DOOMSTACK AND FLEET DOOMSTACKED SUPER-THREAD OF DOOM

[Zwollenaer]

Well, still how does that stop people from clumping ?
It just makes defending OP, as the one with the larger stack still wins only now it costs too much resources to push forward and requires a larger force spread to defend these posts, that the attacker won't be able to send his entire fleet to battle, basically assuring the defender's victory on equal odds.

I mentioned two separate things. The first was that I don't think a command cap would ever work because people will just clump fleets. So we are in agreement there.

The second was an unrelated suggestion for a supply system based on "fleet range". The idea is that you do have to spread forces to guard your supply lines, which I think is realistic and prevents you from moving your ships all over the galaxy without any form of support network. Kinda like how it works in Galciv (which is the ONLY thing I like better in that game). The disadvantage for the attacker is intentional, because massive invasions require massive logistic efforts. But maybe you are right that this would be hard to balance against defenders who can just concentrate their force without penalties.

 

[Wokky]

I don't think attrition would solve the issue here at all, in fact i agree with some of the posts above that it would just create more issues. Imo the problem with fleets and the space combat in general is due to a number of issues.

1. Ship and fleet "stances" are practically non-existent. All we have is generic offensive, defensive or "balanced". Really though these do little to change the outcome of a battle, numbers and fleet power is all that matter imo.

Ship stances should dictate what kind of role that ship takes in battle beyond the simple, does it rush forward or hang back. For example, anti fighter/missile stance for corvettes, escort/screening stances for destroyers etc.

Fleet stances would dictate the overall behavior of the fleet, so does the fleet break formation and rush to the attack, dependent also on individual ship stances, so your ships with a some sort of attack stance would rush forward. Or would it maintain formation and move in as a unit, with attack stance ships rushing forward only when the rest of your fleet is within range. Or would it hold position and wait for the enemy fleet to move in. Etc.

2. Ship formations. Currently we just have this rather boring diamond formation with i think the largest ships at the front and the smallest ships at the back. That to me makes no sense. Imo having your largest ships in the back or in the core of your fleet, thus flanked by your smallest ships, would make a lot more sense. Those large ships are expensive after all and you'd want to protect them. So some options for fleet formation would be useful and provide some additional tactical options to the player. These fleet formations would of course link in with the ship and fleet stances.

3. Ship types. I think the ship types could be expended some what beyond the current 4 that we have. For example, where are the dedicated carrier class ships at? What about dreadnoughts? Frigates? etc. A wider variety of ship types with their own pluses and minuses opens up more options for fleet composition.

4. Fleet caps. Now i realize this isn't a popular idea with everyone but just hear me out. I think that a soft cap on max fleet size would be something that could add more realism and choice to the game from a strategic or tactical point of view.

Something I suggested on another thread was to have a soft cap on max fleet size, this could be linked to your max logistics and or a separate tech and modifier, perhaps even with a boost to it from an Admiral. Going over the soft cap would be possible but it would come with a down side. This would be negative modifiers to speed, evasion, FTL speed etc. This would give the player a choice in so far as, do you go for overwhelming firepower or improved combat ability, do you want a fleet that will go in and destroy everything or do you want a fleet that can perform quick, surgical strikes against enemy positions before retreating etc

This could be combined with a supply limit per system, which would prevent you from clumping multiple fleets together in one system. The supply limit in enemy systems would be higher the closer you are to your own systems. You could increase supply limit by having dedicated supply ships, or a supply station that could be built in enemy systems. This supply limit could again be a soft cap which when gone over negatively effects the ability of your fleets.

5. A wider variety of weaponry and defensive components with more distinct advantages and disadvantages between them. Right now we have a Rock, Paper, Scissors system which, whilst it works, is boring as hell imo and generally leads to the same tried and tested load outs in each game.

