Probably in case a nuclear weapon gets detonated into the middle of the fleet, thereby rendering your nation without a fleet anymore.
Doomstacked Doomstack Doom-Thread: ReDoox
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More exactly, it's the nature of scouting, and this forces the fleet to spread out to location and be ready to engage the enemy fleet. View how fleets work in HOI4. In Stellaris, the problem is you can move your forces too quickly, and there is no real penalty to letting enemy fleets slip through.
Well, it might sound strange, but i think the most important point to split fleets is space, and the space-game stellaris has at the same time lot's of space and little space.
Space-travel in Stellaris is incredible fast. Not only is it FTL, its rushing through the whole gigantic galaxy in just a few minutes of game-time. Battles happen from one end of a solar system to the other and the distance is more felt like a naval battle in a pond rather then in the ocean. Also all space battles happen in solar systems, not outside them in the vast nothing (which may or may not make sense).
To move around the real world oceans requires logistics and a lot of time. So if you only have one doomstack you may destroy every fleet in 1on1, but every enemy would just evade that doomstack and attack you somewhere else.
In Stellaris you can just hold out a few seconds to minutes with your space port and ground forces and then your doomstack is there to fight the enemy off before you even lost anything on your planet.
It makes sense game mechanically that ships are as fast as they are in stellaris, for it could be very boring to watch the years pass just to get from one planet to another, but if it were so, you would stack multiple commands from multiple fleets. You would react more strategically as you do not know what will happen while your fleets are bound in space travel. If there are enough things to do simultaneously the slower pace wouldn't be a problem.
Also this way one could "feel" the vastness of the galaxy that stellaris has to offer. I mean look at the number of stars and planets. This is a massive map! But it doesn't feel as gigantic, because space-travel is this riddiculously FAST!
From this i see three things that are preventing doomstacks in the real world:
- Space and distance, or "slowness" of travel. -> You cannot react in time if your fleet is elsewhere.
- Logistics. -> If all your armada is in one place you need a massive stream of supply to not let them starve and run out of fuel or whatever they need. Also battle-width. -> A doomstack may not be able to send in all ships at the same time to engage a smaller force. With 3D-Space this is less a problem then on the ocean, but even submarines need to watch out were the other ships are shooting at.
- Things to loose. -> To not be at the place the enemy attacks "in time" is not a problem, if you do not loose anything if you don't. If they bombard you evily enough you may loose a pop,... thats terrible, but no problem for your empire. Mining stations also are rebuild quickly and you've got a ton of them. But if attacks would bring you unrest, would destroy tiles on a planet (make them tile blockers that are very time-consuming to clear) and if planet blockades would seriously hurt your economy, then the enemy doesn't have to win the big doomstack-fight to win the war. He would wear down your economy and take the planets that are far away from your doomstack.
Space-travel in Stellaris is incredible fast. Not only is it FTL, its rushing through the whole gigantic galaxy in just a few minutes of game-time. Battles happen from one end of a solar system to the other and the distance is more felt like a naval battle in a pond rather then in the ocean. Also all space battles happen in solar systems, not outside them in the vast nothing (which may or may not make sense).
To move around the real world oceans requires logistics and a lot of time. So if you only have one doomstack you may destroy every fleet in 1on1, but every enemy would just evade that doomstack and attack you somewhere else.
In Stellaris you can just hold out a few seconds to minutes with your space port and ground forces and then your doomstack is there to fight the enemy off before you even lost anything on your planet.
It makes sense game mechanically that ships are as fast as they are in stellaris, for it could be very boring to watch the years pass just to get from one planet to another, but if it were so, you would stack multiple commands from multiple fleets. You would react more strategically as you do not know what will happen while your fleets are bound in space travel. If there are enough things to do simultaneously the slower pace wouldn't be a problem.
Also this way one could "feel" the vastness of the galaxy that stellaris has to offer. I mean look at the number of stars and planets. This is a massive map! But it doesn't feel as gigantic, because space-travel is this riddiculously FAST!
