DOOMSTACK AND FLEET DOOMSTACKED SUPER-THREAD OF DOOM

[Mltdwn]

If you want to deal with Doomstacks there is a very simple and more fitting way. Fleets without an Admiral get negatives to fighting due to co-ordination of ships becoming harder the larger the fleet becomes, make these negatives grow the larger the fleet becomes. Give Admirals an attribute that allows them to counter act this negative based on their level. So a high level admiral can have more ships under his command before the negative kicks in. Then the devs only have to worry about a few numbers for balancing. At what size of fleet does the negative begin, at what rate does the negative grow per ship or number of ships added, and what amount of negative does the Admiral reduce it by level. Expose this to the modding community and people can also do balance mods of their own.

It's also more realistic, as logistics and co-ordination would be the biggest downfall of large fleets, and simpler to balance for whatever size of fleets the devs want to see.

As for clumping fleets together due to the restriction, Admirals already cost influence, and there are limits to how many total leaders you can have anyways so that is not that much of a risk.

Edit because me no speel well

 

[Mltdwn]

To be fair, 'doomstacks' are kind of a staple of Sci-Fi. I mean in the Honorverse there are huge walls of battle of hundreds to thousands of ships that go at it, BSG while they generally have only one Cylon carrier they have a metric buttload of fighter craft they are flooding the skies with, and god forbid if another mothership or two jumps in. The Reapers in Mass Effect are generally a Doomstack that is EVERYWHERE, then there is Galciv 3 and the Terran doomstack that comes back from the pocket dimension to wage war on the doomstack embargoing the planet. Ender's Game is all about a kid guiding a doomstack through the galaxy to the alien homeworld before crashing them all into the planet to blow it up.

I mean if you look at most sci-fi literature and games doomstacks are kind of the end game thing.

 

[Cikomyr]

To be fair, 'doomstacks' are kind of a staple of Sci-Fi. I mean in the Honorverse there are huge walls of battle of hundreds to thousands of ships that go at it, BSG while they generally have only one Cylon carrier they have a metric buttload of fighter craft they are flooding the skies with, and god forbid if another mothership or two jumps in. The Reapers in Mass Effect are generally a Doomstack that is EVERYWHERE, then there is Galciv 3 and the Terran doomstack that comes back from the pocket dimension to wage war on the doomstack embargoing the planet. Ender's Game is all about a kid guiding a doomstack through the galaxy to the alien homeworld before crashing them all into the planet to blow it up.

I mean if you look at most sci-fi literature and games doomstacks are kind of the end game thing.

Except that its not true at all.

Honorverse have multiple fleets deployed all around their territories; including pickets, multiple battle fleets. There is the occasional Doomstack, but its rarely the norm and is usually temporary.

BSG has the Cylon fleet spreaded everywhere on the lookout for the one target they have. So its hardly applicable.

The BOOK of Ender's Game is about a progressive conquest of the Formian Empire done by a coordinated strike by a couple of dozen independant fleets.

Most of the time, wars in Sci Fi is waged by multiple skirmish and battles between lots of independant elements. Its not merely both sides sending a single huge megafleet head to head.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

As for clumping fleets together due to the restriction, Admirals already cost influence, and there are limits to how many total leaders you can have anyways so that is not that much of a risk.

What is this ship cap for admirals ? Is it small so that fleets are unrealistically tiny and force players to stock up influence and make more room for admirals before war, or is it properly sized so early and mid-game players could use their fleets, thus keeping doomstacks a thing, in which case nothing was really solved ?
A person who stockpiled influence and recruited no other leader will be the ultimate winner, as he is the only one capable of utilizing his entire navy ?

I myself suggested an idea slightly similar to this before in more detail here.
Soft or hard caps, all means nothing without having a dedicated mechanic or modifier to accompany them. What you suggested is to limit a nation's military capabilities based on influence points and leader slots, regardless of its industry, which also makes no sense.

 

[Mltdwn]

Except that its not true at all.

Honorverse have multiple fleets deployed all around their territories; including pickets, multiple battle fleets. There is the occasional Doomstack, but its rarely the norm and is usually temporary.

BSG has the Cylon fleet spreaded everywhere on the lookout for the one target they have. So its hardly applicable.

The BOOK of Ender's Game is about a progressive conquest of the Formian Empire done by a coordinated strike by a couple of dozen independant fleets.

Most of the time, wars in Sci Fi is waged by multiple skirmish and battles between lots of independant elements. Its not merely both sides sending a single huge megafleet head to head.

