Hi again folks!

Today I am going to talk about one of the great pitfalls of strategy game design; dull micromanagement. That is, features which require too much player attention. The trick, of course, is determining how much is “too much”, but it’s useful to consider how central the feature is to the core gameplay, how well it scales between small and large states, and how repetitive it gets with time.

In Stellaris, one feature which risked causing bad micromanagement was the planetary tile system; assigning Pops to tiles and deciding which buildings should go where. It is a fairly central feature and it is fun to use… but if you had to worry about 20, 50 or more planets, it would scale poorly. The obvious solution to this type of scaling issue is automation; you can let the AI handle it for you. This is indeed what we did in Stellaris, but not in a “traditional” fashion... Instead, we opted for something a little bit more akin to the vassals in Crusader Kings through something we call Administrative Sectors.



A Sector is an administrative region under the control of a Sector Governor. You can control a few planets directly (your “core worlds”), but once you go past the limit, you will start suffering penalties to your Influence as well as Empire-wide income. The exact limit for how many planets you can control directly depends on various factors, like your government type and technologies, but, as with the “Demesne Limit” in Crusader Kings II, it will never be a huge number. At this point, it is best to start dividing your territory into Sectors. You can decide the Sector capital and which planets should belong to it (but they must all be connected to the capital, i.e. form one cohesive sub-region.) You are also allowed to name your Sectors, for fun.

Unlike proper Vassals, Sectors remain an integrated part of your Empire, but they will handle development of planets and the construction of mining stations within their region for you. You can give them a focus (Industry, Research, etc), an infusion of Minerals or Energy Credits to help them along, and decide if you want to tax them for Minerals and Energy Credits. Sectors do not possess any military fleets of their own, nor do they perform research (they have access to the same technologies you do, and their research output is all given to you.)



While Sectors and Sector Governors cannot demand more autonomy, or directly rise up in revolt (things I’d love to explore in an expansion), over time their population tends to diverge ideologically from that of the regime, and create their own identity. Like-minded Pops will tend to migrate there if allowed to. In the same way, aliens of the same species will also tend to coalesce in the same Sectors. Thus, when Factions form, they will often tend to have their main seat of power in a specific Sector. And Factions can demand autonomy and achieve independence. However, this is something that warrants its own dev diary...

That’s all he wrote folks. This time. Next week, I plan to talk about Alliances and Federations!

Read original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Stellaris Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hi again folks!

Today I am going to talk about one of the great pitfalls of strategy game design; dull micromanagement. That is, features which require too much player attention. The trick, of course, is determining how much is “too much”, but it’s useful to consider how central the feature is to the core gameplay, how well it scales between small and large states, and how repetitive it gets with time.

In Stellaris, one feature which risked causing bad micromanagement was the planetary tile system; assigning Pops to tiles and deciding which buildings should go where. It is a fairly central feature and it is fun to use… but if you had to worry about 20, 50 or more planets, it would scale poorly. The obvious solution to this type of scaling issue is automation; you can let the AI handle it for you. This is indeed what we did in Stellaris, but not in a “traditional” fashion... Instead, we opted for something a little bit more akin to the vassals in Crusader Kings through something we call Administrative Sectors.



A Sector is an administrative region under the control of a Sector Governor. You can control a few planets directly (your “core worlds”), but once you go past the limit, you will start suffering penalties to your Influence as well as Empire-wide income. The exact limit for how many planets you can control directly depends on various factors, like your government type and technologies, but, as with the “Demesne Limit” in Crusader Kings II, it will never be a huge number. At this point, it is best to start dividing your territory into Sectors. You can decide the Sector capital and which planets should belong to it (but they must all be connected to the capital, i.e. form one cohesive sub-region.) You are also allowed to name your Sectors, for fun.

Unlike proper Vassals, Sectors remain an integrated part of your Empire, but they will handle development of planets and the construction of mining stations within their region for you. You can give them a focus (Industry, Research, etc), an infusion of Minerals or Energy Credits to help them along, and decide if you want to tax them for Minerals and Energy Credits. Sectors do not possess any military fleets of their own, nor do they perform research (they have access to the same technologies you do, and their research output is all given to you.)



