Stellaris Ship Design Guide 2024 [3.12 Machine Age Update]

In this guide, we will explore everything there is when it comes to Stellaris ship designs. We will talk about all the ships (Corvettes, Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships,…), Nanite ships, Cosmogenesis ships, counters for all endgame crises, fleet combat computers, and much more. As you may already know, Stellaris ship design has had a massive rebalance, and with that the combat system and the overall pace of the game. The mid-game ship classes like Destroyers and Cruisers were obsolete when the Battleships came, so it wasn’t very worth even buying them. This all has changed…well, sort of. You can now sort of keep your Crusiers and Destroyers when going into the late game.

The Guide is up-to-date for the newest Stellaris 3.12 “Andromeda” Patch.
+Added Ship Designs For The New Endgame Crisis – Synthethic Queen
+Added a full guideline on how Space Combat AI system works
+Imporved and Revised Some of The Existing Meta Ship Designs
+Added Cosmogenesis Ship Designs (Riddle Escorts & Enigma Battlecruisers)
+Added Nanite Ship Designs (Nanite Swarmer)
+Added More General Tips

With the new Machine Age DLC, there are new types of ships – Nanite Swarmers, Riddle Escorts, Enigma Battlecruisers, etc. Overall, there is a lot of stuff to unpack when creating ships, since the DLCs and patches just seem to be “stacking” additional things into the whole combat system. Furthermore, the extra added Leader quirks, Ascension Perks, Traditions, and Origins seem to further the depth of the game even more. While it’s tough to flesh out the optimal build, we will try to give you a general guideline and explain how everything works, and why it’s good.

Ship Design Table [3.12 Meta Update] by Fantasy Warden

All the regular ship designs in the table are presented above. The “game stage” and “good against” are considered a general guideline, not an end-all-be-all. The “Absolute Power Scale” is so you can have a quick overview of what your focus needs to be on when progressing in the game. That said, it’s not set in stone, and you can use a lot of early ships even in the late game. Do also note that these designs are not “PvP-proof” because naturally a real player can just see your designs and counter them accordingly, especially when you’re going all in on 1 particular thing. It’s a game of rock-paper-scissors at that point. AIs are much more forgiving. So without further ado, let’s go through all the meta ship designs.

Corvette Ship Design

In this stage of the game, it may seem like you can disregard combat, but a lot of unexpected situations can happen like a warmongering neighbor empire attacking you. So it is important to know all the things you can do in order to have the optimal early game fleet, regardless of your empire type, and that is done with proper Corvette ship design. Corvettes have a very precise countering strategy against other Corvettes. You can think of this as a triangle:

Missile-class counters Laser-class
Laser-class counters Picket-class
Picket-class counters Missile-class
Disruptor-class counters everything

Missile-class Corvette

The Missile Corvettes (only using Missiles) are good for a few things, mainly dealing with ships that don’t have anti-missile defenses and Starbases. They are good against all Corvettes except the ones that are equipped with Phase Disruptors or Picket Ship modules.

As mentioned, this ship design is countered by the Picket Corvette, mainly because the Point Defense will shoot down your missiles and then you will be outclassed. Also, once the Phase Disruptors come into play, this design won’t be good in the Corvette versus Corvette combat.

Picket-class Corvette

The Picket-class ship design, as we already mentioned, is a direct counter to the Missile-class design. This is because the additional Point Defense system has a huge advantage against incoming missiles and will be able to neutralize the majority of them.

This build is mainly designed to counter enemy missile Corvettes and will be pretty useless in any other type of “job”. And just like the previous design, this will be horrible against the Disruptor-class Corvettes.

Laser-class Corvette

The Laser-class Corvettes will be completing this “triangle of counter designs”, and the idea of this design is essentially everything the same as the Picket-class, but instead of the picket slot, you would just pick an offensive weapon (for example, one more Laser).

This extra slot will provide you with enough power to outclass enemy Picket-class ships, but you will still have a problem with missiles since you removed your counter to missiles.

Disruptor-class Corvette

This design is considered the absolute best against Corvettes. The sheer Tracking power of Phase Disruptors will devastate the enemy swarm of Corvettes. You will need to outfit your ships with this design as soon as possible. Moving from Missiles to Phase Disruptors will provide you the edge over an opponent who hasn’t researched this tech yet.

Consider this a spike in your Fleet power. If you are ahead in tech, and if you are going to make any aggressive moves early on, going with Phase Disruptors against an opponent that has only Missiles or Picket ships will provide you with a significant combat advantage.

