Since you're the second person to make the mistake that I was talking about starbases being weak in the context of doomstacks, I'm editing it to clarify.
General Summation of Stellaris's Warfare Problems
- Thread starter Ragnarok Ascendant
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Since you're the second person to make the mistake that I was talking about starbases being weak in the context of doomstacks, I'm editing it to clarify.
It‘s not a mistake. You wrote: “Weak Starbases. End game fleets will roll over anything. This again contributes to doomstacking...”
You might not have meant “weak starbases contribute to doomstacking,”and no one is attacking you, but it’s literally what you said.
I generally agree with you though. Including on starbases. I think they should be more powerful. building a massive space fortress should take equally substantial resources, but it should be quite possible.
I think I might start with the idea others have proposed to have platforms regenerate over time. While it wouldn’t solve the problem that starbases have a pretty low upper limit on strength, it would help their general uselessness.
I just had a realization. Chokepoints do not contribute to strategic gameplay, but they do serve a function. They allow an empire to be somewhat neglectful of its fleet and still be able to defend against an aggressive neighbor. And as bad as they are from a strategic perspective, that's kind of a good thing for a game that wants to also be a sort of empire-level RPG. It's also an anti-snowball measure in a game where snowballing is hugely impactful. Now we can debate how well that works in practice, but that's why I think chokepoints are here to stay and PDX will do nothing to get rid of them on default settings.
But it is already possible to control the amount of chokepoints with the hyperlane density game setting. Set it to 1 and you get chokepoint star systems. Set it to 2 and you won't see as many perfect single system chokepoints, but you can still create chokepoint zones by fortifying 2-3 adjacent systems. Set it to full and there pretty much are no chokepoints in your galaxy.
As for starbases becoming weak in the late game I suspect that too is a deliberate feature intended to make it much easier to punch through chokepoints and bring the game to a close. So basically what the game is trying to achieve is more or less a stalemate situation in the early- to midgame, so that most empires can persist for a while, and then collapsing that stalemate in the mid- to lategame to keep the game from being too stale.
How good it is at achieving that goal is a whole new discussion, but I think this explains a lot about the state of warfare in the game.
But it is already possible to control the amount of chokepoints with the hyperlane density game setting. Set it to 1 and you get chokepoint star systems. Set it to 2 and you won't see as many perfect single system chokepoints, but you can still create chokepoint zones by fortifying 2-3 adjacent systems. Set it to full and there pretty much are no chokepoints in your galaxy.
As for starbases becoming weak in the late game I suspect that too is a deliberate feature intended to make it much easier to punch through chokepoints and bring the game to a close. So basically what the game is trying to achieve is more or less a stalemate situation in the early- to midgame, so that most empires can persist for a while, and then collapsing that stalemate in the mid- to lategame to keep the game from being too stale.
How good it is at achieving that goal is a whole new discussion, but I think this explains a lot about the state of warfare in the game.
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The need for something blocking a one-sided successful war is that we don't want one strong country to steamroll everything.
With this being the basic aim, then we have 2 different directions
With this being the basic aim, then we have 2 different directions
- War gains to be less direct so that losing a war doesn't mean the lost of your entire civilisation.
- Right now the Claims are too direct. If you have Claims and have got their planet, you will own them after the war.
- Getting too much doesn't have penalties.
- Conquered Capital planet will become chaotic for a while and that's it.
- No Aggressive Expansion mechanics
- War should be difficult
- Supply problem? Perhaps a "range problem" is less of an irrigation. Military ships may only operate a few jumps of depth into enemy territories due to communication to the homeworld's command. Or there can be Starbase requirements so military ships may only operate within 5 jumps of an active military star base or something. It is a simplification.
- War Exhaustion right now isn't really Exhaustion.
- Diplomacy is too rigid. You can't just ally a country at war so you can't intervene a war, or to just call for help by making diplomatic progress with someone and receive their aid in the middle of a war.
- More war objectives? Military facilities than just Starbases on top of planets?
- Crew morale for your military ships?
- Having to fly home to resupply something, be it repairing, fuel or whatever, in an owned (not controlled) Starbase?
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This has come up elsewhere too, but I think you put your finger one one of the most consistent problems with Stellaris. There’s no clear vision for this game, so it’s trying to be like five different games at once. And so you get problems like this, where a core feature is introduced that‘s actively hostile to one type of game (strategy) while supporting another (RPG).