While Sectors and Sector Governors cannot demand more autonomy, or directly rise up in revolt (things I’d love to explore in an expansion), over time their population tends to diverge ideologically from that of the regime, and create their own identity. Like-minded Pops will tend to migrate there if allowed to. In the same way, aliens of the same species will also tend to coalesce in the same Sectors. Thus, when Factions form, they will often tend to have their main seat of power in a specific Sector. And Factions can demand autonomy and achieve independence. However, this is something that warrants its own dev diary...

That’s all he wrote folks. This time. Next week, I plan to talk about Alliances and Federations!

Read original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Stellaris Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hello everyone!

For today’s dev diary, I thought I’d talk about a crucial part of Stellaris; waging wars and making peace, because as you know, not all ETs are nice... The system is different from most strategy games out there, but should be familiar to anyone who has played a Paradox Development Studio title. In fact, it is probably most reminiscent of how these things work in the Europa Universalis games.

Let’s start at the beginning. When you declare war in Stellaris, you have to state what your aims are; what the war is actually about. You simply choose from a list of possible goals, where each one is listed with a certain cost. The total cost of your picked goals cannot exceed 100. If you have a good reason to take something, the cost will be reduced. This might be the case if, for example, members of your founding species happen to live on a planet, or if it has previously been a part of your empire.

If you are a member of an alliance, the other members will need approve your list of selected goals before you can actually start the war. This is of course more likely if you are not too greedy and want to take everything yourself. That is, you will probably want to assign some goals to other alliance members to get them to approve the war.



When a war has been declared, the defending side is allowed to add war goals in the same manner, but they have an important advantage; they have a one-year grace period, and can thus choose targets depending on how the war is already progressing.

You need to gain “war score” in order to win, just like in our other games (-100 to 100.) At any time, you can negotiate for peace by selecting specific goals from your own list or that of the other side, very much like in Europa Universalis (except that you are limited to the stated war goals.)

Of course, wars are not always waged simply to seize territory: Other valid goals could be vassalization, for example, or securing a treaty of some kind. Sometimes, you might not really care about your stated goals at all, but just going in there and destroying the enemy’s space ports and stations...



Like in most of our games, occupying a planet with your armies does not mean it immediately becomes yours, of course; you need to demand it in the peace talks. There is a notable exception to this rule though; so called “first contact wars”. Before you have established communications with another civilization, it is possible to simply attack them and even take one of their planets (but once you take a planet, communications are immediately established.) Of course, such early hostility will never be forgotten, and will sour your relations for the rest of the game… There are other exceptions to how wars are waged, in the form of special types of civilizations, but that will have to wait for another dev diary.

That’s all for this week folks, stay tuned next week for “Administrative Sectors”!

Go to the original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Stellaris Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hello everyone!

For today’s dev diary, I thought I’d talk about a crucial part of Stellaris; waging wars and making peace, because as you know, not all ETs are nice... The system is different from most strategy games out there, but should be familiar to anyone who has played a Paradox Development Studio title. In fact, it is probably most reminiscent of how these things work in the Europa Universalis games.

Let’s start at the beginning. When you declare war in Stellaris, you have to state what your aims are; what the war is actually about. You simply choose from a list of possible goals, where each one is listed with a certain cost. The total cost of your picked goals cannot exceed 100. If you have a good reason to take something, the cost will be reduced. This might be the case if, for example, members of your founding species happen to live on a planet, or if it has previously been a part of your empire.

If you are a member of an alliance, the other members will need approve your list of selected goals before you can actually start the war. This is of course more likely if you are not too greedy and want to take everything yourself. That is, you will probably want to assign some goals to other alliance members to get them to approve the war.



When a war has been declared, the defending side is allowed to add war goals in the same manner, but they have an important advantage; they have a one-year grace period, and can thus choose targets depending on how the war is already progressing.

You need to gain “war score” in order to win, just like in our other games (-100 to 100.) At any time, you can negotiate for peace by selecting specific goals from your own list or that of the other side, very much like in Europa Universalis (except that you are limited to the stated war goals.)

Of course, wars are not always waged simply to seize territory: Other valid goals could be vassalization, for example, or securing a treaty of some kind. Sometimes, you might not really care about your stated goals at all, but just going in there and destroying the enemy’s space ports and stations...