Do note, that Phase Disruptors are close combat weapons that are generally only excellent against other Corvettes, this is mainly because of Tracking and the ability of Phase Disruptors to circumvent the huge 60%+ Evasion that Corvettes have. Once the bigger ships come into play, you will need to repurpose these ships.

Frigate Ship Design

Frigates are usually used as a specialized type of ship, and utilizing the Cloaking Tech is what this ship is about. It won’t stand the chance against brawls and direct combat, but you can pull up some very good sneak attacks.

Stingray-class Frigate

Generally, if you’re going to go with stealth units and want to utilize the power of Cloaking Technology, the best way to do this is to build Cloaked Frigates. Combine that with Torpedos, you get the “Stingray-class” Frigate rogue ship. The main reason why Frigates are so good for stealthy attacks is their size. They are the smallest ship in the game and that works really well with Cloaking.

Do keep in mind that this is a niche Ship and that Corvettes armed with Phase Disruptors will have a field day with them. The main purpose of this ship is to take down the big targets like Titan-class, and Battleship-class ships. It’s important to note that if you don’t have the Stellaris DLC – First Contact, you can’t research Cloaking Tech, rendering this design useless.

Destroyer Ship Design

Destroyers are still in an awkward place in the game. There are better than before the big ship changes, but since the next ship class, Cruisers, are very powerful and the essence midgame, spending too much in destroyers can hurt you in the future.

That said, Destroyers are not obsolete and have their function in the game. Primarily, they are used to counter enemy Corvettes and have a generally easier time with Starbases and Defense Platforms.

Arty-class Destroyer

Going for an Arty-class design is a good choice if you want to steamroll your opponents with Artillery at this stage of the game. The Point Defense Systems are very good in this ship, but you will need to build a lot of them in order to be effective.

We should mention one critical thing regarding the destroyer class. You either build a lot of them, or you almost skip them completely. This is because the next ship class, Cruisers, is much better than destroyers in every shape and form.

Brawl-class Destroyer

At this phase of the game, you will probably want to arm them with some Phase Disruptors as you know you will encounter Corvettes, and then you can choose whether or not you should place missiles and lasers for attacking star bases and defense platforms, or use phase disruptors and Autocannons.

Keep in mind that Autocannons have a great deal of Tracking, and are good against shields. So if you see that your enemy has a lot of Corvettes with shields, going for this fleet design will ensure victory.

Cruiser Ship Design

While the jump from Corvettes to Destroyers isn’t a game-changing one (sometimes players can skip Destroyers completely), the jump from Destroyers to Cruisers is astronomical. You will have more space, more design options, versatility, and weapons choices.

Cruisers are just much better than Destroyers and Corvettes in almost every single regard. It is a ship that dominates the mid-game and is still very useful (certain designs like Arty-class) in the late-game.

Whirlwind-class Cruiser

The main idea of this design is to use as many Whirlwind Missiles as possible. This is mainly because, in the current state of meta, this weapon is extremely powerful in a lot of scenarios. It has good range, great firepower, and versatility.

Getting extra range with perks or Artillery Computer will also provide you with the power to steamroll enemies quicker and have fewer casualties. This design will be outclassed by late-stage Battleships, but it will be perfect in the midgame.

Torpedo-class Cruiser

The Devastator Torpedo Cruiser has superb damage output and can absolutely tear through enemy fleets. Its short range is a problem since it doesn’t have the evasion of Corvettes, but it makes up for that with incredible firepower.

You can use either Autocannons or Disruptors in the small weapon slots, and I’ve had excellent success with both. Use Afterburners for maximum speed, and a Torpedo Computer for the correct behavior. Hangars can be a useful option in the mid-game before Battleships arrive to provide fleet diversity, but once you reach Battleships they do the Carrier role much better.

Arty-class Cruiser

Arty-class is definitely not a go-to Stellaris ship design, but it has a place in the game. The Kinetic Artillery are devastating against hull ships in long-range engagements. They are very good against big ships and are not effective against smaller ones.

The main idea of this ship is to wipe out the enemy at the initial stages of combat, or have a few of these fleets in the backline, while your ship-of-the-line fleet do all the tanking. This is usually effective because they will maintain range and try to stay out of trouble. On the other hand, they are especially vulnerable to Devastator Torpedoes and can be swarmed, rendering their long-range weapons useless, that’s why it’s important to have a good fleet composition when building arty-class ships.