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The problem is that starbases, outside a brief moment of glory equipping a hangar module against an early AI's corvettes, don't serve much of a stalemate function. (And you have no restriction of how much you can seize from enemies early game, that could be a problem.)
In RTS games like the Age of Empires series, usually towers/forts/castles are superior to units on resources invested, at the cost of not moving, and often not gettign the same level of upgrades. But then to deter players from spamming up the Amazing Forest of Towers, there are true siege engines that come into play later game and can wreck shop. Often these siege engines are expensive, and you have to protect them with your own regular units. Examples: catapults or siege towers in Age of Mythology, Trebuchets in Aoe2, and mortars in aoe3.
If you had an element like that in space combat in stellaris, then you could have strong starbases that could give an edge to defenders, but a determined foe could build up "siege ships" on top of their fleet and wipe those away, so you couldn't just be totally passive.
The idea being regular fleets = general purpose, starbases = alloy efficient defense, no projection, siege ships = alloy efficient starbase destruction, but fairly useless against regular ships.
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Hmm... I am putting this design here to see if someone likes it.
- War should be operated by Forward Bases of Operation.
- An admiral has command of an expedition fleet. It has basic combat capacities but its main function is to build a forward Base of Operation.
- Once having entered enemy territories, you have the buffer to occupy like 5 systems before you have to decide a location where you establish your base of operation.
- After establishing, the Admiral will take command within the base. Fleets can be sent out in a radius of either actual distance like how you measure Jumps, or of several hyperlanes.
- Fleets can then be sent out to take war objectives.
- All fleets must operate within range of any forward base.
- All fleets receives extra combat capabilities from the commanding Admiral in the base of operation, and can only receive from one base when they are within range or 2 or more.
- The defender does not need to destroy every single enemy fleet. But they only need to destroy all the forward bases.
- When a base of operation falls, the Admiral in charge dies.
- All fleets without an active forward base of operation are forced to return home with an MIA.
- Only Admirals levelled 3 or above may establish a forward base of operation.
- When all have fallen, the offender has no way to continue the war, as newly recruited Admirals don't have the required levels to establish new bases of operation.
- All Admirals at peace time should have a passive gain of experience so that they would reach level 3 eventually, allowing wars.
- The alternative to this is to give a free Quotum of 1 Base of Operation free of level requirements. But it has to be the one Admiral with the highest level.
- Hiring of Admirals should have certain limits. Else everyone will just hire like 10 at peace time.
- Some extra constraints?
- Can only have 2 or 3 fleets concurrently operating in one star system so everyone has to queue up?
- Admiral of the forward base of operation should determine fleet sizes according to their skill levels.
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Issue with starbases isn't about their strength or weakness in combat, but about whole design of. In warfare scope, starbases are nothing more than glorified ships w/o ability to move around, while any sort of base of operations is, at first, logistics and supply centre. Currently, starbases provides repairs.. and don't need to pay any sort of maintenance for this: literally any starbase provides full-scale repairs and maintenance services at the same level as shipyards, but don't have to have neither shipyard, nor dockyard, nor repair bay in order to provide any sort of ship maintenance services.
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And that, IMO, is the problem: when you don't need to rely on others for something, the only logical interaction between you is conquest.
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Agreed. Shipyards should be needed for repairs. Then there’s be a reason to plan out their location, and they’d be valuable real estate to fight over.
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I strongly agree on all of the above points. Most tragically and unacceptably of all, warfare in Stellaris is often just boring. And that really should not be the case.
Some quick suggestions which would help - but I don't think fully improve - the points above:
0. Giving fleets the option to ignore enemies in the same system as them and move elsewhere. Sure, they'd probably take damage as they did so - they're being fired upon afterall - but if a Doomstack suddenly moves into a system where I'm mustering a fleet, I want to be able to tell that fleet "No, do NOT ENGAGE! Fall back to the next safe system!". As it is, if your fleet and the enemy get too close, they lock into combat until one is destroyed.
Related to this should be the option to "Focus on Starbases", "Focus on enemy Fleet", or both. So much annoyance in that one.
This might even help the 'Doomstack guarding a chokepoint' issue - just tell your own fleet to run the blockade, driving straight through the enemy heedless of damage and casualties to get to the hyperlane on the other side of the system.
1. Lower base fleet sizes across the board. This would require more 'fleets' into which all of an Empire's ships would be sorted. This would have the added benefit make techs/edicts/abilities which improve fleet size more valuable and more of a choice you'd make deliberately.