In the end it usually is. And for example to use your Honorverse point, they have multiple fleets deployed around their territories; HOWEVER, due to the Wormhole junctions it essentially enables them to send their doomstack everywhere.

Case in point, 'Echoes of Honor' the peeps send a huge fleet to take Basilisk sending half of it to hold the wormhole and the other half to take Medusa. Hamish Alexander jumps a HUGE fleet from Trevor's Star to Manticore to Basilisk and walls off the entire Wormhole and puts so many missiles in the air it wipes out the enemy fleet, he is only out done by the Greyson fleet guarding Medusa who manage to put something like 160k missiles in the air all at once completely wiping out the enemy fleet in a matter of minutes and taking no damage.

When the transport fleet comes from Haven to pick up workers from Hades it has 5 transports, 3 Superdreadnaughts, 10 battle cruisers, and something like 50-100 cruisers and Destroyers. And that is just a prisoner transport group and escort. And when the war finally comes to a head in the end of the series it is essentially the entireity of the Manticoran and Peep military might facing off in one final battle which leaves them both completely wrecked.

As for BSG I addressed that there is essentially one capital ship in any battle; however, it is able to throw out so many fighters and nukes it might as well be a stack and if more than one shows up they are pretty much SOL. It's one reason why they DON'T stay and fight except for covering the retreat of the civilians because they would have no hope of taking down even one of their carriers.

I guess a better way to say it would be what we consider a 'doomstack' in Stellaris is essentially a normal size fleet in most military sci-fi novels. And thus why in the Honor Harrington mod for Stellaris you START with a total fleet management size of around 200.

And note I am not defining doomstack as 'your entire fleet' I am defining it as an extremly large stack of ships that can roll over any other fleet that isn't likewise near the same size. Due to the total size limitations of fleets in Stellaris that very well may be your entire fleet of ships. But I do not define it as what percentage of your fleet you are using, mearly what the fleet size is.

For example, for the Second Battle of Basilisk the fleet composition for Manticore was:

• 45 SD
• 18 DN
• 10+ BC
• 39 DD

 

[Cikomyr]

The problem is not "there are large fleets". The problem is "the only way to effectively wage a war is with a single massive fleet". Any other organisation is eitter a waste or very specific.

Echoes of Honor has the Peep fleet strike in no less than 4 independant coordinated strikes. Its not a single superfleet that goes around destroying everything.

The closest thing the series has had of such doomstack was the Eight fleet equipped with SD(P), the LAC Carriers, Ghost Rider and Multistage missiles vs the outdated Haven navy. But besides that, Honorverse is all about not putting your entire fleet in a single basket and the need to spread your forces across multiple sectors.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

All this talk Justifying doomstacks makes no sense, and you don't need sci fi battles to prove it.
Modern naval battles are a perfect example. If one nations sends its entire fleet clumped up to battle the enemy, they can easily be delayed by a smaller hostile fleet, while the rest of the enemies forces maneuver around them. Pincer manouvers and various other tactics are still viable and efficient in seas and even in space.

Due to the reason that these forms of tactics do not exists in Stellaris, doomstacking is a problem because it is an ultimate, uncounter-able move. The only way you can counter it however, involves even more lack of realism as it requires abandoning everything you have and "base-rushing" your opponent, hoping you can do it faster then him to win the war.

 

[Cikomyr]

I think, before trying to further propose how to solve the issue of Doomstacks, we should perhaps spend some time on understanding why we want to get rid of them? And why they are so prevalent in our games?

The way I see it, many of us are dissatisfied with Doomstacks because when we think of Sci-fi wars, we like to see a complex and intelligent conflict. Not merely “put all of your ships in one big fleet, send to destroy everything”. When we think of epic Sci-fi war tales like the Honorverse, Deep Space Nine, Star Wars, Farscape, etc.. the fleets are usually spread around and engage in skirmishes, raids, picket, etc.

I got thinking why that is. Why in Honorverse the Manticorian Navy would accept to deprive its offensive fleet of a few Dreadnaughts, a dozen Battlecruiser and their entire support crafts complement (Light Cruisers/Destroyers) for merely picketing a controlled star system? Such a force is strong enough to resist against any raiding effort, but wouldn’t stand a chance against a single “wall of battle” that is the common battle force of the Honorverse.

Thinking about it made me realize a critical difference between the Honorverse and Stellaris. In Honorverse, it’s logical to risk a consequent battle force to provide for the defense of a Star System and its space-based industry. It’s made clear that space-based resource gathering and industry facilities are extremely costly and lengthy to build. It can easily take years to rebuild a single system’s orbital industrial base.