6. Link all of this into each of the different nation archetypes and perhaps ethics and traits. For example Honourbound Warriors or whatever their called would be more likely to go for fleets all about the firepower with direct engagements between large fleets being their preferred style. Peaceful nations might be more inclined to go for smaller defensive fleets, perhaps with speed in mind over firepower. Hive Mind nations might go for large fleets of small ships designed to overwhelm their enemies with numbers etc.


I think all of these changes would improve combat in the game immeasurably whilst also forcing the player to change their tactics and strategy based upon who their fighting. In other words doomstacks would have their uses but they wouldn't be the answer to every problem.

 

[Kiwibaum]

As I wrote in an other thread already I believe the reasons doomstacks are the only usefull option at the moment is that small fleets can't hit the enemy hard. What can a small fleet do to the enemy? Destroy mining stations (minor income reduction for the enemy which can be cheaply rebuild), sieging a planet (temporary income reduction which can be easily stopped) or destroying star bases (reducing the ability for the enemy to rebuild his fleet. This one is actually quite good the only disadvantage is that your "small" fleet not always can handle a starport with reasonable amounts of losses).

All this are all things that wont stop the enemy on the long or very long term. So what are things the enemy can't ignore that easy and can win you this or a later war with the enemy?
My suggestion would be that small fleets should be able to kill pops, destroy buildings or even make planets uninhabitatable. To make it not op this could be accomplished by having dedicated planet bombardment ships which are very weak against other ships but can destroy buildings and pops on enemy planets while bombarding. This should take some time so the enemy has time to react but not that much time that the war is over till something is achieved so the enemy has to react.
It reduces the enemy income for a longer time than just rebuilding some mining stations and can affect the outcome maybe this war but at least on the next one. If your enemy captures lets say 4 planets but looses most of the economy on 10 planets because he ignored your raiding fleet you can rebuild your fleet much faster than he if you both have been nearly equal before the war.

This also would open some interesting things for future content like superweapons that can destroy planets terraform them to be uninhabitatable or kill all pops on them.

 

[Whartanto]

Simple solution: AOE weapon that does more damage the more enemy ships are around.

 

[Smorensky]

Simple solution: AOE weapon that does more damage the more enemy ships are around.

EVE online tried to fix "blobing" by introducing "doomsday weapon" on titans. It did nothing except that people started blobing with titans . I know it's not a perfect analogy but it's close. Either case, introducing this kind of weapon would probably cause more trouble than it's worth IMHO. As far as weapons, ship stances and fleet formations go, Heinlein is coming out sometime this week and should address some of those issues.

For me a fundamental issue is still that everything ends with a single battle. Sometimes the AI tries to attack your systems with several smaller fleets. It's the "wack a mole" game until you pin him down and manage to force a decisive battle. After that it's gg.

As for bombing planets and killing pops, you already have that mechanic, just set orbital bombardment to "full". It takes out both buildings and pops. With the current system in place it only makes it easier for the attacker to bury you permanently after that one decisive battle, since not only did you loose your fleet, but your remaining planets got bombed into oblivion.

On another note, you can usually stop smaller fleets using fortresses equipped with snares.

I agree that some kind of supply mechanic or effective fleet range is necessary and that's why I tied it together with attrition. But as Deep Space Explorer pointed out a few posts ago "not all battles are fought against your neighbors". In case of an end-game crisis you would be unable to respond in time.

 

[Guidol]

This could be combined with a supply limit per system, which would prevent you from clumping multiple fleets together in one system. The supply limit in enemy systems would be higher the closer you are to your own systems. You could increase supply limit by having dedicated supply ships, or a supply station that could be built in enemy systems. This supply limit could again be a soft cap which when gone over negatively effects the ability of your fleets.

I think this is the best sollution. It works in all other paradox games, so why not in Stellaris? It also the easiest to implement IMHO.

I agree that some kind of supply mechanic or effective fleet range is necessary and that's why I tied it together with attrition. But as Deep Space Explorer pointed out a few posts ago "not all battles are fought against your neighbors". In case of an end-game crisis you would be unable to respond in time.