4. Designable weapons slots on Starbases, and make the 'regenerating Defence Platforms' feature from that mod part of the base game. I almost always play with this as the Defence side of the vanilla game is woefully underdeveloped and underpowered.
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TBH, on higher levels, early game conquest, while rewarding, is also the most difficult - it requires certain strategic forethought and focus, since AI (even modded AI) bonuses are felt the most in the initial decades.
game goes out of sync is the single biggest issue... this carries across into your save game so restarting will not fix it... bases, ships etc become unkillable so you simply can't win the battle in that system and your doom fleets will just be stuck \ killed unless you take control and move them
The UI factors alone around handling six fleets of 20 instead of one fleet of 120 (when you have a target that absolutely requires you to bring 120 to the party) are enough to make me want those techs.
(Remember, the only mechanical downside to running six fleets of 20 instead of one fleet of 120 is the extra admirals you have to buy... and if I remember rightly, there are ways in which 6x20 is superior even if you're moving them around as one big deathball.)
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One easy way around this, is too allow starbases to become sieged as well. Fleet stays outside of the bases engagement ranges, and over time the starbase loses strength, until it surrenders.
It's basically cutting off supplies, fuel, food, etc. for the people on that station. This would allow you to get past them, without having to directly have the fleet power to take it out.
This way bases CAN be exceptionally powerful, and if you use the correct tech, and civic focuses even become more powerful than your fleets, without creating a need for doomstacks to exist.
I don't understand why PDX hasn't thought of this as a fix since they literally have 2 other games that have this system, and it works very well. (Crusader Kings, and Europa).
I disagree with this entirely.
Chokepoint system is not bad, and it theoretically does make sense to have lanes. (Hell our planes have lanes in the air to avoid collisions, and despite how vast and open the sky is, planes still hit each other somehow.. even out in the middle of nowhere.)
I'd prefer to see a "gate" system at each chokepoint though, similar to EVE Online, where you're using the gates to jump, rather than the ships themselves. This would help lend to the credibility of the "lanes".
That being said, Chokepoints are a necessity for defense because of how this game plays out, and how the mechanics are. There are PLENTY of ways to balance this out, like my example above about letting bases be able to be sieged.
Which would become even more problematic by removing "chokepoints", and eliminating chokepoints isn't even going to fix the issue, but compound the problem.
Example: I have a trade base, and trade lanes. I use the chokepoints, and lanes to setup several bases to "slow down" the enemy. Which they do. They are road bumps, to give my fleet enough time to get there before I lose my trade lanes, and trade bases. Is this always possible? Of course not, but that's where proper planning, and dealing with the RNG the game gives you. (It's part of what makes stellaris fun). Yes it didn't stop them outright, but I had options to slow my enemy down.
Your Example: There are 90 ways to sunday to get to my trade bases.. I can't possibly build enough bases to close all the gaps, and they just go around my stuff to hit my base directly immediately...
How exactly is that better?
Simply.. No.. I don't want to lose a war when I have options available to win. Nor would your people accept a loss when your more than able to defend yourself.
This warscore style allows several things to happen:
1) It forces the enemy to actually win. Not just blitz the objectives then gg I'm out immediately.
2) It gives you time to cross huge expanses of space if someone suddenly declares war on you when your fleets are otherwise engaged on the other side of the galaxy.
3) It's a reflection of the peoples willingness to fight. Not just whether or not the enemy succeeded in their objectives. (Just ask Germany about the French, Polish, Czech and many other uprisings during WWII. Just because Germany succeeded in their war plans against them doesn't mean the fighting is over and pack up).
Again, there are MANY ways to break up doom stacking.
1) Make Admirals have limited fleet numbers. HOw many ships those Admirals can actually command effectively. Going above this cap decreases their effectiveness. (This is done in HOI to great effect, to stop "doom stacking" in that game, by having your #1 best general command everything).
2) Have logistics required to upkeep fleets, and the costs and amount required increase the further you go away from your planets, and bases. Have this per system. So all your fleets in 1 system are going to require far more than if you had them split up amongst other systems.
This also makes it so pushing farther away from your bases/planets will require you to split up your fleets a bit more if you really want to push deep into enemy territory.
This I agree with. Though, not the argument to why chokepoints is a problem. You shouldn't be able to just yolo their anchorages, but fleet capacity, and logistics needs to be much more in depth. (Like some of my points above)
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There is a two pronged issue with bases..
1) People think they should go head to head with fleets equally.
2) Bases are supposed to be temporary "road blocks" that slow down an advance, not stop it entirely...