Like in most of our games, occupying a planet with your armies does not mean it immediately becomes yours, of course; you need to demand it in the peace talks. There is a notable exception to this rule though; so called “first contact wars”. Before you have established communications with another civilization, it is possible to simply attack them and even take one of their planets (but once you take a planet, communications are immediately established.) Of course, such early hostility will never be forgotten, and will sour your relations for the rest of the game… There are other exceptions to how wars are waged, in the form of special types of civilizations, but that will have to wait for another dev diary.

That’s all for this week folks, stay tuned next week for “Administrative Sectors”!

Go to the original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Stellaris Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Greetings!

Today our humble offering covers some of the possible Diplomatic Actions and Trade Deals that can occur between Empires. As most of you may know, the basic diplomatic model used in our previous games work quite well and we will use something similar in Stellaris. All Empires will have opinions of all other known Empires, and different actions, events and internal politics will often affect that opinion. The ethics of each Empire will of course play a heavy role here, as pacifist Empires will react quite differently to aggressive wars than would a xenophobic militarist one.

In Stellaris trade between Empires is a very direct affair. Players can create two-way deals lasting a set amount of time, and our ambition is that most diplomatic actions should be available here as tradeable objects. For example, you can offer another Empire a monthly payment of Minerals in exchange for Military Access and updated Star Charts for a period of 5 years, or receive a vital supply of the rare Garanthium resource by offering a nonaggression treaty as well as a guarantee of independence should the other Empire feel threatened. If you want to simply gift or demand something you can leave one side of the trade-deal blank, and the AI will react accordingly.



However, these kinds of trade deals will only happen between equal Empires and as most rulers know, it is better to gain something without having to give up something else. This is where more static diplomatic relationships come into play.

Tributary
A Tributary is forced to pay a set amount of their income to their Overlord each month and is most often established as the result of a lost war. The Overlord will not automatically defend them in wars, so the Tributary is caught in quite an unfortunate position until they have the military strength to either demand an end to their servitude or declare a war of independence.

Protectorate
A Protectorate is a subject protected by a (to them) technologically superior Empire. The Protectorate gains a major research-bonus to all technologies that their Overlord has already researched, and is automatically converted to a Vassal when having progressed far enough technologically.
Any pre-FTL species that is technologically enlightened is automatically created as a Protectorate under whichever Empire granted them the ability to space-travel. The Overlord in turn gains political Influence each month and the eternal gratitude of a bright-eyed new member of the galactic community.

Vassal
A Vassal is the most controlled type of subject-Empire. They will automatically join their Overlord’s wars, aggressive and defensive, and they have no autonomy when it comes to foreign policy or diplomatic relations. A vassal also run the risk of a full diplomatic integration by their Overlord.

Subject-actions
All types of subjects have a Liberty Desire expressing how content they are living under their Overlord’s rule. If a subject's Liberty Desire becomes very high they have a chance to start a war for independence, often waiting for an opportunity when they sense weakness (a taxing war, a larger uprising, a galactic crisis etc.). The Liberty Desire is a compound of a few different parameters but the main ones are the subjects opinion of the Overlord, the total military strength of all the subjects relative to the Overlord as well as if the subject can find someone who supports their cause.
As you would expect from our other games you are able to support the independence of another Empire’s vassal. Doing this will greatly increase their Liberty Desire (assuming the supporter has a fleet rivaling their Overlord) and may cause them to rebel. If they do, the Empire supporting them automatically joins their war for independence. You are also able to guarantee the independence of a smaller Empire, automatically entering the war on their side should they be attacked.



We’ve also added another vital diplomatic action to ensure that we can realistically model the complicated diplomatic interactions going on between advanced nations; the insult. Make sure to clearly express your feelings towards your enemy by insulting them, instantly lowering the opinion between your Empires greatly.

That was all for this week. Next dev diary will be written by Doomdark, expanding further upon War & Peace.

Read the original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Stellaris Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Greetings!

Today our humble offering covers some of the possible Diplomatic Actions and Trade Deals that can occur between Empires. As most of you may know, the basic diplomatic model used in our previous games work quite well and we will use something similar in Stellaris. All Empires will have opinions of all other known Empires, and different actions, events and internal politics will often affect that opinion. The ethics of each Empire will of course play a heavy role here, as pacifist Empires will react quite differently to aggressive wars than would a xenophobic militarist one.