Battleship Ship Design

The Battleship class will get you through the endgame without too much trouble. Of course, there are situations where some weapons and defenses (Hull vs. Shields vs. Armor) are better.

For example, when fighting the Endgame Crysis, 4th Dimensional Beings have a lot of shields, compared to Prethoryn Scourge, so you have to always keep in consideration the ship designs of the enemy too.

Overlord-class Battleship

The Overlord-class design is a very good all-rounder ship. It has everything it needs in order to have extremely good offensive power without having too many blind spots. Your main weapon, Focused Arc Emiter is the primary source of damage against big ships.

The Whirlwind Missiles are a powerhouse in itself and provide good firepower and range. Also, the Point Defense Systems mitigate the biggest blind spot of these big ships, Torpedos. Finally, you have the Strike Crafts that are equipped to deal with pesky small ships like Destroyers, Corvettes, and Frigates.

In regards to the “A” slot, you can run almost whatever you want, depending on the situation, but having a lot of Afterburners is very powerful in most situations.

Arty-class Battleship

This design takes a more classical long-range approach. It resembles pre-3.6 Patch go-to artillery designs where you just have the ridiculous range and enough damage to melt anyone. This is not so true in the new meta, but regardless, it still has its place in the game. Just like Arty-class Crusiers, this design is very effective against big targets and has trouble with smaller ones. The main idea of this ship is to provide you with long-range ballistics and neutralize targets before they even have a chance to retaliate.

If you are fighting against fewer big ships and want to preserve yours as much as possible, having artillery ships is the way to do it. Just don’t forget to have fleets that can absorb damage and also do close combat, you don’t want to get rushed by some Torpedo boats while only having these ships, it will be a disaster. They don’t have Point Defenses or close combat utilities, so be careful when going to the battlefield with this Stellaris ship design, Torpedos, and Stingray-class stealth Frigates are scary.

Titan/Juggernaut Ship Design

While the Titan-class ship design is often overlooked, it can be very beneficial to have one in your army just because of its raw power, and more importantly, the special ability/module it has, like Shield Dampening. In the picture above, we went with a classic arty-style design that does a ton of damage, but more importantly, there is the Aura module which affects all the ships in a given area.

It will make your whole fleet significantly more powerful, so it’s not a good idea to use him as a “Brawler” type of ship, because if you put close-range weapons on it, it will likely be destroyed more easily since the behavior of the ship is going to be to charge forward. It’s better to use some long-range weapons and get him to stay out of trouble so that the Aura slot can do its work.

There are many Auras to choose from, in the picture above, we choose Quantum Destabilizer, which reduces enemy ship fire rate by -10%. This can be really powerful in a large-scale battle. Moreover, there are other Auras with a variety of effects that can be very useful in certain scenarios (as with everything in Stellaris). We have to mention one more specifically, the Shield Dampener, which reduces Shields by -20% and is especially useful against enemies like Unbidden (their defenses mostly use Shields). Again, the Titan is used more or less primarily for the Aura slot, especially when you have a lot of other ships.

Cosmogenesis Ship Designs

The only way to get these ships is through the Cosmogenesis Ascension Perk. There are two variations of these ships: Riddle Escort and Enigma Battlecruiser. Both of them are excellent but Riddle Escorts are just extremely good with how much upkeep and fleet size they consume.

Riddle Escort – Torpedo Class

Riddle Escorts are probably the “best” ship in the game. They can do everything. The loadout capabilities on it are just insane, and the cost is high but the upkeep is very forgiving for its power (almost three times less energy and alloy upkeep compared to a Battleship). Also, the fleet size requirement of 2 is amazing. It essentially means that the initial investment is heavy, but the cap of how many of these ships you can have is much higher than something like a Battleship.

The weapon loadout on the Torpedo-class above is somewhat standard , with the main commodity being Devastator Torpedoes. Essentially you go for good damage output and with the Torpedo Combat Computer, these ships are excellent for swarming. You can also put Marauder Missiles if you don’t have the resources for Ancient Nano Missle Cloud Launcher.

Riddle Escort – Artillery Class

The Artillery Class is somewhat similar to the Torpedo one. The Kinetic Artillery is the main difference here and these ships (with the use of Artillery Combat Computer) are an excellent counter to Shields. Combining the Torpedo/Arty ships is a good composition since the Kinetic Artillery tends to wreck Shields and that can be good in a lot of situations. In regards to the Missiles, the same logic applies as the Torpedo Riddle Escort, if you don’t have Artifact resources, just get Marauder Missiles.

