The Stellaris 3.6 Orion Update is finally out and available now. There is so many things that got updated and patched in this update and below we will be sharing a list from the official Stellaris Team website covering many of the patches we got from this update today.
New Galaxy Shapes
In the 3.6 “Orion” Update, we’ve added several new galaxy shapes to galaxy generation, many of these galaxy shapes were inspired by actual shapes of galaxies out in the universe, while others are interesting galaxy shapes that we thought would be fun to play on.
Fleet Combat Rebalance
For a while now we’ve been aware of some issues with fleet combat, mainly that:
- Artillery Battleships dominate the late-game
- Disengagement mechanics favor artillery battleships
- Destroyers and Cruisers have extremely limited uses once the next ship size is unlocked
- Command Limits are ineffective
- Doomstacks aren’t fun
The last two combat issues were deemed out of scope for this rework and may be explored in future updates.
Combat Computers
In the Orion update, we’ve changed the behavior of most of the combat computers, as well as added a new combat computer. Swarm and Torpedo (New!) computers will charge in, Picket and Line will attempt to stay at the range of your median range weapons, and Artillery and Carrier computers will now attempt to stay at the maximum range of their longest-ranged weapons, and should a ship move closer than that, they will try to maintain that distance from hostile ships.
Weapons Changes
G slots have been repurposed from Missile slots, and are now used for Torpedos, with Missiles moving to S and M slots. G slots are now only available on Frigates (which we will discuss below) and Cruisers. Proton and Neutron Launchers have been reclassed into Torpedo-type weapons. Torpedo-class weapons also gain a multiplicative damage bonus based on the size of the target. Torpedoes targeting battleships will deal more damage than when targeting corvettes, for example.
We’ve also added more differentiation between the different sizes of weapons, smaller weapons will generally fire faster, and large weapons will generally fire slower, but do more damage. We’ve also added a minimum range to most large-class weapons (except lasers).
Strike craft will no longer intercept missiles, but will continue to fight each other and larger ships. Flak has been changed to more strongly counter-strike craft, while point defense has been changed to more strongly counter missiles and torpedoes.
Ships now get a limited number of Disengagement Opportunities per combat. All current drives provide 1 disengagement roll (except for Psi Jump Drives, which provide 2) once the ship takes hull damage below its disengagement threshold, and the Hit and Run war doctrine grants all of your ships an additional attempt. Civilian ships set to evasive will continue to try to disengage with each hit.
We feel this rework adds a breath of fresh air into space combat in Stellaris, and we can’t wait to see what the community-at-large thinks of these new changes!
Ship Roles
After all these changes, we’ve also changed up how ship autodesign works in Orion. Where previously, the ship designer would auto design one “best” ship, there are now different roles of ships you can choose, and the auto designer will choose components that best match the ship role you’ve chosen.
Ship roles:
- Screen – Focuses on Picket Ship sections with armed point defense and flak
- Available to: Corvettes, Destroyers, and Defense Platforms
- Gunship – Generally prefers to maximize the number of medium-sized weapons available
- Available to: Corvettes, Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships, Titans, and Defense Platforms
- Artillery – Prefers large, long-ranged weapons and missiles in smaller slots
- Available to: Corvettes, Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships, Titans, and Defense Platforms
- Brawler – Gets up close with very short-range weapons like autocannons and disruptors
- Available to: Corvettes and Destroyers
- Torpedo – Uses short-ranged torpedoes to destroy larger ships
- Available to: Frigates and Cruisers
- Carrier – hangs back and launches strike craft from maximum engagement range
- Available to: Cruisers, Battleships, and Defense Platforms
Other things to know:
- Pressing the TTS button again will stop the current reading.
- You can open the pause menu(ESC) at any point while TTS is reading text in order to make it stop. This is useful if you’ve already closed the window containing the text and you don’t want TTS to continue reading.
- The voice generation itself is handled by your operating system, which means that there may be cases where things sound sub-optimal, but where we cannot address this by adjusting the system itself.
- Great care should be taken not to feed TTS text pertaining to the individual freedoms of synthetic lifeforms.
These are not all of the patch notes, so if you are interested in reading them all, click the source link below!
