Discussion: Should the gateway tech be available earlier?

[devfrost44]

I want to open the discussion on whether or not should the gateway tech be available earlier? As in make it available in early mid game rather than at the very end game.

Now the reason why I think it is worth considering is because the mobility in Stellaris; the fact that it will take at least a year to cross a medium size star nation, make alliances irrelevant to war consideration unless they are adjacent to you. I had, several times in my playthrough, declare war alone again an alliance of 3 equivalent nation especially because I know that the other would take at least a year to reach the theater of war and the other ally had no way of reaching me. This allowed me to smash the target wargoal military and infrastructure, and then deal with their fleet separately.

Honestly, this takes out a layer of strategic consideration and make me not afraid of alliances or even federation, as compared to say, Europa Universalis IV. Yes, you can't reach the other allies as well but once you have your wargoals, it's just a matter of waiting until they want status quo peace. And this can even work for vassalization war, assuming it the status quo peace now worked properly.

One solution I could think of is to make gateway tech available earlier that allowed cross access with allies. For balance, the dev can make it limited in capability with repeatable researchable tech that will eventually make it comparable to the current version. For example, the gateway can have a long cooldown that scale with the tonnage of ships that go through it. So if you take your entire fleet, it will have a year of cooldown for example. It can also be limited to the number that can be built (say due to exotic material needed or something)

What do you guys think? The reason I'm not putting this on the suggestion is because I want to see various ideas regarding this first. And also whether or not it's a real problem or just a thing that bother only me.

 

[Mavkiel]

Not a bad thought. I'd be worried though about it helping the player to much. I'd almost rather them come up with something else though.

I keep thinking of the great khan mechanics, where if you submit a defensive fleet spawns. What if something like that happened? A fleet under ai control spawns in a capital of the system closest to the conflict. It take abit of hand wavey mechanics to explain it. Like local federation militia is mobilized to combat the threat. Such a mechanic would at least force the player to take an account allies.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Gateways being available earlier would be a VERY welcome change, IMO.

 

[TheHolyAsdf]

I've had games where no disabled gateways spawn hence the technology is never even made available at all. And I have spend the entire damn game without gateways.

 

[devfrost44]

Spawning defensive fleet will cause more problem than it's worth though. Like how to balance it so that it can still be overcome by players and how do the player even take account for that in their war consideration. Beside, spawning something that potentially can be random in a war is problematic in general. Think of rebels in Europa Universalis IV except they will spawn as you roll through enemy territory.

They can spread more of the gateway during spawn or even make it possible to build a gateway with a lot of resources and maybe a unique resource (ala Naquidah) and thus you can only built a limited amount of early on but you can build more as the game went on.

My thinking so far is to:
- Make it one way, like the mass relays in mass effect or even the way wormhole travel used to work in 1.0
- Limit it to only be able to send to friendly or allied territory (Handwave can be that it is easily disruptable through artificial gravity use) This prevents the tech making bastions irrelevant again.
- Make it need 2 - 3 months to prepare and its signature can be seen on the target system as it prepares (to avoid easy ambush)
- Cooldown scaled to the tonnage sent in the relay.

This allowed mobility in the early part of the war but prevent it to be used like jump engine in the late game. You can move your fleet to a better position but you will have to move it to the right front. If you chose unwisely, well then, your fleet will be severely out of position

 

[Azhcristokos]

Yes. Totally agree. I know mass relays, er, gateways are supposed to be a crowning lategame achievement signalling surpassing ancient empires, but it'd be a godsend for mobility. Perhaps the way they spawn could be changed so basically every empire starts near one? That'd make it easier to allies to coordinate, though it'd rely on the AI getting its tech priorities straight.

 

[RoverStorm]

This sounds more like the AI needs a lesson in good alliances.

A good compromise is perhaps a mid-game event (call it "alliance gateway rush" or something) where all empires get the opportunity to build a gateway in their capital. Just the one, you need to wait for lategame to build more or unlock the disabled ones.
And I cannot find it on the wiki, but if gateways don't work between allies, they REALLY friggin SHOULD!!