In Stellaris trade between Empires is a very direct affair. Players can create two-way deals lasting a set amount of time, and our ambition is that most diplomatic actions should be available here as tradeable objects. For example, you can offer another Empire a monthly payment of Minerals in exchange for Military Access and updated Star Charts for a period of 5 years, or receive a vital supply of the rare Garanthium resource by offering a nonaggression treaty as well as a guarantee of independence should the other Empire feel threatened. If you want to simply gift or demand something you can leave one side of the trade-deal blank, and the AI will react accordingly.



However, these kinds of trade deals will only happen between equal Empires and as most rulers know, it is better to gain something without having to give up something else. This is where more static diplomatic relationships come into play.

Tributary
A Tributary is forced to pay a set amount of their income to their Overlord each month and is most often established as the result of a lost war. The Overlord will not automatically defend them in wars, so the Tributary is caught in quite an unfortunate position until they have the military strength to either demand an end to their servitude or declare a war of independence.

Protectorate
A Protectorate is a subject protected by a (to them) technologically superior Empire. The Protectorate gains a major research-bonus to all technologies that their Overlord has already researched, and is automatically converted to a Vassal when having progressed far enough technologically.
Any pre-FTL species that is technologically enlightened is automatically created as a Protectorate under whichever Empire granted them the ability to space-travel. The Overlord in turn gains political Influence each month and the eternal gratitude of a bright-eyed new member of the galactic community.

Vassal
A Vassal is the most controlled type of subject-Empire. They will automatically join their Overlord’s wars, aggressive and defensive, and they have no autonomy when it comes to foreign policy or diplomatic relations. A vassal also run the risk of a full diplomatic integration by their Overlord.

Subject-actions
All types of subjects have a Liberty Desire expressing how content they are living under their Overlord’s rule. If a subject's Liberty Desire becomes very high they have a chance to start a war for independence, often waiting for an opportunity when they sense weakness (a taxing war, a larger uprising, a galactic crisis etc.). The Liberty Desire is a compound of a few different parameters but the main ones are the subjects opinion of the Overlord, the total military strength of all the subjects relative to the Overlord as well as if the subject can find someone who supports their cause.
As you would expect from our other games you are able to support the independence of another Empire’s vassal. Doing this will greatly increase their Liberty Desire (assuming the supporter has a fleet rivaling their Overlord) and may cause them to rebel. If they do, the Empire supporting them automatically joins their war for independence. You are also able to guarantee the independence of a smaller Empire, automatically entering the war on their side should they be attacked.



We’ve also added another vital diplomatic action to ensure that we can realistically model the complicated diplomatic interactions going on between advanced nations; the insult. Make sure to clearly express your feelings towards your enemy by insulting them, instantly lowering the opinion between your Empires greatly.

That was all for this week. Next dev diary will be written by Doomdark, expanding further upon War & Peace.

Read the original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Stellaris Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Good news everyone!

Today’s Dev Diary will be about Fleet Combat and the different things affecting it. Like always it is important for you to remember that things are subject to change.

In Stellaris we have a number of different types of weapons that the player may choose to equip his/her ships with. All weapons can be grouped into either energy, projectiles (kinetic), missiles, point-defenses and strike craft. Their individual effects and stats vary somewhat, so let’s bring up a few examples. One type of energy-weapon is the laser, using focused beams to penetrate the armor of a target dealing a medium amount of damage. Mass Drivers and Autocannons are both projectile-weapons with high damage output and fast attack-speed, but quite low armor-penetration. This makes them ideal for chewing through shields and unarmored ships quickly, but are far worse against heavily armored targets. Missiles weapons are space-to-space missiles armed with nuclear warheads. Missiles have excellent range, but they are vulnerable to interception by point-defense systems. There’s of course far more weapons in the game than these mentioned, but it should give you a notion of what to expect.

Strike crafts are different from the other weapon types since they are actually smaller ships that leave their mothership. Cruisers and Battleships can in some cases have a Hangar weapon slot available, in which you may place a type of strike craft. Currently, we have two types of craft; fighters and bombers. Fighters will fire upon ships, missiles and other strike craft. Bombers however may not fire on other strike craft or missiles, but they will do more damage than fighters against capital ships. Point-defense weapons can detect incoming missiles and strike-crafts and shoot them down. These weapons may also damage hostile ships, if they are close enough, but will do significantly less damage against those.



