Because then it's even easier to circumvent; just move your fleets around in a big stack.
Doomstacked Doomstack Doom-Thread: ReDoox
- Thread starter Antediluvian
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The moral of the story is that every one of these misguided attempts to break up stacks from the top down fails to address the core reason why doomstacking exists, and in the end all they would do is cause the doomstack to mutate.
If you want to end doomstacking you need to make the strategic cost, the risk of having all of your ships in one place, higher than the potential rewards. Right now things like bombardment and even occupation mean virtually nothing outside of their impact on warscore; if my planets get bombarded I don't even blink because the worst that happens is a pop or two dies and a building or two needs to be rebuilt.
If you want to end doomstacking you need to make the strategic cost, the risk of having all of your ships in one place, higher than the potential rewards. Right now things like bombardment and even occupation mean virtually nothing outside of their impact on warscore; if my planets get bombarded I don't even blink because the worst that happens is a pop or two dies and a building or two needs to be rebuilt.
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A better solution is to only have a few ships jump through warp in a tick of time. Large fleets will then string ghemselves out and be vulnerable to well coordinated attacks.
You would also get this interesting game of cat and mouse as fleets jockey themselves into position
And have beautiful escalating battles.
You would also get this interesting game of cat and mouse as fleets jockey themselves into position
And have beautiful escalating battles.
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The problem with banking a doomstack fix on increasing the risk of losing all ships at once is that it's just that: a risk, as in something that's a chance. While an inexperienced player would probably not see that risk and fall into it, a more experienced player would easily be able to work around the issue and circumvent the risk all-together. Maybe there does need to be a more abstract reason for you not to doomstack, but there needs to be a direct one as well.
And yes, I'm aware of how utterly complex the problem is and that it's not an easy thing to address, but doing something to directly discourage the practice would at least be a start. I personally haven't seen or been able to think of any better solutions than an exponentially increasing cost, so there you go.
It's still a solution that can be largely circumvented with micro. In most wars - outside of the very early game where the slow trickle of reinforcements can actually make a difference - the heavy fighting phase is a relatively short one; after you smash the enemy fleet you're basically just going through the motions of sieging and capping worlds. So the period of time in which you are paying elevated upkeep isn't actually that long, and unless your economy is in bad shape to begin with, it probably won't be that costly.
Any solution that penalizes having a single large fleet, rather than rewarding having multiple fleets by giving them more options and advantages, is going to fail and probably annoy the player as well.
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Doomstacks are the result of ease of travel. And the lack of need to really defend.
In any situation, you'll want to bring the full might of your empire against the enemy. And if you can easily get all your forces to them, why wouldn't you? There is simply and absolutely no reason not to.
However, if you were required to defend several areas of your empire where several enemies may enter, you may begin splitting your forces some.
If an enemy fleet runs through and destroys some mining outposts and even bombards a planet or two... so what? I can recover within months. No real need to defend there, especially if it doesn't give them war score. Send my doom stack to the war goal and call it a day. I win.
If it takes too long to travel across, and war score quickly goes up for destroying infrastructure, I will instead want to put a large enough force to defeat my enemy in his space, and a couple fleets evenly spread in my own territory to deny him the ability to do to much harm against me.
I could also engage his doom stack with my fleet, then have 2 smaller fleets rampage against his infrastructure for war score.
But... implementing such a thing might not be so easy as it sounds.
I am confident devs are looking over this issue and looking at better ways to handle it.
In any situation, you'll want to bring the full might of your empire against the enemy. And if you can easily get all your forces to them, why wouldn't you? There is simply and absolutely no reason not to.
However, if you were required to defend several areas of your empire where several enemies may enter, you may begin splitting your forces some.
If an enemy fleet runs through and destroys some mining outposts and even bombards a planet or two... so what? I can recover within months. No real need to defend there, especially if it doesn't give them war score. Send my doom stack to the war goal and call it a day. I win.
If it takes too long to travel across, and war score quickly goes up for destroying infrastructure, I will instead want to put a large enough force to defeat my enemy in his space, and a couple fleets evenly spread in my own territory to deny him the ability to do to much harm against me.
I could also engage his doom stack with my fleet, then have 2 smaller fleets rampage against his infrastructure for war score.
But... implementing such a thing might not be so easy as it sounds.
I am confident devs are looking over this issue and looking at better ways to handle it.