 

[Novacat]

...Gateways should be easier to build, but at the same time, easier to destroy. It is kind of silly that, because they are a megastructure, they cannot be fired on and destroyed with conventional weapons.

 

[StephenCoffey]

I think early gateways might shake things up too much, but what about artificial wormholes instead as the early option? You build a wormhole that links to 1 other system, that must be controlled by either you or a star empire with open borders. Means you can jump from one end of your empire to another, or go to your ally on the other side of the galaxy, but not from any point to any other.

 

[devfrost44]

I have considered making the AI better in alliance selection but that lead to the following note or conclusion

- Limiting to picking allies that are close by to the greatest threat is not realistic as most often time, those nations might or might not want to ally with them
- Making them wait to group up with the ally mean they become passive for up to a year. In that time, the aggressor can smash through their system (let's face it, no player would declare war if they can't get through their opponent frontier bastions and damn make sure to do that while the enemy fleet is far away) Then if they are outmatched fleet to fleet, their choice to fall back. It's true that eventually when they group up, they would be able to smash the player's fleet but then overall, it would make the war not that engaging and to last a very very long time, depending on how spread out the enemies allies is. On the other hand, solving the early game mobility problem can open up the possibilities of the aggressor bringing their own allies as well.

edit: If you want to make the A.I smart enough to prolong the war until their A.I arrive, why not just give them a system to make the group up faster, rather than making the war lasted a decade at a time and leading to the same outcome.

I think artificial wormhole system is an idea worth exploring as well.

And also agree with Novacat, allowing gateway to be destroyed, especially if it can be employed in early game would provide a welcome addition to strategic consideration in a war. Of course that means you have to make it easier to build as well.

 

[AlanC9]

I dunno. Gateways, in the current implementation, result in playing a lot of whack-a-mole until you've overrun all of the enemy shipyards. Although if we could disable or destroy them , as suggested, this wouldn't be a problem

 

[pttaylor]

Would it help your concerns if disabled gateways could be reactivated mid-game, but building new ones was still a late game tech? It would still depend on most empires having at least one gateway in their borders.
As for deactivating gateways, the rule should be that both ends need to be under allied control (or neutral with open borders). Taking the starbase of a system should be sufficient to deactivate an enemy gateway (and maybe you need to also occupy the planets before you can use it yourself).

 

[devfrost44]

Would it help your concerns if disabled gateways could be reactivated mid-game, but building new ones was still a late game tech? It would still depend on most empires having at least one gateway in a system.
As for deactivating gateways, the rule should be that both ends need to be under allied control (or neutral with open borders). Taking the starbase of a system should be sufficient to deactivate an enemy gateway (and maybe you need to also occupy the planets before you can use it yourself).

That required a better spawning of disabled gateways. I haven't actually played a game with an increased number of disabled gateway (will probably try tonight) but for it to work, the gateways have to be quite evenly spread out so that at least each empire had one or two within their border.

 

[Ramiel]

Ehhh, not a fan of the idea. I disagree that the mobility aspect is a problem with warfare; it's kinda half the point of the whole current system, and the issues you describe the AI having with judging mobility, distance and preparedness are more of an AI competency issue than a mechanical issue. I'd rather just see the AI get more TLC than add in new halfway versions of existing systems. I also completely disagree with the assessment that Gateways are a 'very end game' tech. They're a late mid-game/early end-game tech, which means they should be around for a good third of the game - the third when massive armadas are finally roaming around the galaxy, and empires on opposite sides are starting to butt heads. Giving a bump to the tech pull weight would probably be good though, as would the ability to disable gateways.
A more restricted form of gateway as you suggest sounds like a really neat mod, but not like something that should go in the base game. Same with the artificial wormhole idea.

