Doctrine: Blue-Sky vs Black-Sky

[Denkt]

Here is what Im going to say about doctrines:

1. You always want a short war, a long war will just make you and your enemy weaker and while your enemy may lose more on a long war then you all other space nations will benefit from a long war that make you weaker.
2. You only want to fight battles if they really help you win the war, sending your ships to pointless battles is just a waste of resources
3. Always if you can, bring the war to the enemy as it is the best way to show the enemy that he is defeated, also by doing so it is the enemy's economy that comes under attack.
4. Know then to continue a war and then to make peace, continue a war that you know you will lose is never a good thing and giving the enemy a cheap peace then you clear could have pushed on is no better.

A fleet should be designed around these goals:

1. Having a realistic chance against your potential enemies, building 10 ships against an armada is a waste of resources.
2. Strong enough to take any system, a fleet who is no threat is pointless.
3. Effectivness, losing several times the resources the enemy does can quickly lead to defeat.

 

[Hertzila]

I understand the difference in doctrine between blue/black fleet but I don't see why you need to design the ship much different. There does not seem to be a huge difference in ship design that would matter between the two fleets.

You should be able to use any well balanced fleet to act as either a blue or black fleet depending on the circumstances.

You might try to entice the AI to engage you in your home systems by having a fleet in a nearby system ready to jump into a system attacked by the AI. The AI will most likely not attack systems that are heavily defended with both stations and fleets unless it can bring overwhelming numbers.

It will obviously depend quite heavily on the goal of a war how you approach it. If you are fighting a defensive war you will most likely use your black fleet to raid the enemy while defending with the blue fleet, depending on your resources and how you are able to divide your forces.

You should be able to switch your fleets around from blue or black and back depending on your progress in any particular war.

It should be easy enough to respond to enemy incursions if you are mindful of what is going on. Ships that are incoming will be shown in the system or when a wormhole is opening. You should be ably to use that information to jump in reinforcement from nearby systems. I also think that you will be able to see the number of ships that are inbound to that system. This should be usable on the defense.

I also think that raiding forces might not function in the same way as either a black or blue fleet and would fall outside both those two doctrines and functions.

It is hard to tell exactly how you will conduct war in the game before you tried it but I will certainly build a mainly balanced main fleet for both offensive and defensive actions and then some raiding and scouting elements in support of the main fleet assets.

I actually don't see myself using Corvettes for much other than scouting once the empire have most of the necessary technologies. I think that fighters and destroyers will cover my bases in that regard. Cruisers will mainly be used for deep striking and raiding or as support in fleet actions. Destroyers will take care of the escort duty while Battleship hulls will mainly become carriers and artillery ships. Of course, everything hinges on what technology I have available.

There's a bit too little info to separate the design principles with any detail, but here's as far as I understand things:

A Black Sky Doctrine fleet would need to be as self-reliant as possible, as optimally, they wouldn't return to home territory until the war is over. Specialist ships that are needed for the fleet to function should be kept at a minimum, as replacements would require a return to home. Generally the design would favour generalist, sturdy ships that won't be destroyed easily and can have their role replaced without much problem if they are destroyed.
Still, a Black Sky would most likely still need some repair ships or other support ships, which would be their weak point. The generalist design might also limit the choice of weapons you can field.

A Blue Sky Doctrine fleet can rely heavily on friendly military installations for resupply, repair and additional firepower. Specialist ships can simply (well, "simply", but without compromising fleet efficiency in the long-term) disengage and return for repairs, any tech that needs resupply from planets / bases can be used with maximum efficiency. While protection is always nice, retreating for repairs is much easier for a Blue Sky fleet, which might actually make them much closer to a Glass Cannon fleet than you'd ordinarily think of defensive fleets.
However, Blue Sky needs to be able to respond to a Black Sky fleet attack, so mobility will be their biggest problem. The increased need for military installations might also limit the fleet size while also spreading your defenses somewhat, especially if you have a long expected front.

Note that both of those are Decisive Battle Doctrines. Both work on the idea that battles will determine the outcome of the war, instead of, say, raiding actions.
Something like the Red Sky Doctrine suggested in this thread work much more on the idea that you can win the war regardless of the outcome of the battles, though more commonly it would simply consider the outcome of battles significantly less important than Black and Blue Sky Doctrines consider.
For Red Sky, the importance would be on economic raiding and destruction. Destroying unprotected installations and possibly blockading planets for disrupting the economy and crippling the enemy through that route. Optimally without battles, realistically never giving the Decisive Battle Doctrine fleets the big battles they want. If a Red Sky can manage the mobility and damage a hit-and-run strategy needs and gain the warscore for White Peace or minor wargoals, it might turn out to be a viable doctrine.