Compare in Stellaris; where the Space-based industry is trivial in development cost (and time) compared to battle fleets. The reason we are not willing to risk combat assets to defend our industry is because the combat assets are worth a lot more than the industrial base. I can afford to compact my entire fleet and send it on the offensive while my opponent destroy the installations of a dozen border systems. Because it will cost me a mere 600 minerals and 2 years to rebuild everything. This is the cost about 10 base destroyers.

I am not sure if this is a “problem”, but I certainly believe it’s one of the source of the Doomstack issue: civilian infrastructure is just too cheap to worry about, and too easy to rebuild.

 

[Mltdwn]

The problem is not "there are large fleets". The problem is "the only way to effectively wage a war is with a single massive fleet". Any other organisation is eitter a waste or very specific.

Yeah but that is more because of the stupidity of the AI, than the doomstacks. If you attack the AI they will keep throwing everything at you until one or the other is destroyed, they won't send a fleet flying to your backlines to take out resources there. I don't know how many times I've had the AI attack/wage war on me and so I just send my fleet to one of their unoccupied areas and boom they redirect their entire group to me. You want to fix doomstacks then fix the AI and have them take systems behind the front lines or attack you on multiple fronts and NOT retreat everyone as soon as one of their colonies comes under attack. Silly mechanics limiting fleet size or supply isn't the fix, making the AI act right is.

Part of the problem too is the limited 'power' of a 'normal' sized fleet. Luckily though they fixed that to a degree with the Heinlein patch as now there is a limit to how many ships can participate in bombardments or the like. So yeah you can have your entire fleet as a boomstack, but someone with their fleet broken up to the maximum participation size for bombardment can take more planets in the same time.

 

[IMP_102]

I think there is a mechanic missing from the game. We have fleet logistics, which is empire's ability to support large amount of ships. We also need command logistics, which is empire's ability to command large number of ships in a battle. Historically coordination was a major issue in any naval battle, so why not have it in stellaris as well. I personally envision it as an increasing penalty versus large fleet attack rating, something like -20% to attack if the fleet gets too large.

On top of that there should be significant war score awarded for raiding enemy territory (representing war weariness). The idea is that several smaller fleets wrecking havoc in enemy empire's territory can win a war while the enemy is unable to chase the fleets down with their one large fleet. Pity there are no supply lines in this game.

 

[Mltdwn]

Thing is though with the changes to planetary Bombardment in Heinlein they do kind of fix this. Now a doomstack trying to capture planets and sectors vs. 3 fleets a third of the size will capture fewer in the same time as there is a cap on how many can participate so it does exactly what you wanted with the exception of it being 'colonial' resources rather than say industrial. Well hopefully it does, we won't know what the participation limit is until the patch drops. Also it is the taking of colonies that gives the most points so if one side can get 3x the points over the doomstack size that means they will complete their goals in 1/3 the time.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

Yeah but that is more because of the stupidity of the AI, than the doomstacks. If you attack the AI they will keep throwing everything at you until one or the other is destroyed, they won't send a fleet flying to your backlines to take out resources there. I don't know how many times I've had the AI attack/wage war on me and so I just send my fleet to one of their unoccupied areas and boom they redirect their entire group to me. You want to fix doomstacks then fix the AI and have them take systems behind the front lines or attack you on multiple fronts and NOT retreat everyone as soon as one of their colonies comes under attack. Silly mechanics limiting fleet size or supply isn't the fix, making the AI act right is.

Does it matter though ?
If they send a part of their fleet to your back lines, and you defeat their main fleet, then you won !
They can't do anything after that, as long as you continue to attack their territory, and halt any rebuilding process.

Currently, in order to win there are only 2 options:
Full engagement. The winner of the first decisive battle wins the war.
No engagement. Sending small fleets to attack his mining and ports, running from battles, and waiting until you have enough warscore without a single battle fought.

Main problem is that there is absolutely no inbetween. Either option A or B.

 

[Mltdwn]

Does it matter though ?
If they send a part of their fleet to your back lines, and you defeat their main fleet, then you won !
They can't do anything after that, as long as you continue to attack their territory, and halt any rebuilding process.

Currently, in order to win there are only 2 options:
Full engagement. The winner of the first decisive battle wins the war.
No engagement. Sending small fleets to attack his mining and ports, running from battles, and waiting until you have enough warscore without a single battle fought.

Main problem is that there is absolutely no inbetween. Either option A or B.