 

[devfrost44]

Ehhh, not a fan of the idea. I disagree that the mobility aspect is a problem with warfare; it's kinda half the point of the whole current system, and the issues you describe the AI having with judging mobility, distance and preparedness are more of an AI competency issue than a mechanical issue. I'd rather just see the AI get more TLC than add in new halfway versions of existing systems. I also completely disagree with the assessment that Gateways are a 'very end game' tech. They're a late mid-game/early end-game tech, which means they should be around for a good third of the game - the third when massive armadas are finally roaming around the galaxy, and empires on opposite sides are starting to butt heads. Giving a bump to the tech pull weight would probably be good though, as would the ability to disable gateways.
A more restricted form of gateway as you suggest sounds like a really neat mod, but not like something that should go in the base game. Same with the artificial wormhole idea.

I agree the mobility is half the point of this current system and it does its job well in that regard. But the problem is, the long mobility means that you can just disregard defensive pact for at least half of the game.

If we optimize the AI under the current system to be able to grasp the point of getting their fleet together with their allies first before attacking, then that would just lead to a situation where they waited for a year or so until their allies fleet arrive (perhaps even going to safety of their allied territory). That 1 year of aggressor free reign on their territory might as well won the war already.

The fact is, in EUIV, I watched the forming and falling of alliances of my neighbor very closely and war is often time made and abandoned based on that alliances. In Stellaris, I don't get that feeling at all and I don't think that's the sort of scenario the dev are envisioning when they came up with the defensive pact system.

 

[Nyrael]

Nope, long travel times are intentional as to make it so that fleet positioning is something you must always keep in mind, and something that can doom you if you are not careful. So I strongly think it shouldbe a late game tech.

 

[Metztli]

Definitely want to see the gateway tech coming earlier. Currently passed year 2400 and there are no gateways anywhere.

 

[Typee]

As a solution to that problem, why not simply greatly increase ship mobility?

It is my understanding that ships have been made so slow to prevent doomstacking, but it turns out it didn't solve the problem at all anyway, in fact slow reinforcement arrival speed makes it even more worthwhile to doomstack and adopt the Schlieffen strategy and smash your opponents one by one as fast as possible like OP described.

So just make space smaller. I'd rather see fleets move at a pace similar to armies in EU4, where it doesn't take me 3 years to reach an enemy.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I miss gateways (I haven't actually built one in all my games post 2.2 now that I think of it). In my second to last game I had fully built 5 megastructures, many repeatable techs and the game was fairly far on. But only a couple of gateways had spawned at the other side of the map (that I scouted very early) and the technologies were never an option for me. So I'm not entirely sure if it's bugged out a little at the moment, if I've been horribly unlucky in all my games or if it's just a few modifiers that stack to make them show up really really late. (i.e. that game had no x4 modifier because they weren't in my borders so they have about the same weight as a repeatable tech, but perhaps it also had a x0.0 modifier because the game didn't think gateways existed, or my maniacal genius brainslugged scientists weren't counting and giving me an extra x0.1, although I kept swapping in a pure particles guy to see if that made a difference (extra x1.25 and no x0.1) but no luck).

I do think the cripplingly slow movement speed has a huge effect on war, that gateways come too late and perhaps have too large an effect when they do show up, completely eliminating travel times within your empire. I think that something in between would work better. Slower gateway travel (a warm-up time) and much earlier gateways so that 800 days travel is cut to say 200 rather than 0. Perhaps by adding a series of gateway utilization techs that reduce the warm-up and letting hyperlane registrar also reduce it so that becomes a useful module. So still instant travel by the end-game but a more gradual approach to that point. That or as Typee says increase base ship speed.

I agree that a way to disable, ruin or destroy gateways is needed.

The wormhole idea sounds interesting but feels like it would be an entirely new, DLC worthy mechanic - like the Zuul creating new hyperlanes in Sword of the Stars. Also with all these ideas I'm a little afraid of the effect on performance, so I hope they test it for performance before making any drastic changes.

 

[Madzai]

I don't know much about gateways, because my games start lagging hard around time they become available, but i want to point out that, IMO, travel times are really messed up. They are way way too slow for 3/4 of games. I fully understand that just upping effects of engines and FTL techs may lead to exploitation of of already weak AI, but something has to be done. With introduction of new trade routes, maybe we can have some kind of "space highways" network? But at the same time, Starbases are already overloaded with modules...