Doctrine: Blue-Sky vs Black-Sky

[Subbak]

I think Black Sky would actually be more likely to rely on a few capital ships for support if such a thing exists. And of course without defence stations you need carriers for fighters. It's also less likely to split a lot.

By comparison a Blue Sky navy would probably rely more on interchangeable ships. The worst-case scenario is someone punching through your defences, so you'd need to be able to shore up some areas on short notice. If every system needs to be defended by exactly (say) 1 battleship, 10 cruisers, and 200 destroyers and corvettes, then you can't really move part of that without compromising its efficiency. If you just ditch the battleship and go 5 destroyers or 10 corvettes for every cruiser, then you're more likely to be able to split it into smaller units that still work okay as a group.

 

[Smertnik]

What are the refuel and repair options of a Black Sky fleet? Any tenders, repair ships, self-repair capabilities?

There are a couple self-repair techs, based on 'space monsters' remains research.
But in most cases a Black Sky fleet is to fallback for repairs at some point.

 

[PrismaticFlux]

I'm very certain there are parts of the Art of War that can be quoted here.
Probably the parts about fighting the enemy where they are weakest, when you are strongest and suchlike.

a Black Sky fleet: they get to choose where the battle is. If an enemy system bristles with defences, they can attack the system next door instead.

This is evidently already known by OP though I must say that movement from system to system is a risky thing due to one thing above all else: Knowledge.
AFAIK there is no way to have knowledge of an opponent's mobile military assets in a system without having a presence there yourself. Therefore jumping into an enemy system blind is dangerous as charging up FTL drives or opening a Wormhole takes a while. If the enemy are far away, you have a chance at least but if they're prepared and are already on top of you when you arrive in the system, the doctrine rapidly shifts to 'do or die.'

 

[22Arkantos]

If I remember my naval doctrine, the most dominant powers will favor black-sky fleets while smaller powers will favor blue-sky. See, for example, the modern US Navy vs. the modern Swedish Navy.

I think the best prepared powers will have both, though, so long as it's feasible. Black-sky to take the war to the enemy and Blue-sky to defend key strategic installations and systems.

 

[BrokenSky]

AFAIK there are none of these in Stellaris, but from a headcanon point of view I imagine that a Black Sky fleet will have an immense and expensive infrastructure of such ships. If mobile dockyards ever get implemented then they will definitely become the core of a Black Sky strategy.

I think they said in the blorg stream when they built the hugboxes that there would be hulls for capital ships (or possibly just battleships) which allowed then to have one of those special bonuses that the hugboxes could have (e.g. FTL jammer, enchanced sensors etc. I think repair bots was an option?), but I'm not 100% sure. I may have misunderstood.

Edit: just checked: (From Blorg Stream)

So yeah. Assuming current numbers (not necessarily valid assumption but whatever) you can give your "large ships" an aura of +5% monthly health regen. Not sure if this stacks with having it multiple times (if it does it would almost certainly have diminishing returns) but you'll probably want to have a load of these because redundancy is a thing.

Edit Edit: Can't get it to start at the right time, go to 37:50 ish.

 

[Subbak]

I think Black Sky would actually be more likely to rely on a few capital ships for support if such a thing exists. And of course without defence stations you need carriers for fighters. It's also less likely to split a lot.

By comparison a Blue Sky navy would probably rely more on interchangeable ships. The worst-case scenario is someone punching through your defences, so you'd need to be able to shore up some areas on short notice. If every system needs to be defended by exactly (say) 1 battleship, 10 cruisers, and 200 destroyers and corvettes, then you can't really move part of that without compromising its efficiency. If you just ditch the battleship and go 5 destroyers or 10 corvettes for every cruiser, then you're more likely to be able to split it into smaller units that still work okay as a group.

Further indication of this: Military Dictatorship (more likely to be aggressive, and therefore Black Sky) gets a super-duper capital ship.

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

Further indication of this: Military Dictatorship (more likely to be aggressive, and therefore Black Sky) gets a super-duper capital ship.

I can see empires with a lot of allies also relying on Black Sky fleets, because they're going to be fighting in allied space a lot. It then becomes the federation builder's fleet doctrine of choice.