Or with the Heinlein patch, capture his colonies. Colonies give the most points in terms of war score, Heinlein limits how many ships can participate in orbital bombardment. Thus if he is going around in a mega fleet capturing your colonies and taking our resource, but you are going around in a smaller fleets that is right at the limit for bombardment participation you are going to take more colonies than he is in the same amount of time raising your war score faster than his.

Also of course tech is pretty important too which the Stellaris 20 player MP game that Paradox ran before release showed. Quill18 and an ally took two doomstacks against an enemy half their strength (they had like a total 30k combat strength and he had like a 15-20k) and got destroyed because their enemy had built to counter them.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

Or with the Heinlein patch, capture his colonies. Colonies give the most points in terms of war score, Heinlein limits how many ships can participate in orbital bombardment. Thus if he is going around in a mega fleet capturing your colonies and taking our resource, but you are going around in a smaller fleets that is right at the limit for bombardment participation you are going to take more colonies than he is in the same amount of time raising your war score faster than his..

Let's assume the decisive battle winner isn't an idiot, and after the main battle, he separates his fleet, knowing that the enemy has nothing left with which to kill his smaller fleets.
Main battle winner is still the war's winner.

Tech is something else. The only thing really contributing to interesting battles, although at the point of particle lance and such, there is no better. Hopefully will be properly changed in Heinlein.

 

[Agathors]

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.

What wrong is considering doomstaking as bad or undesirable but when we speak about navy (surface or space) doomstack will always be rightly legitimate. You can watch one of the Blorg stream where Wiz adresse this issue. Of course, the warfare mechanic in Stellaris is lacking for a game pretending to be a GSG but artificially removing or negating the use of assembling a large armada would not resolve the case.

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



 

[Mltdwn]

What is this ship cap for admirals ? Is it small so that fleets are unrealistically tiny and force players to stock up influence and make more room for admirals before war, or is it properly sized so early and mid-game players could use their fleets, thus keeping doomstacks a thing, in which case nothing was really solved ?
A person who stockpiled influence and recruited no other leader will be the ultimate winner, as he is the only one capable of utilizing his entire navy ?

I myself suggested an idea slightly similar to this before in more detail here.
Soft or hard caps, all means nothing without having a dedicated mechanic or modifier to accompany them. What you suggested is to limit a nation's military capabilities based on influence points and leader slots, regardless of its industry, which also makes no sense.

Um I see you have the Stellaris since you have the icon, so you are aware there is already 'leader' slots right that all people count against (governors, scientists, admirals and generals). If they recruited no other leader they would be unable to perform research, survey systems, would have mass rioting in their sectors, and their ground troops for colony invasions would be at a negative for not having a general assigned. And I didn't say have a ship cap I said have after a certain number of ships in a fleet it receives negatives and Amdirals reduce those negatvies.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

What wrong is considering doomstaking as bad or undesirable but when we speak about navy (surface or space) doomstack will always be rightly legitimate. You can watch one of the Blorg stream where Wiz adresse this issue. Of course, the warfare mechanic in Stellaris is lacking for a game pretending to be a GSG but artificially removing or negating the use of assembling a large armada would not resolve the case.


That is only an option because not all realistic modifiers can be implemented to the game.
We can't add highly calculated micro tactics and such, therefore artificial modifiers are necessary to make the game closer to reality by other means.

 

[Mltdwn]

Let's assume the decisive battle winner isn't an idiot, and after the main battle, he separates his fleet, knowing that the enemy has nothing left with which to kill his smaller fleets.
Main battle winner is still the war's winner.

Tech is something else. The only thing really contributing to interesting battles, although at the point of particle lance and such, there is no better. Hopefully will be properly changed in Heinlein.

Given that:

1. You can't declare war on a nation when you are in their controlled area.
2. Sensors generally show fleet sizes and locations pretty close to your border so you know where they are coming.

You can see 'hey they are sending a doomstack' and send your ships to their backline systems to capture them as their doomstack travels towards you. They'll take longer to jump as it is, while you can go quickly from origination to destination in a much shorter time frame and rack up your war score. There are means to counter it that aren't overwhelmingly difficult. If they split up and try to do the same with you, well then great, they don't have a doomstack anymore and the issue you were complaining about is now fixed. And you are still up in the war score due to the time it would take them to seperate out the doomstack. and jump to different systems.

Nothing says you have to engage them. Tactical withdrawls are a perfectly valid tactic.

 

[Galactic Origins]

I am thinking yes.

I am wondering how many such ships we will be allowed to have. Maybe 1 in 1000 fleet capacity? Or a building? Or something else?

I am wondering if it will be DLC or free update.

Any of these ideas will work for me.

 

[Galactic Origins]

oops, Auras