Here is what Im going to say about doctrines:

1. You always want a short war, a long war will just make you and your enemy weaker and while your enemy may lose more on a long war then you all other space nations will benefit from a long war that make you weaker.
2. You only want to fight battles if they really help you win the war, sending your ships to pointless battles is just a waste of resources
3. Always if you can, bring the war to the enemy as it is the best way to show the enemy that he is defeated, also by doing so it is the enemy's economy that comes under attack.
4. Know then to continue a war and then to make peace, continue a war that you know you will lose is never a good thing and giving the enemy a cheap peace then you clear could have pushed on is no better.

A fleet should be designed around these goals:

1. Having a realistic chance against your potential enemies, building 10 ships against an armada is a waste of resources.
2. Strong enough to take any system, a fleet who is no threat is pointless.
3. Effectivness, losing several times the resources the enemy does can quickly lead to defeat.

The doctrines sound more post-it note bullet points rather than concise doctrine types, if you ask me.

1. Depends on who you're fighting. While war exhaustion is potentially crippling for both, Militaristic empires actually benefit from long wars and should not be afraid to use a more slow-burning strategy.
2. True. However, Decisive Battle Doctrines (DBD?) might benefit from pressing most battles more than they should, at least if there's anything of value for the enemy, hoping that the Eve mass battle scenario happens (they have, say, a large ship there that they want out of there, so they keep sending ships to relieve the pressure from their objective). If it does, DBD fleets have the decisive battle they need.
3. Unless you go Blue Sky and rely on friendly support, then the initial battlefield (battlespace? battlevolume?) will be on your own territory, as that's where you're most effective.
4. Know when to fold 'em is a good principle in general.

Notes on notes on fleets design:

1. If you don't have a realistic chance against your enemy, something has gone horribly wrong already and you are doomed. GG, everyone. Time to switch tags.
2. Threat how becomes the question.
3. If the enemy utterly annihilates your fleet so badly that you lose an order of magnitude more resources than the enemy, pooch has already been screwed so hard and manure is already flying everywhere with such a speed, you might want to consider a peace of some sort before the enemy can press their advantage.

 

[Turin the Mad]

Some of this is going to be heavily dependant on the enemy's FTL method and your ability to interdict it on the cheap.

"Cheap" may be relative (static defense stations might be quite cost-effective, especially if your leaders/edicts/other provides assorted bonuses towards such defenses), but at least stations et al don't appear to count against your fleet limit.

 

[Jakobus]

A bit late but...

Both Blue and Black Sky are decisive battle doctrines.

I don't think Black Sky is a decisive battle doctrine, quite the opposite. You usually can't afford the risk of a fleet action if you are deep inside enemy territory. It's more of an indirect approach, manoeuvre warfare. Whittle down the enemy's forces in smaller skirmishes (think what the Germans were trying to accomplish with Hochseeflotte vs Grand Fleet during ww1) and try to keep him off balance with raids against those high value tarhets you can engage with acceptable risk.

 

[Jakobus]

Not corvettes for scouting? Battleships devour energy and minerals, leaving you a good sized fleet size capacity. You'll probably lose the few vessels for scouting anyway from deep space stations sucking in fleets and locking down emergency FTL and from encountering bigger fleets, even when you build them bigger. Then it would be prudent to keep a good reserve of them.

I haven't thought much about gameplay mechanics, so IBM approaching this from a "real life" (if I may say so) or RP perspective. The choice of destroyer as scouting/picket comes from my experience of serving on corvette irl. Very nice ships with great punch and good sensors, but you don't want to be on extended operations far fram bases. Crew endurance will be a major limiting factor. Also, the smaller hull of a corvette can't accommodate the system redundancy I think us need for a fleet operating with a black sky profile.

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

A bit late but...


I don't think Black Sky is a decisive battle doctrine, quite the opposite. You usually can't afford the risk of a fleet action if you are deep inside enemy territory. It's more of an indirect approach, manoeuvre warfare. Whittle down the enemy's forces in smaller skirmishes (think what the Germans were trying to accomplish with Hochseeflotte vs Grand Fleet during ww1) and try to keep him off balance with raids against those high value tarhets you can engage with acceptable risk.

I can definitely see the value in fighting a raiding war against an enemy within their own borders. However, ultimately, if the game is balanced so that it's not possible to win a decisive battle on the offensive against an equivalent-sized empire, then defence is stronger than attack to the point where war is basically impossible.

This would take you down the road to a Fleet In Being doctrine, otherwise known as "this game doesn't feature much space combat." This would make me sad.