You should of course be able to use the supplies from your allies. If the diplomatic interactions in the game would work properly, then empires would cluster to defend against an end game crisis. If you do not succeed in that, I think it's good that your not able to do military operations on the other side of the galaxy without any way to supply them.

 

[Kiwibaum]

As for bombing planets and killing pops, you already have that mechanic, just set orbital bombardment to "full". It takes out both buildings and pops. With the current system in place it only makes it easier for the attacker to bury you permanently after that one decisive battle, since not only did you loose your fleet, but your remaining planets got bombed into oblivion.

The current system takes ages to get something done and for the second point that is something that might happen but if he doesn't want to stick in a war for ages he will just capture your planets after a decisive victory and you could also start bombing his planets with your remaining units so he has to split his fleet to def and take even longer.
However this offers the slightly weaker player or if the players are even an option to not just throw doomstacks at each other but to split fleets and attack the enemy economy. If he chases whith his whole doomstack just fly away with one fleet while the others keep bombing. If he splits his fleets to catch you you now have an oportunity to catch a part of his fleet while the other is trying to cut your escape route of.

 

[melaw]

I feel like wormhole travel being totally OP is the one separate thing.
Free jumps right into the enemy territory is just preventing any form of stretched-out war.

All FTL methods should be limited in reach with respect to the front line (enemy border line).
Jumping further into enemy territory should not be possible until a minimum of "work" is done in such a front line system.

The victim of the attack may lose this or several border systems, but can properly defend one layer behind that.
If defense stations would be capable of actually stand a chance in their highest tier.

 

[huon23]

I think a cap would be able to prevent the blobbing as long as the maluses were applied to combat, like how having more forces than your general can control in Hearts of Iron, with a limit on how well those forces will actually fight in the battle. I think for the defensive enemy being able to outlast the enemy on equal terms, I'd say it makes some sense for the defender to be able to outlast the enemy, but I'd imagine the attacking enemy would be able to do quite a bit of damage and gain a lot of warscore as long as they don't directly attack the enemies main defense.

 

[Squizzy77]

Sorry to not only beat a dead horse, but to grind it's bones down to dust and scatter them over a volcano.

But this topic has been stuck in my head a while. I think we may be going about the whole "Stop the death ball fleet" issue the wrong way.

Instead of restricting or limiting large fleets in some way. How about creating an incentive to field smaller fleets.

One way to do this is to add a speed tax on larger fleets, and/or a bonus speed gain to smaller fleets. For example, the more ships you have, the slower your entire fleet moves (managing all those moving parts is difficult) and longer jump times (calculations take longer because you need to account for more ships. Imagine if even 1 ship was off by even 1 millimetre. Over vast space distinctness, that's a problem.)

You would then have a valid tactical choice to make. Small fast fleet detachments or a large death-ball that can crush all in its path but is easy to avoid.

My guess would be such a situation would create a more tactical manoeuvre driven war of positioning & counter positioning.

Oh, and I really am sorry.
Please don't tell my mum.

 

[Optimus prime]

So what would prevent people to split their death ball into lets say 10 smaller fleet and move them all together?

No, that wont work.
The only thing that works in my opinion (and thats one of the reasons why it works in real life as well) is lowering speeds drastically. It takes too short to move from one side of your systems to the other. In real life it takes very long to move an army and is a logistical problem.
When you know that when you move your whole fleet to one direction, that it will take a long time before they will be back and able to defend the other side of your space, then you would think twice before moving them all together or splitting them. Real life is the best example why that would work.

 

[Oscot]

One way to do this is to add a speed tax on larger fleets, and/or a bonus speed gain to smaller fleets

You do know we already have this, right. It is literally already in the game and functioning, since 1.0. Large fleets take longer to jump between systems.

The fact that you didn't even notice perhaps points to why this is not a very good solution.

 

[Tionix]

Personally I do agree that giving incentives and positive reinforcement is the way to go.