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the more ships in a doomstack = slower rate of fire - a 200K fleet not all ships will have targeting line of sight all the time
the larger the fleet you are attacking the higher the accuracy (less chance to miss)
the larger the fleet you are attacking the higher the accuracy (less chance to miss)
I mean like naval units, as in "fleet has x battleships therefor 4x naval units"
I'm also more in favour of this than flanking, as for how the space battle is handled now it would probably not work at all for the AI and be a mess to organise/restrict for players.
A supply system favouring few large ships above small ones would be soooo much better than what we have now (or even a fleet size tweak.
What about Fleet Size + Friendly Fire malus? that is, if you commit > x points of ships to the *same combat* then they have a chance to shoot each other.
You could make this much better vs. doomstacks if you make Friendly Fire *much* more likely if you vastly outnumber the other party.
[edit] oops this idea was already mentioned in this thread.
You could make this much better vs. doomstacks if you make Friendly Fire *much* more likely if you vastly outnumber the other party.
[edit] oops this idea was already mentioned in this thread.
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I feel that would become too much of an annoyance in the late game, when large fleets should become more of a norm. Not doomstack fleets, but very large ones that hold significant power despite not hosting the full power of the navy.
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Aren't we all missing the obvious?
1. A fleet can't retreat without losing massive amounts of health.
2. A fleet can't skirmish with another. Once they are in combat, they fight to the death.
With these mechanics, of course it's doomstack vs doomstack!
1. A fleet can't retreat without losing massive amounts of health.
2. A fleet can't skirmish with another. Once they are in combat, they fight to the death.
With these mechanics, of course it's doomstack vs doomstack!
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So true, so true. The combat system and combat AI is very limiting, and frankly the weakest point (IMO) of Stellaris as whole. Not only is it ugly (a heap of ship clipping each other ) and not very fun to play, just push doomstack back and forth.
there is a need of a fundamental change of the design choices here, not a re-design, but a change from the bottom, of the combat system and what it is supposed to do.
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I tried to kind of alleviate this by tinkering with weapon damage. (The fruits of my very ill-balanced and maybe too extreme attempts so far can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=819181015)
Essentially, the most straightforward solution to this seems to be lowering weapon damage, thus locking fleets in combat for much longer and allowing smaller fleets or stations to stop an enemy from advancing until they can be reinforced. The AI kinda-sorta deals with it, but not well enough to make it viable on its own.
What I would like to see are fleet formations and stances, e.g. allowing small task forces to fight holding actions against larger fleets or letting larger fleets engage more methodically, with picket/skirmishing ships moving ahead of the main force.
Essentially, the most straightforward solution to this seems to be lowering weapon damage, thus locking fleets in combat for much longer and allowing smaller fleets or stations to stop an enemy from advancing until they can be reinforced. The AI kinda-sorta deals with it, but not well enough to make it viable on its own.
What I would like to see are fleet formations and stances, e.g. allowing small task forces to fight holding actions against larger fleets or letting larger fleets engage more methodically, with picket/skirmishing ships moving ahead of the main force.
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Yeah! I was thinking of saying the doomstack problem needed a two pronged approach, but then I was thinking of another .. three pronged, no four ...l well multidirectional, multidimensional splitvector disassembling approach... what was I talking about?
Jokes asides, I think the two main parts to change is both the combat in itself, as you propose, but also in the logistic/mainteinace/administrative area.
Each ship needs a commander = create a command-resource, penalise if more ships than pool, like naval Cap but affects combat performance rather than economy. Perhaps not a blanket penalty either, but a risk of ships misfiring, takes of in wrong direction etc etc
Each ship needs maintainace = increases less with size (this could as mentioned earlier in thread mbe meaningless with current resourcerich late game)
Biggest difference between Stellaris and EU4 which it is most like is
(1) Lack fotresses With purpose and attrition
(2) Inabaility to quickly replace a army/fleet because
- Only Spaceports can construct spaceships which are easy destructable and slow to build
- Lack of credit
- Fortifactions doesn't work, you only need to reduce 20%
to have successful invasion
- Ground combat is too fast
(Why can't we have ground combat in similar fashion to naval combat in Hoi4? I think that would be awesome and very interesting)
(3) There is no viable retreat option
- retreat and your fleet is gone for months.
- try to escape and your fleet will be caught and destroyed
There will always be Doomstacks, but if these problems would be fixed then maybe it would be 2-3 Doomstacks and more strategy instead of just 1 doomstack and no strategy.
(also what is it People want? 10-100 fleets? without Automatic behavior that will just be micromanaging hell)
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