 

[dezuman]

I can see empires with a lot of allies also relying on Black Sky fleets, because they're going to be fighting in allied space a lot. It then becomes the federation builder's fleet doctrine of choice.

On the other hand federations get a common fleet controlled by the president, so it'd make sense for that to be black space while the members have blue space navies. After all most of the conditions for fighting in home space also apply in allied space.

 

[Murmeldjuret]

No Sky Doctrine:

• The intention is to never fight a war with ships. All power is concentrated in a single all out damage fleet intended to take out enemy stationary defences, spaceports, and mining outposts.
• The defence relies on masses of infantry, preferably highly teched or traited. Spend no resources on defence stations, inviting the enemy to freely go anywhere they so desire.
• Concentrate a massive invasion force to compensate for the inability to mount sieges. Blitz whatever planets look weak. Wear them out from inside their borders, run as soon as you see an enemy fleet.
• The only counter is to spread their fleet, which might leave them weak enough for you to destroy their smaller groups with your offence specialization. If you can't kill them quick enough they will be able to group up.
• Force composition: The best and most ground troops money can buy, the fastest ships over any other quality, and then the ones with the most offence/cost.

 

[swiftsvre]

The The Aspiring Midshipman's Introductory Primer will soon be published.

Preface

Dear Reader,

if you are holding this little book in your hands you are most likely one of the newly inducted student at Britannia Royal Naval College Dartmouth, either as one of our own or as a foreign but just as warmly welcomed student, or attend one of the numerous other academies and institutions that are affiliated with the Royal Navy. When Lord West, still First Space Lord at the time, came to me and asked whether I would be willing to pen a brochure to aid newcomers to the Senior Service I gladly accepted as I still have vivid memories of those first weeks of my naval career, filled with wonder, awe, confusion, despair, and sometimes even sheer terror. Decades ago, when I first stepped off the shuttle, I would have welcomed a text offering a guiding hand.

With that in mind I aim to provide some initial pointers to you as you walk those hallowed passageways and decks, help you to get your bearings, and decipher some of the more esoteric terms your instructors are bound to use so naturally, assuming that their meanings must be evident even to someone who has spent barely a day in space and is still trying to get accustomed to the peculiarities of that most unique experience.

I suspect that you are wondering why you were given an actual booklet, made from paper, ink, and glue, instead of a digital file to peruse on your modern devices. There are two reasons for that. First, I believe that the book, or booklet in this case, with its pages is a wonderful medium that is used too rarely in our time. Second, and more importantly, you will soon store countless textbooks and works of reference on your computers and tablets, burying this little file beneath all the other ones that are, understandably, more important and more frequently used. By making this one of the few printed books you are going to own you will happen upon it every now and then and maybe consider taking a look at it, potentially finding something that proves useful to you at that moment.

Commodore David Woodward
Caledonia
Standard Date 2199.11.30​

​

 

[Subbak]

No Sky Doctrine:

• The intention is to never fight a war with ships. All power is concentrated in a single all out damage fleet intended to take out enemy stationary defences, spaceports, and mining outposts.
• The defence relies on masses of infantry, preferably highly teched or traited. Spend no resources on defence stations, inviting the enemy to freely go anywhere they so desire.
• Concentrate a massive invasion force to compensate for the inability to mount sieges. Blitz whatever planets look weak. Wear them out from inside their borders, run as soon as you see an enemy fleet.
• The only counter is to spread their fleet, which might leave them weak enough for you to destroy their smaller groups with your offence specialization. If you can't kill them quick enough they will be able to group up.
• Force composition: The best and most ground troops money can buy, the fastest ships over any other quality, and then the ones with the most offence/cost.

You try that and tell us how it works out for you...
It might just be crazy enough to work. On the other hand, it might be the worst idea ever in the history of ideas, so...