When it comes to defenses, you may increase the durability of your fleet in combat by placing armor and shield components in the utility slots on your ships. Armor components will reduce the incoming damage and can’t be depleted during combat. Shields work much more like an extra health bar to your ships and will be depleted if they take too much damage. Shields will automatically regenerate after combat, unless you have certain components that allow your shields to regenerate during combat. Both shields and armor can have their efficiency reduced if the enemy uses armor and/or shield penetrating weapons.

The different components you place on your ships will also affect certain other key combat values:… Hull points is a value corresponding to the “hit points” or health of your ship. Evasion affects the chance for your ship to evade a weapon firing at it. You may also affect the overall stats (values) of your fleet by assigning an Admiral to it. The stats of your fleet will both be affected by the skill and the traits of your leader. But be aware that traits will not always have a positive effect. I would recommend everyone to always have good admirals assigned to their military fleets since they can really improve your stats, like +20% fire rate and +10% evasion.

Once the combat has begun, you very few options to control what happens, much like it works in our other grand strategy games. For this reason it is really important not to engage in a battle that you are not ready for. As a fallback, it is possible to order a full retreat through the “Emergency FTL Jump” option, this will basically cause your fleet to attempt to jump to the closest system. However, during the windup for the EFTL jump your ships will not be able fire back at the hostile ships, so you put yourself in an exposed situation. Depending on what type of fleet you have, you might want them to always engage in combat or always try to avoid it; for this purpose we have different fleet stances. The evasive stance will try to avoid combat and the fleet will leave a system if a hostile arrives. Civilian fleets have this stance on per default. Aggressive stance will actively make your fleet attempt to attack any hostile that enters the same system as them. Passive stance will, like the name suggest, make your fleet only engage in combat when enemies are within weapon range.



The combat might be off-hand, but you can still indirectly affect how each individual ship will behave. When you design your ship you may specify what combat computer to use on the ship. These computers range from making your ship super aggressive, and basically charge the enemy, or be really defensive and keep formation. At the start of the game only the default combat computer is available, but more are unlocked through normal research or reverse engineering.

It is very possible that your fleet might end up in combat with multiple fleets. This means that you can have a combat with three different empires that are all hostile to each other. To help you keep track of everything that happens we have a combat view, which will appear as soon as a combat is initiated. This view will list you (and any other friendlies or neutrals) on the left side and every hostile on the right side. The combat view is currently being reworked, so you will get to see that interface at a later date, but the idea is to provide you with crucial feedback on how effective your weapons and defenses are.

Once the battle is over, you may want to investigate any debris left from destroyed vessels. If you weren’t the one being wiped out, perhaps you can salvage something?



Sadly, neither the “Picard Maneuver” nor the “Crazy Ivan” are currently possible in the game, but who knows what the future might hold…


Read and discuss the original article on our forums

Useful links
Official Website
Stellaris Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Good news everyone!

Today’s Dev Diary will be about Fleet Combat and the different things affecting it. Like always it is important for you to remember that things are subject to change.

In Stellaris we have a number of different types of weapons that the player may choose to equip his/her ships with. All weapons can be grouped into either energy, projectiles (kinetic), missiles, point-defenses and strike craft. Their individual effects and stats vary somewhat, so let’s bring up a few examples. One type of energy-weapon is the laser, using focused beams to penetrate the armor of a target dealing a medium amount of damage. Mass Drivers and Autocannons are both projectile-weapons with high damage output and fast attack-speed, but quite low armor-penetration. This makes them ideal for chewing through shields and unarmored ships quickly, but are far worse against heavily armored targets. Missiles weapons are space-to-space missiles armed with nuclear warheads. Missiles have excellent range, but they are vulnerable to interception by point-defense systems. There’s of course far more weapons in the game than these mentioned, but it should give you a notion of what to expect.

