer rocket cruisers? I have had good success having them as a foundation of my fleet in mid game
I agree with increasing missile range and giving strike craft system-wide range. I don't like the idea of strike craft moving between systems at all. Too many problems, introduces weird gameplay. Honestly, I really like the rest of the changes. The main thing I want to see is a better ability to gain intelligence on enemy fleets. At the very least, you should be able to see fleet comps after you engage them.
Another point for frigates late game that I haven't seen anyone talking about it that you can use them as minefields. They are very cheap, build them naked then park them on your jump points. Seems like it would be very effective, and also might give corvette fleets more use late game clearing these things out.
Mostly a matching experience, except the frigates didn’t fall off that much in mid game. They’re cheap enough to just keep 10-15 in the fleet and they take flak away from your more expensive ships – even better than corvettes at being fodder.
Needs to be more of a role for plasma weapons. In both current and former meta their only real purpose is in pulsar system defensive platforms.
I like the idea of system-wide strike craft range in principle, but need an option to turn it off so you have the ability to sneak/escape instead of immediately initiating battle with everything in the system.
150 mm gun has more Damage when shooting Iowa Battleship than when shooting Fletcher Destroyer. Think how stupid that Idea is? Size should reduse your damage taken, not increase it!
I love carriers and really wish they had a substantial role in the game. I think system wide engagement range is an extremely good idea, but I think letting them engage 1 system away is a bad idea (think it would be far too problematic). I like to think of fighters as your standard TIE fighters, no light speed for you! lol – but yeah, I think your system wide engagement idea is brilliant.
Now if only if fleet manager/maker works like a fleet blueprint.
To improve on your strike craft idea, they could also have different types of strike craft, like interceptors and bombers
Or maybe strike craft customisation by giving them a targeting computer like thing but it's just formations that affect their stats , like loose formation, wedge formation, line formation, etc. This can be done for fleets too.
Crystal Forged Plating nerf is a little weird tbh. Seems kinda unnecessary to do if armor is already getting a lot of love, ontop of access to crystal forged tech being fairly rare.
I'm very curious on how this combat rework is going to affect Menacing Ships from the Become The Crisis perk. Menacing ships should be the ultimate brawlers imo, they just zerg rush suicide in and beat you to death with sheer dakka
One way they could prevent strike craft gateways swarms is prevent them from being able to use gateways under some lore. Say that the gateway isnt just as easy as walking through a door and that ships below certain sizes have a high chance of being lost in other space. Maybe allow the player to sent a strike fleet through but at with 75-90% loses.
I have not played it yet but I like most of what Ive heard so far. That said, I dont like a few things:
1-There should be no frigates. Unless they get their own art model and dont just use the corvette one. But even then, if you make a specific copy paste class for a role then you might as well make a copy paste class for carriers and siegeships. XL weapons should be removed from battleships and should instead be given to a special copy paste siege ship that has the XL slot and maybe a hand full of small turrets. Not bristling with turrest but just a handful of small ones. And carriers should have their own ship class copy paste that packs 6 hangers and the handful of left over slots are pd/missile.
Do I think they should really do either of those? No not really (maybe the Seige Cannon one) but they might as well if they are going to be copying the corvette just for a single role. I know what they are doing is hard work but right now this more than anything just sounds lazy. Admittedly there are some unused corvette models iirc. So they could scale those up and add some not so exact same (but still pretty exact same)
2-Torpedos should not do more damage the bigger the ship class. Now if it was a gravity torpedo or gravity beam or something relating to gravity or mass or something then sure. Then it becomes a really cool idea. But a normal weapon dealing extra damage just because the ship is bigger is a bad idea… There isnt really any reasonable reason that the current weapon deals more damage. Thats a very gamey mechanic. Like how in normal strategy games when a rocket launcher or tank fire at an infantry unit and the soldier just fires back with its rifle. 2.5 The minimum range thing is another wierd one. Honestly if the ship is closer it should be easier to hit. Lasers being able to target ships right ontop of them but Kinetics not being able to makes no sense. Just like with the Torpedo thing feeling gamey this just makes it feel even more gamey. There isnt a reason for it other than paradox needs an easy way to make mixed fleets a thing. Dont get me wrong, I know its a game. And I love the game, that doesnt mean I gotta agree with all their changes. Hopefully these are all stats that modders can tweak. But you never know with them. They could have left the various FTLS in the game and let modders play with them still but they ripped it from the code.
3-Torpedos should act like missiles. Idk if that is a change they have done or not, but torpedos being hitscan is also really stupid. I personally think all non-laser weapon types should be projectile based not hitscan but at the very least Torpedos certainly should be.
Unrelated but one thing I think that would vastly improve combat is if they added ammo to weapons. Not like ammo in the sense that you have to keep supplying your ships with ammo but something where Autocannons have 30 ammo and fire 3 rounds a day and take 4 days to reload. Or where a normal mass driver holds 8 rounds, fires 1 round every 2 day and takes 6 to reload. Mechanically it would allow new weapon types. You could have a burst fire weapons that fire off 3 shots in quick succession and then has to reload or actual proper multimissile launchers (the swarm missile is not a good solution). If PD had ammo/charge capacity, then missiles would be able to stay viable. Burst launched missiles could overwhelm pd during its down time. Sure if you launch 6 and 5 get destroyed thats not great but it still makes missiles more viable than launching 6 and having 6 get destroyed.
Most importantly I think it would make battles more pleasing to look at. Instead of a near constant stream of fire. 4 isnt really a balance thing outside of the PD. I just think that doing such would add to the variety of weapon types and to the look of combat. Sure you could sorta make the look of a burst fire weapon with particle effect sorta but it wouldnt look great and would not work with missiles. It would be better to just to make one particle effect/projectile and have the game fire off the effect/projectile 3 times in quick succession.