I think more "fleet sinks" might be an idea:
- Make it sensible to place a fleet in a blockade/patrol in a system.
- Make a planetary siege-mechanic which is low-risk but consume much time.

Real armies in the past also had to fragment itself as it occupied more and more land/cities. Why not abstract this to space as well?

Also, being able to set a "retreat after a certain percentage fleet strength lost"-threshold might be nice. I mean, how realistic is it for a fleet to fight to the last mammal/reptiloid/avian/fungoid/molluscoid/plantoid? This will ensure that your forces are going to last longer, and could potentially lay the groundwork for an interesting pursuit & skirmishing mechanic:
- Are you going to pursue and waste a lot of time ensuring their destruction? Or will you hold back and press on, allowing the enemy to fight another day? Then it would be neat to have another fleet at hand, so you could do both!

Maybe the current mechanic of no retreat might be a militarist ethos-only thing even.

 

[Smorensky]

I think a cap would be able to prevent the blobbing as long as the maluses were applied to combat, like how having more forces than your general can control in Hearts of Iron, with a limit on how well those forces will actually fight in the battle. I think for the defensive enemy being able to outlast the enemy on equal terms, I'd say it makes some sense for the defender to be able to outlast the enemy, but I'd imagine the attacking enemy would be able to do quite a bit of damage and gain a lot of warscore as long as they don't directly attack the enemies main defense.

I'm not really sure about Admirals effecting fleet size. It makes a lot of sense in general but also comes with several problems. Having an admiral die in the middle of a campaign could demolish your odds significantly. Since all leaders have a chance to randomly die after a certain age this would leave you at the mercy of rng and I'm not sure too many people would be thrilled with such mechanics.

My idea was to link admirals to attrition, so that even if your admiral dies, your fleet can still finish the job if you've played your cards right. Since attrition accumulation is linked to the admiral's skill level, loosing an admiral would not immediately put your fleet in a bind. It would simply mean that you have less time to finish the job.

You should of course be able to use the supplies from your allies. If the diplomatic interactions in the game would work properly, then empires would cluster to defend against an end game crisis. If you do not succeed in that, I think it's good that your not able to do military operations on the other side of the galaxy without any way to supply them.

Supply or attrition mechanics, this is a must. It would make diplomacy more relevant and possibly add a few more options to the table.

 

[Appleson1]

Personally I do agree that giving incentives and positive reinforcement is the way to go.

I think more "fleet sinks" might be an idea:
- Make it sensible to place a fleet in a blockade/patrol in a system.
- Make a planetary siege-mechanic which is low-risk but consume much time.

Real armies in the past also had to fragment itself as it occupied more and more land/cities. Why not abstract this to space as well?

Also, being able to set a "retreat after a certain percentage fleet strength lost"-threshold might be nice. I mean, how realistic is it for a fleet to fight to the last mammal/reptiloid/avian/fungoid/molluscoid/plantoid? This will ensure that your forces are going to last longer, and could potentially lay the groundwork for an interesting pursuit & skirmishing mechanic:
- Are you going to pursue and waste a lot of time ensuring their destruction? Or will you hold back and press on, allowing the enemy to fight another day? Then it would be neat to have another fleet at hand, so you could do both!

Maybe the current mechanic of no retreat might be a militarist ethos-only thing even.

How about non-FTL patrol fleets that don't take up capacity? @Jones944 had an idea like this. Patrolling could be even more reasonable that way, but you'd still need energy to support them. Or maybe a separate patrol fleet capacity...

 

[melaw]

That might be the way to approach this:
Why do real armies in real wars not cluster together all their firepower?

- Because the enemy would surely get intel on that! And prepare/adept his defense. -> Intel on large fleets/clusters?
- Because it would take gigantic amounts of organsation to move them this way -> more upkeep for doomstacks, or local (system) upkeep if doomstack present?
- Because they cannot fight this way (as a huge blob), surely 2D issue which does not apply in space

 

[VerKer]

Interesting thread. Thinking 10-20 years back (anyone still knows "Stars!"?) we solved the doomstack issues in turnbased 4x games with fuel and / or chaff (deminishing returns).