Think of defensive structures in real war.. The pillboxes, barbed wire, and defensive structures on the beaches of D-Day. The Ardennes Maginot Line. (Ignoring the fact Germany went around it, it would of been able to stall the advance significantly for quite some time, but wouldn't of stopped them entirely), and there are many many other examples of frontal military base like installations of varying sizes in wars from every point in history, all of which extremely rarerly if at all entirely stopped an army.
Bases are supposed to be stall tactics, to allow your fleets to get to the fight and let the main army actually counter the opposing army (which is what the Maginot line would of effectively done had it not been usurped by a silly oversight of borders, and assuming Germany would follow the gentleman rules of war).
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This is why I think:
1) Bases should be able to be sieged like planets.. with military buildings able to be built to increase the siege time, and even damage the siegers from a distance.
2) This would allow doomstacks to not be required to take down a base.
3) Would open up options to the attackers. Do I siege the base with a smaller fleet? Or do I need to consolidate my fleet to take it out quickly?
4) Slow down how easy it is to repair, and replenish fleets. Main problem right now is "doom stacks" are so effective because of how insanely fast they can repair back to 100% health.
5) Do not allow captured bases to repair enemy fleets.. Ever. (There could be certain civics and cultural options to get around this, similar to building ones that make buildings more beautiful increases 1 stat while making them more expensive to build, by having civics which allow your fleets to repair at enemy bases but your fleets also have -15% hull and armor stats, and the bases only repair at like 25% efficiency)
6) Create a real logistical mechanic per system. The farther away your fleets are from friendly uncaptured bases and planets, the more and more expensive that fleet gets, as well as the slower the logistical stats get. (I'd see the logistics stats of a fleet similar to the Supplies system of Imperator, or other PDX games, where the army or fleet basically takes "attrition" in this case, just using the fuel, ammo, food, etc. required to keep your fleets running. You need to go back to a friendly base to replenish, or set your fleet to "replenish" making it unable to move, but the supplies bar goes up slowly. Farther away you are from friendly bases/planets, the longer this takes.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but I think the two big differences we have are these:
- Your model focuses on how the enemy gets to its target. Mine focuses on where they're going.
- Your model emphasizes certainty. Mine emphasizes uncertainty.
So when you say: "Your Example: There are 90 ways to sunday to get to my trade bases.. I can't possibly build enough bases to close all the gaps, and they just go around my stuff to hit my base directly immediately..." I think that's a great explanation of how we see this problem differently. I think that's how the game should be designed, because the solution in that example is to protect the trade base itself.
I think the doomstack problem in Stellaris has always been that there isn't infrastructure that's worth attacking or defending. The entire war is won or lost with the fleet, so the best option is to keep that fleet bunched up and together. The only thing you need to attack is their fleet, so nothing outweighs the offensive benefits of force concentration. The only thing you need to protect is your own fleet, so nothing outweighs the defensive benefits either.
What we need is a system of critical infrastructure and logistics that change the role of fleets in warfare. Then the question of how the enemy gets to its target won't matter as much. The strategy will be in choosing how you prioritize your resources. Which locations do you defend more heavily, and which do you risk? Which targets do you attack, and which aren't worth it?
Those choices can be wrong. I might protect locations that you ignore altogether and under-invest in places that you hit. But that's a feature, not a bug. Being wrong in a strategy game means the other side played better than you. They made a choice you didn't expect or account for and it let them win.
But as long as this infrastructure is bottled up behind a chokepoint there is no room for uncertainty. If there's one way to get to the trade base, you know what to defend. You stack defenses there, so I concentrate my forces there, so you send your defenders there, and just like that our war is reduced to one big fight. Meanwhile, our strategy game is devoid of strategy because neither of us made any actual choices. This entire war was pre-scripted by our geography.
That's why I prefer a target/uncertainty based model. Infrastructure should not just be important, it should be critical. Your fleets should depend on your infrastructure to keep fighting, your economy should depend on it to keep running, and your war score should be primarily based on it. Then, doomstacking would be far less viable because if the enemy bunches all their ships together, you could just ignore them in favor of the real targets. Your challenge would be choosing which targets to attack and defend based on the limited resources at hand (and I would suggest a range system as well), knowing your choices might be wrong.
Right now none of this is true or possible. I can and should doomstack because if I hit one target and you hit five, my ability to fight and win the war is undiminished. As a result, nothing outweighs the advantages I get by concentrating my forces. (Also, because of chokepoints, you realistically can't hit five targets. You only have one target anyway.)