Since I think this is not the case - in the Blorg-Just League War we saw the Blorg fight fleet actions in enemy space against equivalently-powerful enemies and win - I think I can still argue that Black Sky is a decisive battle doctrine.

 

[Jakobus]

Regarding a decisive battle doctrine I might as well add in on my thoughts since the terns have been (IMO) muddied a bit here.

A decisive battle doctrine teaches that the course of the war will be decided by (preferably one) major fleet action, involving maximum number of ships on both sides. If the enemy fleet is annihilated or severely weakened in this major battle, you will have naval supremacy and with this the ability to devastate enemy trade while your trade can flow freely. His homeland will also be open for unopposed naval invasion. (that is, without any threat to supply lines). This is the teachings of Mahan (see "Influence of Sea Power Upon History) This is the Trafalgar style battle, what happened at the Battle of the Cheapest, what Royal Navy sought at Jutland and what Japanese attempted and Amerikans achieved at Midway. This is on essence the Blue Sky, and only under very favourable circumstances Black Sky.

The opposite is the Indirect approach, in classic naval theory also known as le jeuene ecole ". In more modern times is it known as manoeuvre warfare. It teaches that to win the war you strike at weak spots, not the main strength. Raid commerce and supply lines, hit at weakly defended targets, engage smaller enemy detachments to whittle enemy strength. The aim is to defeat theenemywirhout ever engaging the main fleet by destroying ability and/or will to fight. Best known historic examples are German and American submarine warfare. This is the essence of Red Sky and under most circumstances Black Sky.

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

Thanks for that, @Jakobus.

You know more about naval history than I do, so I'm not going to contradict you, but I will ask: I thought Jeune École was about building small ships which could destroy large ships via oversized weaponry?

 

[Jakobus]

I can definitely see the value in fighting a raiding war against an enemy within their own borders. However, ultimately, if the game is balanced so that it's not possible to win a decisive battle on the offensive against an equivalent-sized empire, then defence is stronger than attack to the point where war is basically impossible.

This would take you down the road to a Fleet In Being doctrine, otherwise known as "this game doesn't feature much space combat." This would make me sad.

Since I think this is not the case - in the Blorg-Just League War we saw the Blorg fight fleet actions in enemy space against equivalently-powerful enemies and win - I think I can still argue that Black Sky is a decisive battle doctrine.

Well, I haven't looked much at gameplay and approach the subject from an almost pure naval theory point of view. I haven't seen anything the streams and haven't looked at the wiki, just followed the Dev diaries. I find both aspects extremely interesting though, and I agree that it would be a very boring game if fleet in being was all there's to it

 

[Jakobus]

Thanks for that, @Jakobus.

You know more about naval history than I do, so I'm not going to contradict you, but I will ask: I thought Jeune École was about building small ships which could destroy large ships via oversized weaponry?

You are certainly right about that! Torpedo deployed by submarine and light ships at thar time, though how that could be implemented in a game I don't know. It wouldn't be fun to have a hugely powerful and expensive battleship destroyed be the first salve from a lowly corvette...

The other part of it though is commerce raiding. In both cases, it explicitly avoids engagement of the enemy's battlefield on anywhere near equal terms.

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

@Jakobus:

It's an interesting point. Torpedos and other asymmetric weapons may well make the giant ships into uneconomic white elephants, which wouldn't contribute to a fun game. On the other hand a little asymmetry is fun, because it gives the small guys a chance. There's probably a design tradeoff here.

 

[Daffor]

One way we do have for a fleet ot punch above it's weight class is designing a ship in particular to counter enemy designs or by going for a highly specialized fleet.
This ofcourse leaves you open to further counters, but I can see for example a torpedo heavy design being quite powerful against an unprepared enemy.

 

[BrokenSky]

@Jakobus:

It's an interesting point. Torpedos and other asymmetric weapons may well make the giant ships into uneconomic white elephants, which wouldn't contribute to a fun game. On the other hand a little asymmetry is fun, because it gives the small guys a chance. There's probably a design tradeoff here.

Well part of the advantage of battleships is the one utility slot. For the streams, we can see that only the battleship (heavy capital ship), not the light capital ship, has the slot. This means you probably want a few ships to be mine-layers or medic-barges, but on the other hand you don't want too many because of the cost.

 

[Jakobus]

I'm sorry if I derailed this thread a to be more about naval history than space warfare. It's just that I find the topic really interesting, and best way to express my thoughts is using examples from history...

Also, I tend to overlook gameplay realities in favour of pure theory - feel free to point put in-game weakness or errors in my speculations

About blue sky, I assume that
- Logistics is not thar important. Resupply is readily available. Fuel, repair, crew replacement is less of a problem.