Strike crafts are different from the other weapon types since they are actually smaller ships that leave their mothership. Cruisers and Battleships can in some cases have a Hangar weapon slot available, in which you may place a type of strike craft. Currently, we have two types of craft; fighters and bombers. Fighters will fire upon ships, missiles and other strike craft. Bombers however may not fire on other strike craft or missiles, but they will do more damage than fighters against capital ships. Point-defense weapons can detect incoming missiles and strike-crafts and shoot them down. These weapons may also damage hostile ships, if they are close enough, but will do significantly less damage against those.



When it comes to defenses, you may increase the durability of your fleet in combat by placing armor and shield components in the utility slots on your ships. Armor components will reduce the incoming damage and can’t be depleted during combat. Shields work much more like an extra health bar to your ships and will be depleted if they take too much damage. Shields will automatically regenerate after combat, unless you have certain components that allow your shields to regenerate during combat. Both shields and armor can have their efficiency reduced if the enemy uses armor and/or shield penetrating weapons.

The different components you place on your ships will also affect certain other key combat values:… Hull points is a value corresponding to the “hit points” or health of your ship. Evasion affects the chance for your ship to evade a weapon firing at it. You may also affect the overall stats (values) of your fleet by assigning an Admiral to it. The stats of your fleet will both be affected by the skill and the traits of your leader. But be aware that traits will not always have a positive effect. I would recommend everyone to always have good admirals assigned to their military fleets since they can really improve your stats, like +20% fire rate and +10% evasion.

Once the combat has begun, you very few options to control what happens, much like it works in our other grand strategy games. For this reason it is really important not to engage in a battle that you are not ready for. As a fallback, it is possible to order a full retreat through the “Emergency FTL Jump” option, this will basically cause your fleet to attempt to jump to the closest system. However, during the windup for the EFTL jump your ships will not be able fire back at the hostile ships, so you put yourself in an exposed situation. Depending on what type of fleet you have, you might want them to always engage in combat or always try to avoid it; for this purpose we have different fleet stances. The evasive stance will try to avoid combat and the fleet will leave a system if a hostile arrives. Civilian fleets have this stance on per default. Aggressive stance will actively make your fleet attempt to attack any hostile that enters the same system as them. Passive stance will, like the name suggest, make your fleet only engage in combat when enemies are within weapon range.



The combat might be off-hand, but you can still indirectly affect how each individual ship will behave. When you design your ship you may specify what combat computer to use on the ship. These computers range from making your ship super aggressive, and basically charge the enemy, or be really defensive and keep formation. At the start of the game only the default combat computer is available, but more are unlocked through normal research or reverse engineering.

It is very possible that your fleet might end up in combat with multiple fleets. This means that you can have a combat with three different empires that are all hostile to each other. To help you keep track of everything that happens we have a combat view, which will appear as soon as a combat is initiated. This view will list you (and any other friendlies or neutrals) on the left side and every hostile on the right side. The combat view is currently being reworked, so you will get to see that interface at a later date, but the idea is to provide you with crucial feedback on how effective your weapons and defenses are.

Once the battle is over, you may want to investigate any debris left from destroyed vessels. If you weren’t the one being wiped out, perhaps you can salvage something?



Sadly, neither the “Picard Maneuver” nor the “Crazy Ivan” are currently possible in the game, but who knows what the future might hold…


Read and discuss the original article on our forums

Useful links
Official Website
Stellaris Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Good news everyone!

This week we will talk about the Ship Designer. Last week we said that this week would be about “War, Peace, Influence and Claims”, but due to some really good (and secret) reasons we have decided to postpone that Dev Diary for a later date. Now let's continue with how you customize your ships in Stellaris...



Customizing your ships is vital for making sure that your ships are equipped for any challenges that awaits them in the galaxy. Your ships have a build cost, build time and maintenance cost that is calculated from the different sections and components that your ship consists of. The ships also receive a wide range of different values; all these are affected by what sections and components you use on your ship. These values can be modified by, among other things, researching technologies and the traits of your leader.

Every ship consists of at least one section that you can place different components on. A Corvette, for example, has one only section but a Battleship has three. The number of slots on each section (slots to place components) may vary between different sections. You can choose all different sections by yourself. The sections are divided into categories based on where they are placed on the ship, so a stern section cannot be placed in the middle section position.



Every section may have available weapons and utility slots. These slots can be of Small, Medium or Large sizes. The different sizes affect the size of the component you may place in the section; a large weapon component may, for example, do more damage but has a lower hit chance. Some sections also have a hangar slot, but more on those in a later dev diary...