In Stellaris you can save energy / cash when orbiting, but if you are wealthy enough then you dont give a damn and since you never have to refuel, your doomstack has nearly 100% air / flight time. If there was a refuel mechanic, plus a factor which would punish huge fleets with additional time to refuel and / or repair (station resources are limited thus a doomstack takes a long time to refuel cause it counts how many ships a station has to refill), it would certainly give a smaller, defending empire a chance, as it would have way more air / flight time with its small strike fleets than the bully empire with his huge doomstack. Any refuel mechanic would also lead to longer flight times across the galaxy, which also makes a doomstack less attractive. You will start to run a "fleet in being" as well as having several defensive and offensive fleets. Oh how lovely Stellaris would play out, esp so in multiplayer, if they just added that.

On the other solution: Make initial / small / low tech ship hulls cheaper over time, based on how long you have been knowing that tech. That way there is a point (if correctly balanced just the point where doomstacks become the problem) you can produce them in huge quantities. They serve as a throwaway chaff - if the game provides any mechanic which can let these look attractive for being targeted (e.g. no shields present > primary targets). They die but you dont care since they can simply / quickly be replaced, and this way your lower firepower fleets can compete with the larger ones, simply because the latter cant target things precisely enough.

When i was part of the "Stars! Supernova" early development (had signed a NDA, but the sequel game never made it to a release) these mechanics were core of the hull / ship design, and they also were in mods we wrote for the original "Stars!" game.

EDIT: Nearly forgot, in Stars! larger hulls had to mount way more engines than smaller hulls, that resulted in identical flight speeds, but way more fuel usage for the big guys. Compare that to Stellaris, we have a single engine in any vessel, no matter its size - have we?

 

[Vjeldan]

Supply-soft-Cap per System or other supply-system, Command-soft-Cap per Admiral. Then attrition whenever the fleets in the System outnumber the caps.
Sounds good to me.

How should the supply work in Stellaris if it were to be included?
Supplylimit per System based on Planets and Stations? Maybe with some supply swapping over from from friendly neighboring stations so friendly terrain has a benefit to be at.


Also... I still would like some mechanic to make conquering planets more of an long time investment instead of the natural consequence of one decisive victory. To my mind it should be very difficult to take over a complete planet. I mean... look at all those other paradox game. Sure, they don't have lasers, but still that's a whole world to conquer. No minigame needed, just some "make sure the orbit is under your control and troops and supply is still constantly incoming, while the numbers go up and down".
Is there general opposition against this wish/idea in a wide sense? Could be done quite differently, but I think this would be a major thing to slow down a conquerer especially if you have attrition in the game. In combination with attrition-energy-costs for example this could give a defender a chance to come back if the attacker is not prepared and has spend to much in his attempt.

 

[Cikomyr]

Spitballing some things. Some who were already said and are good ideas.

1- large Fleet are more easily detectable. In fact, change sensor range to be a function of fleet size instead of absolute value. This is such a good idea. I think i will make a post about it.
2- Have border worlds require a minimum military presence (picket) or you lose happiness, even more during a war.
3- Speed penalty for large fleet. That includes multiple smaller fleet bunched together.
4- Range penalty for larger fleet. Larger fleet means more supplies required.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

Supply-soft-Cap per System or other supply-system, Command-soft-Cap per Admiral. Then attrition whenever the fleets in the System outnumber the caps.
Sounds good to me.

How should the supply work in Stellaris if it were to be included?
Supplylimit per System based on Planets and Stations? Maybe with some supply swapping over from from friendly neighboring stations so friendly terrain has a benefit to be at.

Supply stuff of this kind like EU4 aren't going to solve much, considering the fact that people will still send their entire fleet to a single battle in order to win it, just like EU4. You solve nothing related to doomstacking or 1 battle wars with this.

Change will only come by targeting wartime industry or battles directly for improvements.