Engima Battlecruiser

While Enigma Battlecruiser is stronger than Riddle Escorts, the overall value is just better with Riddle Escorts. While the Riddle Escorts are better in almost every way, there is a place for a few Engima Battlecruiser ships, especially because they have x2 Spinal Mounts, which is pretty powerful. The loadout above is for “general” purpose warfare and is a good allrounder. Again, these ships are not the main focus of the Cosmogenesis fleets, focus mostly on Riddle Escorts.

The loadout is considered a long-range one, dishing out tons of damage and staying out of too much trouble. The Combat Computer is Artillery and all the weapons are long-range. In the example above, we mixed Focused Arc Emiter and Tachyon Lance together, for general-purpose use. If your opponent has a lot of Shields, go for x2 Focused Arc Emmiter, if your opponent has Armor and almost no Shields, go for x2 Tachyon Lance. Also, just like with Riddle Escorts, you can put Marauder Missiles if you don’t have the resources for Ancient Nano Missle Cloud Launcher.

Nanite Ship Designs

The Nanite Swarmer ship is exclusive to the Nanotech Tradition tree which can only be unlocked by playing a Machine Empire, and the whole progress towards Nanotech is kinda slow, so you won’t see this one in the early game.

Nanite Swarmer

The biggest quirk about this ship is that it has no upkeep, and the cost of it is 500 Nanites, regardless of your loadout. This means that you can literally put all the most advanced components in the ship, and it will cost the same as if you put nothing. The ship has high evasion, but it’s extremely small and has very low Hull/Armor. The best loadout and playstyle for this kind of ship is to just put one Advanced Strike Craft and to just spam them. Other loadouts with close-range weapons are bad because the ship is, again, just too squishy. Strike Crafts seem to mitigate this problem and they can be very powerful in large numbers.

Ship Designs for the Endgame Crisis

When talking about Stellaris fleet and ship designs, it’s important to learn how to fit your ships to counter all endgame crises. Because we already know what type of ships each endgame crisis uses, it’s extremely important to outfit your ships to counter the given crisis, once you find out what it is of course. Let’s go through all three and see how can you make your ships in order to gain the upper hand.

Ship Design for Synthetic Queen

The biggest ship you will deal with (the flagship) is a Titan-class, so Devastator Torpedoes will deal a lot of damage since they scale with the target ship’s size. The flagship also has a lot of regen and bursting it down is the way to go. Torpedo Frigates and Nanite Swarmers are extremely powerful against Cetana, since you don’t need as much upkeep as running Battleships, but still get enough of those juicy Torpedos on the loadout. Her other fleets are mostly defended by shields and armor, so whirlwind missiles are still good here. Her weapons are usually energy ones, so try to avoid having a lot of armor, and stack up on shields.

For her other fleets, just go for Battleships with Focused Arc Emiter (Against Shield and Armor) and Whirlwind Missiles, also stack up more on Shields since they have a lot of anti-armor weapons. The important thing to note here is that by going with smaller ships, Cetana will be less efficient. Nevertheless, on x10 and x25 Crisis Strength, she is extremely powerful and has an absurd amount of regen. As we already said, her flagship is huge (Torpedo deals more damage), and Torpedos are close-range, so her long-range weapons will stop being functional if all your fleets get in close combat (Swarm Computer tactics). Nanite ships with Swarm tactics are also ideal for this, of course, if you have access to them.

Ship Design for Unbidden

For The Unbidden, the defenses have a lot of Shields and some Hull, with no Armor. The weapons are extremely Anti-Armor. Your main goal here is to arm your ships with anti-shield weapons and with Shields as a defense. Using Battleships with Focused Arc Emiter, and Whirlwind Missiles is a safe choice. Moreover, it’s very important to mention the Shield Dampener that can be equipped in a Titan/Juggernaut ship. The -20% is very effective since that’s the majority of Unbidden defenses have Shields. Don’t underestimate the impact of Titan’s aura, it can make your whole fleet much more powerful.

As a side note, once you know that your endgame crisis will be The Unbidden, you need to outfit your ships as soon as possible, in multiple different star bases. Moreover, getting a highly-upgraded Quantum Catapult in some cases can be extremely beneficial so you can sling your fleet close to the portal where they start coming out…you don’t want them to spread across the galaxy.