Weapon components are, like the name suggests, different components that work as weapons of some kind. It could be something like a huge X-Ray Laser or some point-defenses that are great for when you encounter hostiles using missiles.

Utility modules are passive components that affect the properties of the ship. It could be different types of shield or improved power reactors. A reactor is vital for your ship to function; several different weapon and utility components drain power, and unless you have enough reactors providing the necessary power, your ship will not be able to function (it’s an invalid design).

We also have some required components depending on the class of ship you are trying to build. One of the basics is what FTL capability your ship has, so you may build some ships with warp and others with wormhole FTL. It is, however, only possible to have ships with the same type of FTL in the same fleet. You may also set what thruster to use, which affects the speed of your ships and their evasion chance. For military ships, you can also set what combat computer to use on the ship, which affects how they behave in combat. Different combat computers can be unlocked by technologies. There are a lot more types of components than the above, but this should give you a hint of the basic mechanics..

For those of you who really don’t like to fiddle around with designing your own ships (and we know that you are legion), we have the option to auto-generate new ship designs whenever you research a new technology with something that the game thinks you should use on your ships. This algorithm is very close to what the AI will use.

In the mid and late game you may also use the designer to customize your military defense stations and make sure that noone will ever be able to penetrate your solar system defenses.



That is all for this week, I hope you enjoyed it despite the fact that I don’t write as well as Goosecreature! ;-)

Next week we will talk about fleet combat in Stellaris!


To read this on our official forums with better resolution images, go here!

Useful links
Official Website
Stellaris Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Good news everyone!

This week we will talk about the Ship Designer. Last week we said that this week would be about “War, Peace, Influence and Claims”, but due to some really good (and secret) reasons we have decided to postpone that Dev Diary for a later date. Now let's continue with how you customize your ships in Stellaris...



Customizing your ships is vital for making sure that your ships are equipped for any challenges that awaits them in the galaxy. Your ships have a build cost, build time and maintenance cost that is calculated from the different sections and components that your ship consists of. The ships also receive a wide range of different values; all these are affected by what sections and components you use on your ship. These values can be modified by, among other things, researching technologies and the traits of your leader.

Every ship consists of at least one section that you can place different components on. A Corvette, for example, has one only section but a Battleship has three. The number of slots on each section (slots to place components) may vary between different sections. You can choose all different sections by yourself. The sections are divided into categories based on where they are placed on the ship, so a stern section cannot be placed in the middle section position.



Every section may have available weapons and utility slots. These slots can be of Small, Medium or Large sizes. The different sizes affect the size of the component you may place in the section; a large weapon component may, for example, do more damage but has a lower hit chance. Some sections also have a hangar slot, but more on those in a later dev diary...

Weapon components are, like the name suggests, different components that work as weapons of some kind. It could be something like a huge X-Ray Laser or some point-defenses that are great for when you encounter hostiles using missiles.

Utility modules are passive components that affect the properties of the ship. It could be different types of shield or improved power reactors. A reactor is vital for your ship to function; several different weapon and utility components drain power, and unless you have enough reactors providing the necessary power, your ship will not be able to function (it’s an invalid design).

We also have some required components depending on the class of ship you are trying to build. One of the basics is what FTL capability your ship has, so you may build some ships with warp and others with wormhole FTL. It is, however, only possible to have ships with the same type of FTL in the same fleet. You may also set what thruster to use, which affects the speed of your ships and their evasion chance. For military ships, you can also set what combat computer to use on the ship, which affects how they behave in combat. Different combat computers can be unlocked by technologies. There are a lot more types of components than the above, but this should give you a hint of the basic mechanics..

For those of you who really don’t like to fiddle around with designing your own ships (and we know that you are legion), we have the option to auto-generate new ship designs whenever you research a new technology with something that the game thinks you should use on your ships. This algorithm is very close to what the AI will use.

In the mid and late game you may also use the designer to customize your military defense stations and make sure that noone will ever be able to penetrate your solar system defenses.



That is all for this week, I hope you enjoyed it despite the fact that I don’t write as well as Goosecreature! ;-)

Next week we will talk about fleet combat in Stellaris!


To read this on our official forums with better resolution images, go here!

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