Stellaris Dev Diary #88 - 1.8 Post-Release Support | Page 13

Kipsta · Oct 11, 2017

Stop breaking custom races with each patch. This is frustrating beyond what is bearable.

Mastah Jedi · Oct 11, 2017

Kayden_II said:
I don't really understand the "hate" for doomstacks since it's a usual strategy to minimize the losses in a battle, but the thing is, that the game doesn't really encourage multiple fleets ...

The USA or Russia have the ability to bomb this world within seconds, whereas it takes ingame-years or at least ingame-months to damage / kill a single building / POP, so that there's no need to attack or to defend multiple colonies with multiple fleets since any attacking fleet can't really cause significant damage until the opponent-fleet arrives ...
This leads to the other point, that the the FTL-engines are too fast, so that there's no need to station multiple fleets at multiple strategic points like the home-world or multiple borders since any fleet can reach any destination within ingame-days or at least within a few ingame-weeks + To slow down the FTL-engines is also necessary (for the player) to have enough time to respond to the attack of multiple AI-fleets ...
This leads to the last point, that the AI doesn't use multiple fleets, so that it's natural, that the player tries to hunt down the AI-doomstack with its own one to minimize his/her losses in a battle.

Nether of the two Superpowers, USA or the Russian Federation, have the capability to "bomb this world within seconds". A thermonuclear extinction level conflict, between the two Superpowers, would take 3 to 4 hours, from start to finish. Assuming, hundreds of ICBMs where used by both parties; It would take at least another 78 hours after that, for our planet, to be no longer able to support life. (It takes on average 300 thermonuclear ICBMs to destroy life on entire planet. Each superpower has only about 500 in total, ready to launch. The rest are warheads in storage, or air dropped munitions, or short to medium range missiles; and tactical) Chances are, even in a thermonuclear conflict, before it becomes such, there would be a few months, days or at least hours, of gradual escalation (Real world example, is the ongoing deterioration of relations between the Russian Federation and the USA. The hypothetical end result, unless redirected, is war. However, this process is slow, and relations between the two Superpowers have been steadily deteriorating over past two years. The two Superpowers confiscated each other diplomatic properties and expelled many of each other diplomats, only recently. Proxy conflicts lead to direct engagements by special forces, also, only recently. This may continue some few more years, before the process ends in total brake of relations. The process, that leads two Superpowers to war, does take considerable time, and provides plenty of potential opportunity for redirection). Even in this case, after 78 hours or so, then our planet is no longer able to sustain life in principle, it would take anywhere between 5 months to 2 years, for all life on the surface to perish from lack of food, radiation and drop of temperature.

The simple truth is, there is only one way to efficiently destroy all life on the planet, quickly. That is not with thermonuclear weapons. That would be a bacteriological weapon, a pathogen; preferably genetic and airborn. One idea, would be to take HIV and bird flew, and combine them. One is genetic, and would assault the immune system, the other would kill the host. If it can be made airborn, it would make for a perfect life ending weapon. It may even be possible to genetically tailor this weapon to attack particular nationalities or population groups, who share specific genetic traits. There is no verifiable data, if such weapons even exist at this time. Frankly, if I where an alien, who wanted to conquer another alien world, I would use those kinds of genetic weapons against native population, rather then destroying the world it self, with kinetic detonations.

Now to Stellaris. Those buildings, on planet, are less specific buildings, and more a representation of particular infrastructure. Same with population. Each population unit, is also a representation of 100s of millions of beings. There is in fact, a rather effective raiding strategy I use, before I commit my navy into a single location. I split my fleet into raiding gangs, and raid, 15-20 enemy systems at a time, destroying their infrastructure. Once I have achieved the damage I wanted, I settle (warscore goes up by then), or commit everything into one place for final killing blow. So, no, doomstacks are not the only way to use the navy.

yiome · Oct 12, 2017

Now that 1.82 is out, I genuinely hope the bar for "if no further critical issues are discovered" is not too high. From what I can see on forum and reddit, there are still plenty of bugs around.
Gonna play some more during weekends, but after losing a 8 hour run in 1.81 to bug, for now I guess play without iron man so I can have backup saves and console commands in case things goes wrong again.

Frizzy · Nov 1, 2017

Ikael said:
I am hoping, yes, that we will see a warfare rework. That being said, the introduction of massive shipyards alone would change a lot of the warfare system just by the virtue of creating valuable strategic targets for warfare rather than keeping empires a mass of same-ness as it is now, because that would mean that where and when do you strike with your doomstack would matter. As of now, that type of situation only arises with galactic crises, me thinks.

Surely we have to take mouch more into consideratio if we want an improvement, the starbases are a great , valuable and logically soound target , but without changes in combat that depict what would happen in reality if a space faring nation was attacked would happen this will only mean, that there are fewer targets within the empire to attack, wouldn't it ? instead of going after 120 systsm each with a starport, teh doomstack would now go for 8-10 systems with large starport/starbase. Or It would be split depending on fleet size in relevece ti opponent, plus distance between starbases (so perhpas this is it) the remaining starbases would still be able to spit out more ships faster than individual starports. As long as there are minerals are available, which means the resources now would get depleted much quicker, and teh defender would be able to recreate his/hers fleet in a considerable shorter period of time. I still think should be much more, attriton, logistics, most importantly lack of defenses or fleet presence in your territory should affect minerl/energy outcome through morale/unrest/riots so that an undefended population, be it aggressors or defendeer's forces their "government" to take them into consideration, which is presently nonexistant. I do not mean hardwired and preset penalties "per se" , but a system that changes. I.e. There was a battle 2 hyperlanes from our system and we lost, there is an enemy fleet there, with engough strenght to overwhelm our system defenses and our fnearest fleet is 5 hyerlane jumps out. I guarantee that a normal population would thing about running away and not go to work in the mine every day as nothing happens, without soldiers forcing them to, and even so the efficiency would drop etc.

For now I see that the placement of starbases will lead to a split of force in the first phase of war, depending on intel you could trap the enmy and if correctly forseen would be able to allocate more ships to defend vs the attacker. Let's say 3 starbases are attacked, in 2 cases it is a vicoy for the defender as he "guessed" correctly and had enough force there to win, and in 1 a victory fro the attacker. Now the defender even if he started with a smaller fleet, could have more combined fleet power than the attacker so he rtaliates, etc. Still after that first phase it could go back to doomstack vs doomstack or doomstack vs lonely starbases. The fact that we have so little info makes such a hype of the things that could be

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