- Rapid response is really, really important. i imagine that you deploy your forces akin to Systems alliance in Mass Effect: powerful fleets at key positions so you can respond to any incursion with overwhelming force. In my mind, there is really no between here, you either go in with everything or not at all. I would guess that system defense also is "all or nothing". Either a system is important enough to defend and then you do it properly, or it is not and then you don't waste recourses on defense that's not going to stop an invader anyway. The drawback is, off course, that you must be prepared to sacrifice systems you can't or don't want to defend.
-With this in mind, I guess hyperlane is preferred FTL method (also very similar to Relays from mass effect). Without knowing details, I would assume warp drive is too slow, and that it takes too much time to build a wormhole good enough for your entire home fleet.
- regarding hardware, I would prioritise long range above anything else for both system defense installations and ships. If you fight above your own planets, collateral damage could possibly be a big problem. By engaging at extreme ranges, you could possibly destroy attackers before they come into range, and destroyed ships hopefully won't end up in the planet's gravity well. Extreme ranges probably require some form of terminal phase guidance, so missiles and bombers would be preferred.
Positioning of defensive installations are important. You might want to put them where they are not on a direct line between the planet and the attacking fleet, to avoid stray massdriver slugs, missiles and lazerbeamz hitting the planet. Minefields could be important (though I have no idea how to lay them effectively. The more I think about it the more useless they seem, when you consider that spaceship can manoeuvre freely in 3d. Also, how do you keep them in place?)

More a treatise on general system defense than Blue Sky but still...

 

[swiftsvre]

Well, Stellaris combat is effectively 3D and space is an ocean. Except there's not depth to it and thus no submarines, which makes mining actually easier than it is to mine off against submarines. And well... they stay in place by the same magic that keeps space stations in the same spot and allows ships to move around as they desire instead of forcing all of those into orbits around stellar bodies.

While fun for fluff reasons we'll have to largely ignore assumptions about space and instead consider actual naval warfare, out there on the ocean wave. Which is pretty much exactly what I did/do with my Midshipman's Primer, I guess.

 

[Wulfram]

My current thinking is along the lines of a Wormhole based blue sky doctrine, with fleets being garrisoned at mutually supporting wormhole stations and thus able to quickly reinforce each other

 

[Daekeyas]

This has been a great read for me. Thanks all.

from what I've read, I'd like to try wormholes, with aggressive scouting/sensor range. using black-sky style ships probably carriers with their apparent ability to build losses on board. popping in and out and smashing mid sized fleets of the enemy trying to avoid their main strength & forcing them to defend more places. allowing for steady push back of the opponent.

from what I've seen the warm up time even on larger fleets isn't prohibitive for them to out run the other styles, and thus you should be able to fall back if needed for defense. Also a black sky would be better able to hold out longer if local network is lost for a time. The biggest issue I think would be trying too deep a strike, having your opponent killing a key link to home, and then driving into your own home (base-race like). It will thus be important to have a constructor aux attached to any deep fleet. (in SotS I wold often have a few extra gate ships tagging along when playing the hivers).

 

[MasterOfGrey]

For the first game I play I'm planning to have a 'main fleet' which is very much black-sky; huge number of destroyers for versatility in offence coupled with reasonable survivability, cruisers to hang back with more support-type roles, battleships for carriers and a selection of corvettes with the tactical module to hang back all equipped with large and medium long-range weapon slots to 'snipe' the heavies in the enemy fleet.

Meanwhile I will have modular size-related groups centred around 1 battleship as blue-sky patrols. (Intercept and destroy constructors building wormholes, support defences, mass together to maintain security while defences are rebuilt etc.

 

[Jakobus]

By the way, doesn't Black Sky and Blue Sky sound very much like something the Tau would name their operational profiles?

 

[Tavior]

I actually had a successful black sky fleet doctrine build once in Master of Orion III. Yes I know it was horrible and all but if you look at Master of Orion III as a stand alone game with some serious fundamental flaws then it is good for endless hours of fun.

The idea was that I would build two multi-purpose largest hull possible and go to wild wild west town at noon. The sad part was it actually worked TOO well against the AI.

I did a simple border skirmish with the multi-purpose dreadnought (for lack of a better word) and I used only "5 percent" of the bombardment power once and it completely wiped out everything. As a result left me nothing to invade. Whoops.

They could also launch a swarm of missile and everybody on the battlefield would be blind to them and never got the chance to shoot them down due to intense amount of ECM on each multi-purpose dreadnought. This strategy also worked fantastic against the Orion Guardian.