Welcome, everyone. We haven’t really done dev diaries before, but as a way to mark our 90k subscribers’ anniversary and because the next major update will include a fundamental change to game mechanics, we thought its time we give you a heads up on what is coming.

This diary will be a bit long and extensive, so bear with me. Today, I want to talk to you about ship classes, and how we are going to overhaul them over the next year.

The current ship classes

Historically, Stellaris has various limits that forced every buildable ship class to be available to all species. That had caused a few issues. We had to come up with classes that are generic enough in name and in play style that they can fit for every species. We then had to select actual Star Trek ships to go along with those classes, which often resulted in some things being somewhat shoe-horned in.

For example, it makes sense that we wanted, from a gameplay point of view, to have a more ‘tanky’ cruiser and a more ‘glass-cannon’ battlecruiser, but it is hard to find appropriate Federation ship selections that can fit those classes.

Other issues include that we are limiting the distinction between species and the ships – a Federation battleship is the same as a Romulan battleship, with the only difference being the global construction modifiers.

Finally, another issue is that some empire, especially the Federation, simply have more ship classes in canon and beta canon then everyone else. Since everyone has their favorites, it means a lot of people are disappointed that ‘their ship’ isn’t in the game – but the current ship classes system simply does not allow for an unlimited addition of new ships. Even with using unique sections to unlock more ‘classes’.

The Solution: Individual ship classes

Due to certain changes in Stellaris code, we can now allow for ship classes that are individual to a specific empire. In the next major update to New Horizons, we are going to do just that. On a test-case basis, to gather feedback, we are going to start overhauling the Starfleet ship classes. If the test works, we will extend this method to the four, major species – Romulan, Klingons, Cardassian, and Dominion.

The Borg, of course, already have their own ships for almost a year.

What does this mean? It means that, for example, the Ambassador-class will no longer be the ‘TMP Battleship’ that will eventually be replaced by the ‘TNG-Battleship’, but its own unique, distinct ship class – that might have unique advantages that will make you want to use it, instead of the newer ship classes. The old ship class won’t be automatically replaced by the new one, as it does currently, under the era system.

To make this point clear, the era system will no longer work in the same way for the Federation.

What is this change good for?

Well, giving ship classes individuality allows us near complete freedom on how they play out. The Galaxy-class can have its own values to make it different from all other ‘similar’ ships – allowing it to be faster or slower, more nimble or slower to turn, sturdier or weaker. It can have access to unique components, utilities, and weapons. It can have unique modifiers.

Naturally, for the sake of balance, initially, the ship classes won’t be too drastically different. But this allows us to add a few interesting new game mechanics, and eventually to build up the uniqueness of those new classes.

What new mechanics?

For starters, since 2.0 we can limit access to weapons and utilities (components were already possible) to individual ship classes. This allows us to do several fun things in the next update, that will allow the various ship classes and ship roles to manifest themselves.

Exotic Torpedo: The first such change is marking some torpedo warhead types as ‘exotic’. Those slightly more potent torpedoes will only be available to certain ship classes (destroyer and battlecruiser for the generic ship classes, enforcing those ship purpose as being the ‘artillery’ classes).

We are going to use the same concepts to mark another type of components as ‘exotic’ too. For example, the spore drive is going to come back – but will now be an ‘experimental warp drive’, only capable of being fitted into ships like the Crossfield-class.

Tech Limit: The second change will initially only be for Federation ships. The idea behind it that, for example, there is only so much refitting you can do to an old NX-class – it is simply not built for the pressures and energies made by, say, TNG-level warp cores and shields.

Ships will now have a ‘tech limit’ ranging between 1 and 9, marking the highest tech tier they can equip. An NX-class will have a tech limit of 4, meaning it can only equip components, utilities, and weapons up to, and including, tech tier 4.

Certain ships, like the tried and true Miranda-class, will have a very extensive tech range. Others, like the experimental Crossfield-class, will have a limited tech range – meaning you will probably replace it rather quickly as your technology advance.

This also means we can have a range of ships that are visually unique and differentiate them significantly just by allowing the ‘newer’ ships having access to newer techs.

Unique modifiers: the current way the era system works, all new ships gain a passive bonus to their health and damage. So, a TNG ship, when built, comes with a +20% bonus to health and damage. This makes newer ships better, by default, from the older version of those classes.

Under the new system, Federation ships will no longer gain this passive bonus. Instead, they will gain individual bonuses, that fit their tech level and role. While those bonuses will be equivalent in term of balance to bonus to the old era bonuses, they can be far more varied. For example, a galaxy class will gain +60% bonus to hull and +20% bonus to disengagement, making them a truly sturdy ship that has a very good chance to survive almost everything tossed at it.

What was required to make this transition?

The biggest change already happened, in Arsenal of Freedom – we re-factored all the game components to be on a scale. Previously, in 1.9, our components were fixed. There was, say, a certain ‘size’ of shields for a destroyer and a different ‘size’ for a battlecruiser, but those values were fixed. There was no room to add more classes.

The new system has all components on a scale, from size A – that fits runabouts, to size O – giant city-ships and omega cubes. Sizes are ranked linearly. Size O is about 55 times more potent than size A. This means that when we make a new ship class, we just need to assign it a ‘size’ for its shields, thrusters, etc. It also means we can easily make classes that, say, have weaker shields but very fast engines.

The second change has been partially done and has to do with resorting our weapon slots. With the 2.0 addition of the option to add a modifier unique to certain slots, we have begun to make use of it by using an innovative ship size restriction for our torpedo launchers, so we merged the ‘light’ and ‘heavy torpedo slots.

Important: The next goal is to change the current light/heavy cannon/beam breakdown, switching back to a more vanilla standard of having light/medium/heavy energy weapons, with a unique ‘extra-large’ weapon class reserved for unique and powerful weapons.

So how will this work, exactly?

When we were working on this overhaul, we realized that tossing 30+ ship classes at the player can be overwhelming. While we are certain some players will enjoy finding interesting fleet combinations by utilizing the various bonuses.

For that purpose, we have divided the Federation ships into 8 archetypes, that will serve a similar purpose to the current ship classes, coupled with the era system. Each archetype will represent a style of play, a certain role – such as artillery, fast engagement, tank, support, etc. When a new ship class under an archetype unlocks, it will retire the old ship class, in a similar way to how the era system works now.

The difference is two-fold. First, the individual ships will still be completely unique.

Secondly, players will be able to pull old designs back, using the Starfleet Museum mechanic, that will also be overhauled. The Museum will now act as a way to retire old ships again or to commission them once more. This will basically be like a toggle, that will add, or remove, those ship classes from the list of designable ship classes.

Every Federation ship class will also have a new unique component that will serve as a way to observe all the unique details of that ship, in its tooltip.

Conclusion

There is still a lot more work to do before we can even start testing this new system, and sometime before we will put it in your hands. Still, we hope you found this read interesting!