Ship Design for Prethoryn Scourge

Prethoryn Scourge have no Shields, and are equipped with weapons that ignore shields. This means that the best bet is to go with Tachyon Lance, and Whirlwind Missiles, Advanced Strike Crafts, and Guardian Point Defense will be your bread and butter (anti-armor/hull) against the Scourge.

As for defenses, we suggest you go full Armor, since their weapons are really weak against it. The A Slots are dependent on the situation, if you want to catch them as soon as possible (which is very important), you may want to go for more Thrusters. Just like The Unbidden, we suggest you execute your ship designs as soon as possible since you don’t want them spreading across the galaxy.

Ship Design for Contingency

The defenses of Contingency are a mix of Shields and Armor and the weapons are anti-hull. This means that one of the best fleet designs to counter Contingency is to go with weapons that ignore shields (similar to The Unbidden), building Battleships with Focused Arc Emiter + Whirlwind Missiles are very effective, and you can sprinkle in some Disruptor Corvettes if you have any “leftovers”.

As for defenses, you will need to stack up as many Shields as possible to counter their weapons. You will also need to strip all your ships of the Sapient Combat AI and replace it with Yellow Computers because the Contingency will debuff ships with the Sapient Combat AI. There are ways to play around with this, mainly looking at your log and changing only the infected computers, but if you want to be safe, we suggest you just go with Advanced Computers, the debuff is really strong.

Space Combat AI System

Space Combat AI is a pretty complex mechanic in the game that dictates how ships behave in combat. To break it down, each ship operates and behaves independently of others and is defined by a few things: Attack-Move-Pattern, Passive-Move-Pattern, Formation Distance, and Preferred Range Attack.

Once a given ship enters combat and picks its target, it will go toward the enemy target until a certain range (long, medium, close) is reached. Once the ship reaches it (a certain range), it will enter the “Attack-Move-Pattern”.

Why is this important? Well, the “range” is the keyword. If your weapons have different ranges, let’s say you have a weapon of 30 and 300 range, the median value of this is 165, and that is the range the ship will prefer and will enter Attack-Move-Pattern. The ship will also try to reposition itself to that range if something happens (the enemy ship tries to close distance).

The specific behaviors are defined by the Combat Computer, which is why it’s important to mention all of this. It doesn’t really say anywhere in the game, so a lot of people just take Combat Computers for granted and put whatever bonus they feel like getting. This is a big mistake since Combat Computer heavily dictates your ship’s behavior.

Here is a table on how each Combat Computer influences the ship’s behavior.

Combat Computer Program	Preferred Attack Range	Attack-Move-Pattern	Formation Distance	Passive-Move-Pattern	Return to Formation Distance
Swarm	Minimal Range	Orbit	10	Charge	60
Picket	Medium Range	Stay at Range	Medium Range	Orbit	Maximal Range
Line	Medium Range	Stay at Range	Medium Range	Charge	Maximal Range
Artillery	Maximal Range	Maintain Distance	Medium Range	Stay at Range	Maximal Range
Carrier	Maximal Range	Maintain Distance	Maximal Range	Stay at Range	Maximal Range
Torpedo	10	Charge	10	Charge	Maximal Range

As we can see, there is a lot to unpack from this table. The most important thing to mention is the flow of the ship’s actions:

The ship picks an enemy target.
Ship engages in one of its defined Passive-Move-Patterns (Charge, Orbit, Stay at Range) until Formation Distance is reached.
Once Formation Distance is in motion, the ship will engage Attack-Move-Pattern (Orbit, Charge, Stay at Range, Maintain Distance).

If you want a detailed behavior analysis, run each ship through the flow above and see how it exactly behaves. There is a lot of stuff to consider here when you look at everything on the table. Generally, a good rule to go by is that the Combat Computer will behave as the name suggests:

Swarm Computer will try to try to get in opponents’ faces as much as possible. Usually, mass Corvettes use this.
Torpedo Computer will do the same but will maintain some distance from time to time. For example, a Torpedo Frigate.
Line Computer will try to have an “optimal” medium range based on the weapons used, as well as try to “hug” the allied ships. Any standard missile ship.
Picket Computer will do something similar to Line but without the hugging.
Artillery Computer will pick the most weapon range and try to stay at that range as much as possible. Obviously, this goes on ships with a lot of Artillery weapons.
Carrier Computer will try to maintain maximum hangar range and try to maintain extreme distance (Ships with Hangars).

