Defensive play can be viable..

[Shoobs]

I just won three wars, mostly in the first 40 years, where I literally just let the enemy navies crash upon my starports and network of defense platforms....I even managed to fully annex an empire without ever seiging their worlds! Infact, I never fought back against any of them! I just .. barely built any ships and the AI just kept trying to take them down. With woefully inferior ships!

 

[Ferrumius]

In early game, yes. In mid to late game, not so much. They will just tear down your defenses in a second.

 

[KopiG]

It also depends on the difficulty. I'm quite sure it was on normal, had you tried that on insane or even just hard, you would be dead in the first war.
The title should be something like this: Defensive play can be viable in normal / easy difficulty.

 

[Slarkon]

the AI bonus on insane for me anyway makes it only playable using console or mods. even if you do everything right in your first war you can expect to be outnumbered in a even 1 v 1 fight

 

[Harle]

Given that the main issue for defensive structures is doomstacks, and doomstacks aren't really a big deal in the early game, yeah, it ought not be a big surprise that stations and defensive structures work in the beginning.

As the fleet cap grows, however, stations don't really scale with them.

 

[Shoobs]

It also depends on the difficulty. I'm quite sure it was on normal, had you tried that on insane or even just hard, you would be dead in the first war.
The title should be something like this: Defensive play can be viable in normal / easy difficulty.

This was on hard and high aggressiveness. I was the declarer in the first war, the second and third were declared on me for declaring on them. I just made absolutely certain to flower up the starports as that was what my current government was good at. They came at me with fleets 4x my size....but still under 1.5k. They targeted the starports over the defense platforms. Each time they fled the battle just before the starport actually went down.

What surprised me is that I was capable of annexing an empire outright, gutted 3 planets each out of the other two AIs, all without ever seiging a planet.

 

[mangalore]

Great for you. I don't think one could claim such stuff never happens. I also had a few interesting wars where there was a change of fortune over several years and a lot of fleet posturing, reequipping, sieges, ground wars and waiting for opportunities and raids. The issue is it only happens in a very narrow sweet spot of relative strengths and development.

I think the issue is mainly a lack of mechanics that broadens the range at which wars are interesting. Maybe to think about it militarily is also a bit narrow. EU4 can be a blast as a small border skirmish with a neighbor can escalate into a major coalition war over time and in the end you just want to forget aboutt he provinces you tried to conquer and just want it to stop without you losing anything.

Overall Stellaris needs more dynamics in how fleets clash so fleets can maintain their strength better when being outmatched (aka easier to run away and regroup), use tactics geared to a particular situation (e.g. corvettes just making a torpedo run before running for their lives in the hopes that this can destroy a few capital ships) and defenses that make conquering systems a longer and less repititve process (currently jump into system, smash starport, bomb, invade, repeat till you win). Additionally Stellaris could use more dynamics in the diplomatic area to make wars more dynamic.

 

[Almond_Brown]

This was on hard and high aggressiveness. I was the declarer in the first war, the second and third were declared on me for declaring on them. I just made absolutely certain to flower up the starports as that was what my current government was good at. They came at me with fleets 4x my size....but still under 1.5k. They targeted the starports over the defense platforms. Each time they fled the battle just before the starport actually went down.

What surprised me is that I was capable of annexing an empire outright, gutted 3 planets each out of the other two AIs, all without ever seiging a planet.

How did you generate War score? Or did the AI just give up and offer a sweet Peace deal after losing most of their navies?

 

[Shoobs]

Somehow, I generated war score by just destroying their fleets over and over again and having little actual standing navy?

 

[dying0d]

You get some for winning battles, more fleet destroyed more score

 

[Rhel]

It also depends on the difficulty. I'm quite sure it was on normal, had you tried that on insane or even just hard, you would be dead in the first war.
The title should be something like this: Defensive play can be viable in normal / easy difficulty.

I'd assume normal difficulty is kinda the baseline assumption anyway though, right? Iirc normal is pretty much a level playing field with noone getting any additional advantages or disadvantages. Hard, and especially insane difficulty is bound to distort the balance.

 

[scaper12123]

I just won three wars, mostly in the first 40 years, where I literally just let the enemy navies crash upon my starports and network of defense platforms....I even managed to fully annex an empire without ever seiging their worlds! Infact, I never fought back against any of them! I just .. barely built any ships and the AI just kept trying to take them down. With woefully inferior ships!

If you're going to play defensively, I'm afraid that the strategy of playing entirely defensively isn't going to work for very long. It's unfortunate, but a pacifist has to be a pacifist warmonger as the game goes on, because otherwise the actual warmongers build massive fleets that woefully overpower those who don't expand aggressively enough (though hopefully the orbital habitats thing Wiz is working on will address this).