Stellaris: Better Combat

Stellaris Better Combat keeps the flavor of regular Stellaris but makes combat more interesting based on classic RTS elements. Now updated for 3.10.3! Please see the patch notes for more details.

Some key elements of this mod:

1 – New "Tactician" computer available as a starting technology that allows the player to issue real-time commands during combat.

2 – Useful Destroyers, Cruisers, and small weapons. Large and XL weapons now perform poorly against smaller ship types. Primarily, this is done by reducing tracking on large weapons and increasing evasion on Destroyers and Cruisers. (Specifically, tracking bonuses are now multiplicative instead of additive; this means that a XL weapon with zero tracking will never have more than zero tracking.) A correctly configured Corvette can be almost invulnerable to L and XL weapons.

3 – More ship sections and loadout variety – such as XL Cruisers, 3P Corvette, or a 16G Titan Bow!

4 – Ship Specializations. This optional component can greatly change a ship’s role. For example, Aegis gives a bonus to shields, armor, and shield regeneration, but a penalty to firing rate.

5 – New weapons, such as short range Large and XL weapons (Heavy Autocannons and Photon Cannons for example). There are also new auxiliary slot items, such as the Improved Rangefinder (range bonus) or Shield Regenerator (big shield recharge bonus for military stations only). Many particle effects are new and unique.

6 – New Defense Stations and Fortresses (medium and large military stations).

7 – Combat modifiers that increase the duration of battles (reduction in movement speed, firing rate, and damage).

8 – Many other minor changes to make combat more interesting!

See the Discussion section for an in-depth explanation of changes, and please provide feedback or comments! I hope you enjoy this mod as much as I have enjoyed building it.

Changes to Picket and Line computers encourage ships to stay in formation, more appropriate for large ships as shown here. New particle effects for the Rocket Battery and HV Penetrator are shown.

Two heavy fleets in formation unloading their weapons.

An example of battle data fighting a 100% Corvette fleet. Notice how the Large and XL weapons have zero or near-zero hit ratios, as expected.

A large battle showing some of the new particle effects.

Titans have additional sections and are more versatile. Here, a group of Titans fires a volley of Gemini Torpedoes (T-slot bow replaced with a 16G-slot bow). The hard fleet cap on Titans is gone and you can "mass Titans" if you want! They now cost 24 fleet capacity, up from 16. Note that in typical RTS fashion, a monofleet of Titans would be poorly balanced and vulnerable to certain weapons.

A Fortress (large military defense station) showing off SBC-specific weapons and auxiliary components. The Tactical Ion Cannon does enough damage to kill most ships in a single hit, but is expensive and short-ranged. All military stations are much stronger and more difficult to kill versus Vanilla. The Shield Regenerator is an auxiliary component specifically for stations that greatly increases the shield recharge rate.

The new "Tactician" computer gives manual control to ships during combat. Here, a fleet of carriers attempts to kite a much larger enemy fleet.

An Elite Cruiser equipped with the Photon Cannon, a powerful short ranged XL weapon.

A battleship showing off some of the new SBC-specific weapons and auxiliary components.

A fleet of battleships unloading their HV Penetrators.

Mod compatibility
This mod modifies many ship sections and components (section_templates and component_templates).

"00_economic_categories.txt" and "00_ruler_traits.txt" had to be replaced to allow Defense Stations and Fortresses to be correctly affected by cost modifiers (such as leader traits).

""00_personalities.txt" was replaced to provide the AI different weapon preferences.

"00_ship_sizes.txt" was replaced to update the evasion values for ships, and change the attributes of military stations.

This mod overwrites "weapon_components.csv" which may cause problems with other mods that add or modify weapons (there is more than one method to modify weapons, it depends on the particular mod).

The other modified files are appended to the original ones, so they are less likely to cause conflicts or major issues. File modification follows the best practices to minimize compatibility problems as defined here: https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Modding#Overwriting_Specific_Elements

This is partially compatible with the species packs (Humanoid, Necroid, Nemesis, Aquatic) as these species packs did not include all of the original ship section models. Available sections are used instead; there are cases where some turrets are hidden since the configurations don’t match up completely. Plantoids have all of the ship sections and should be fully compatible. Reportedly, Toxoids don’t render Defense Stations or Fortresses correctly.

For details, see the change notes.