Also, just to be clear, I never said get rid of war score and war exhaustion. I said take fleets out of that calculation. Right now fleets dominate both of those metrics. Taking planets is kind of irrelevant,
Fleets right now occupy both prongs of warfare: how you fight and how you win. Using your fleet is how you fight the war, and protecting/attacking fleet is how you win it. My suggestion is to remove fleets from that second prong. Fleets would be how you fight a war, but protecting/attacking the empire (its planets, bases, systems, etc.) would be how you win it.
I would also disagree with the idea of having admirals limit fleet numbers. This seems like a variation on the system limit, which is basically what you would need. However you get there, any arbitrary limit on the number of ships would need to stop players from bringing more ships into a system. Otherwise you get what we have right now, which is a fleet cap... but then players just bring all their fleets.
My problem with system/admiral limits is that they don't change any of the underlying incentives. The game still has an optimized strategy, which is to bring as many ships as possible into any given fight. Not only would that still be boring, but the new best thing to do would be to just have all of your ships travel in a blob spread across a couple of systems. Then you just cycle new ships in as old ones are destroyed.
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How do fleets dominate 'war score', by which I assume you mean surrender acceptance? Relative naval strength only gives at most +50 surrender acceptance, which is not enough on its own to broker even a status-quo peace, let alone an outright victory. And taking planets is relevant if you intend to conquer them - it's basically impossible to conquer a planet you haven't occupied.
My two favorite ideas ideas from this discussion:
1) make star bases very powerful but Siegable.
2)give fleets a supply value that decreases with activity, decreases faster farther from a base, and needs to be replenished by “resting”, which is faster at a base > in friendly territory > in enemy territory. Low supply value decreases combat ability and movement. Also replenishing adds fleet cost.
it seems like these two can really be one idea. Just include starbases in supply and have it decrease when sieged. Once depleted the starbase is far weaker and doesn’t require a doom stack.
with these, you now have important infrastructure that must be protected (the supply bases), you an interesting and strategic limitation on fleets, and you have a couple new mechanisms to give unprepared defenders time.
1) make star bases very powerful but Siegable.
2)give fleets a supply value that decreases with activity, decreases faster farther from a base, and needs to be replenished by “resting”, which is faster at a base > in friendly territory > in enemy territory. Low supply value decreases combat ability and movement. Also replenishing adds fleet cost.
it seems like these two can really be one idea. Just include starbases in supply and have it decrease when sieged. Once depleted the starbase is far weaker and doesn’t require a doom stack.
with these, you now have important infrastructure that must be protected (the supply bases), you an interesting and strategic limitation on fleets, and you have a couple new mechanisms to give unprepared defenders time.
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I dont think doom stacks are ALLWAYS a thing really a thing because as you said:wack a mole
Defender wants to make a doomstack and hunt down attacker while attacker wants to spread and occupy their claims
if its a head to head battle attacker cant allways afford to make a doomstack because they dont have enough time allways
This does not happen often enough I agree sometimes even when fight is very close attacker finds enough time to stay as doomstack and occupy everything. With tweaks this can be solved (maybe an attirtion system? It might be weird sure but sounds possible. Maybe if you got a doom stack war exhaustion goes faster so you can only maintain such stack for some time.)
What does that mean? Simple
If you prefer to keep your doomstack then you will be forced to peace faster but you will most likely win actual war
if you dont use doomstack as long as you dont get ambushed by enemy doomstack you will make bigger wins in longer war
with this system person that wants peace will not care and go for full doomstack wich is defender most likely so its welcome for them while attacker will be like "I dont want to peace yet" and spread wide
Defender wants to make a doomstack and hunt down attacker while attacker wants to spread and occupy their claims
if its a head to head battle attacker cant allways afford to make a doomstack because they dont have enough time allways
This does not happen often enough I agree sometimes even when fight is very close attacker finds enough time to stay as doomstack and occupy everything. With tweaks this can be solved (maybe an attirtion system? It might be weird sure but sounds possible. Maybe if you got a doom stack war exhaustion goes faster so you can only maintain such stack for some time.)
What does that mean? Simple
If you prefer to keep your doomstack then you will be forced to peace faster but you will most likely win actual war
if you dont use doomstack as long as you dont get ambushed by enemy doomstack you will make bigger wins in longer war
with this system person that wants peace will not care and go for full doomstack wich is defender most likely so its welcome for them while attacker will be like "I dont want to peace yet" and spread wide