All this information is to say that for you to have an optimal strategy, you have to think a lot. The basics of these mechanics can be applied like in a medieval battle. The footman/pikeman is your “ship of the line” with…Line computers. These ships are robust and form the backbone of your fleet. The catapults and archers are your artillery and carrier ships, and the charging cavalry are your Swarmer/Torpedo designs. Of course, everything is highly dependent on what type of opponent you face, but this is a good general rule to follow and apply.

While this structured approach to combat allows each ship to optimize its engagement strategy based on specific weapon configurations and enemy movements, we do have to mention that when mixing weapons and ships, combat computers can behave very quirky, but it’s still very important to understand the behavior/range when putting on weapons on your ship designs.

There is also a targeting system that you should be vaguely aware of. It essentially dictates what your ships prioritize as a target. Some of the mechanics of the targeting system are:

Targeting smaller, more fragile ships is a factor, but a small one.
Low-health ships are prioritized.
Closer ships are prioritized.
Your ships that have high tracking will focus on highly evasive ships, this means mixing a few “anti-corvette, anti-tracking” fleets will come in handy.
Large ships somewhat ignore highly evasive targets, this means, for example, that if you have a mix of Crusiers and very high evasion Corvettes, and the enemy has Cruisers with low tracking, they will likely prioritize your Crusiers even though Corvettes are smaller (because they have high evasion).

This kinda comes in handy when developing your fleets, it’s just nice to be aware of the combat mechanics and how they play out in battles.

Bonus Ship Design Tips

Follow the general rule of “Absolute Power” in the table at the beginning of the article. You don’t want to have a lot of early ships like Destroyers in the later stages of the game, they simply can’t compete in a lot of scenarios. Corvettes are sometimes okay, but Battleships are still the absolute king of the battlefield.
The “Overlord” Battleship design will deal with almost anything the AI throws at you. If you don’t know what to build and don’t want to get too much into the designs, this is your safest bet of all Stellaris ship design patterns in this guide.
Chokepoints are sometimes an overlooked strategic point. Holding and controlling them will significantly help you defend your empire and prevent AI from scattering all over the place.
Don’t underestimate the power of Tachyon Lance and Focused Arc Emmiter, those two weapons are by far the most impactful in the late-game, choose one of them according to your enemy fleet defenses.
Armor is generally better than shields, of course, this is definitely not the case if a real player is building anti-armor weapons, but against AI it’s a somewhat safe choice.
Afterburners are very powerful, when in doubt, go with Afterburners.
If you are creating your own ship design, try to look for weapons that have synergy in weapon range and that fulfill a certain role – Range, Brawl, Burst, Anti-Shield, Anti-Armor, etc.
Apart from designs themselves, there are a ton of ways to upgrade your ships with bonuses from all of the game (Civics, Edicts, Ascension Perks, Tech, Admiral Bonuses, Traditions,…). While this is obvious, it’s important to note the significance of the bonuses themselves.
With the introduction of Astral Planes, you might want to consider more shields on some ship designs, since there is one Astral Action called Planar Mastery that unlocks an Edict called Astral Shielding, which boosts Shields considerably. More information is in our Astral Actions guide.
If you are not advanced, stick to the general ship designs, randomly changing weapons can have very bad anti-synergy effects.
Auras from Juggernaut/Titan ships are extremely powerful, so be sure to make one of these ships and choose the right Aura for your scenario. Usually, the -10% Ship Fire Rate is the safe choice.

Conclusion

Stellaris ship design meta development has been an interesting journey for the whole Stellaris community. It’s always good to see people experimenting, trying different builds, and exploring different weapons choices and defenses. In this current state of the game, we are happy with the changes Paradox made in regards to the whole combat system in Stellaris Patch 3.6. There is still some polishing to do, like the state of Destroyer ships and some other questionably powerful weapons, but we still tried to provide some of them in our Stellaris ship design guide. Nevertheless, you will always get some sort of power scale in games like Stellaris.

It’s important to note that every Stellaris ship design has a counter to it, meaning there is no perfect design, but there are bad ones. That said, the ever-evolving meta is the part that makes it fun for the players. We think we won’t be seeing any significant changes in the combat system since the last big change was more than enough to keep Stellaris players engaged in the combat system. Moreover, we all know that Stellaris is not only a game of combat but also a game of politics, relationships, economy, etc. This is why we think once you learn these Stellaris ship designs, you won’t have to worry for a long time and the main focus should be on other things as well.