 

[BrokenSky]

No Sky Doctrine:

• The intention is to never fight a war with ships. All power is concentrated in a single all out damage fleet intended to take out enemy stationary defences, spaceports, and mining outposts.
• The defence relies on masses of infantry, preferably highly teched or traited. Spend no resources on defence stations, inviting the enemy to freely go anywhere they so desire.
• Concentrate a massive invasion force to compensate for the inability to mount sieges. Blitz whatever planets look weak. Wear them out from inside their borders, run as soon as you see an enemy fleet.
• The only counter is to spread their fleet, which might leave them weak enough for you to destroy their smaller groups with your offence specialization. If you can't kill them quick enough they will be able to group up.
• Force composition: The best and most ground troops money can buy, the fastest ships over any other quality, and then the ones with the most offence/cost.

I think there may be a cap on the number of units you can have on a planet at a given time; in the last blorg stream there was a moment when wiz was unable to build more armies until he put his attack armies in orbit (but that might not apply to defensive armies).

 

[Murmeldjuret]

You try that and tell us how it works out for you...
It might just be crazy enough to work. On the other hand, it might be the worst idea ever in the history of ideas, so...

The biggest factor will be how durable stations are. Especially since they can be made to stop FTL. In many other 4X games where you are capped in ships/fleet this has been surprisingly effective. You kill their fleet by taking out their economy. Extra + if you have the galcivII invasion options, so even if they take turf back it will be crap.

I think there may be a cap on the number of units you can have on a planet at a given time; in the last blorg stream there was a moment when wiz was unable to build more armies until he put his attack armies in orbit (but that might not apply to defensive armies).

So if you can afford enough defence it will be nigh on impossible to attack them unless there is no cap on bombardment?

 

[BrokenSky]

The biggest factor will be how durable stations are. Especially since they can be made to stop FTL. In many other 4X games where you are capped in ships/fleet this has been surprisingly effective. You kill their fleet by taking out their economy. Extra + if you have the galcivII invasion options, so even if they take turf back it will be crap.

So if you can afford enough defence it will be nigh on impossible to attack them unless there is no cap on bombardment?

I'm not saying it doesn't apply to defence armies, just that i haven't seen enough evidence to say that it definitely does.

 

[Nyanako]

Its an interesting concept; but I believe that picking a doctrine and sticking with it is limiting your choices and expansion opportunities. I think the Blorg livestream showed us; unless you go deep into enemy territory and suppress the alliance's ship making and industrial capacity, they will keep throwing ship after ship at you. Meanwhile, if you go deep into enemy space, you leave your own space open for attack from another flank. A blue sky fleet and a black sky fleet working in tandem would be the best offensive option in my opinion, the blue sky protecting your own border, or the flank, or the other front, or your conquests while the black sky as the expeditionary force; destroying ships and crushing foes. Limiting yourself to a single doctrine is limiting your flexibility and ability to deal with unexpected events.

 

[sdeezie]

I think the point about black sky navies favoring larger ships is a good one, especially if "field repair" of ships is a thing at some point in the tech deck, for reasons of not wanting to lose ships while far afield.

I posted yesterday about hull size and the logic of the cheap and numerous swarm, and I think corvette/destroyer swarms might be very effective for blue sky navies - their two major weaknesses seem to be a lack of range and the tendency to lose entire ships. But if your stations have some stand-off weapons that might help the range problem, and you'll always be close to spaceports to replace lost ships.

Some good thinking going on in this thread.

 

[Stadhouder]

Based on the AI war doctrines mentioned in the stream I would like to suggest an additional doctrine:

Black sky: agressive AI doctrine, attack in enemy territory
Blue sky: defensive AI doctrine, defend in own territory
Red sky: raiding AI doctrine, send quick raid to destroy enemy space ports etc. and then retreat back in own territory

 

[ikki]

You could even use those two doctrines by having both a warp capable strike fleet

and then a wormhole-tech defence navy.
along with lots of hugboxes
properly updated space stations with engineer corps etc would be essential.

Problem being the maximum naval capacity as always. But then a subdivision may be unavoidable.

 

[Jarac Rassen]

Wormhole civs would definitely go Blue Sky while Warp would be more Black Sky if they so choose.

 

[ikki]

luckily you can do both at the same time, well, at least once you have done the neccesary research and reached a strength allowing for that extra infrastructure..