From this i see three things that are preventing doomstacks in the real world:
- Space and distance, or "slowness" of travel. -> You cannot react in time if your fleet is elsewhere.
- Logistics. -> If all your armada is in one place you need a massive stream of supply to not let them starve and run out of fuel or whatever they need. Also battle-width. -> A doomstack may not be able to send in all ships at the same time to engage a smaller force. With 3D-Space this is less a problem then on the ocean, but even submarines need to watch out were the other ships are shooting at.
- Things to loose. -> To not be at the place the enemy attacks "in time" is not a problem, if you do not loose anything if you don't. If they bombard you evily enough you may loose a pop,... thats terrible, but no problem for your empire. Mining stations also are rebuild quickly and you've got a ton of them. But if attacks would bring you unrest, would destroy tiles on a planet (make them tile blockers that are very time-consuming to clear) and if planet blockades would seriously hurt your economy, then the enemy doesn't have to win the big doomstack-fight to win the war. He would wear down your economy and take the planets that are far away from your doomstack.
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The problem with the vast majority of doomstack "solutions" is all they do is force players to make smaller fleets.
All this does is mean battles will be fought with 5 tiny fleets rather than one big fleet. The numbers and outcome will be exactly the same.
All this does is mean battles will be fought with 5 tiny fleets rather than one big fleet. The numbers and outcome will be exactly the same.
4 doomstack threads merged with this one. Please keep all doomstack discussion here.
Thanks,
Dylan
Thanks,
Dylan
I think this is 99% of the problem.
Even economic harm isn't really a tactic because wars don't tend to last long enough. Unless it's super early game I'll usually have lots of energy and minerals stockpiled. So if he tries to bleed me dry and I doomstack him, I'll have wiped out his fleet long before attrition becomes a problem. And the winner, even if in rough shape, is still the winner.
As someone said elsewhere, the only thing worth attacking is the enemy fleet and the only thing worth protecting is your own. What else is there? Expensive damage, pops, unrest, economy, that's all stuff for after the war. It doesn't kick in fast enough to change the outcome: if I split the fleet to go after his economy he'll pick my ships off in detail. Maybe his empire is in ruins, but he still won.
Alternative targets would have to have a near-immediate impact on the enemy's ability to fight. Either:
- Warscore, so that before he can pick off your split fleets you'll run up the points and win. In this case a doomstack still wins tactically but becomes sub-optimal because it loses strategically. It's just too slow, the war is over before he can bring that overwhelming force to bear.
- Tactical necessity, so that your fleet gains an advantage over his. In this case a doomstack will lose tactically, because somehow taking out that target allows your smaller fleets to destroy his larger one. (For example, if taking out three targets collapsed his fleet supply and crippled the doomstack overnight. Or if without lythuric gas, shields don't work at all. Just hypothetical examples.)
Things to lose would be numbers 1 through 50 on my list of doomstack fixes. And they need to be things that you need in order to carry on the fight right away, not stuff that you'll have to rebuild down the road. Otherwise the balance will stay as expensive rebuild vs. immediate tactical advantage, and the player who goes for the immediate advantage wins every time.
I'd say it's Number 2. Number 1 is Speedy FTLs, which itself is a complex problem that will probably take a combination of FTL rework, giving space more interesting (i.e. obstructing) "geography" and improved/overhauled static defenses. If you can create the reliable possibility of someone being able to invade a planet in a decent-sized empire or federation that has all their ships in one part of space before they can respond, you've created a situation where the doomstack loses strategically.
Again though, that's #1, #2 is absolutely making is so your navy isn't for all intents and purposes the only important asset in warfare.
I don't entirely disagree, there'd be value to the "but if they attack Earth we could never get back there in time!" And making geography and defense more interesting would be great.
But on its own I think slower FTL would actually exacerbate the problem. If my fleets move too slowly to reinforce each other I'll have absolutely no choice but to stack them together. Otherwise, any single fleet would be a sitting duck for a major force.
Here's how I see it playing out. Let me know where you think I'm wrong:
FTL is set to some slower rate and I get attacked. Not knowing where the hammer will fall, I split some of my fleets up defensively but the enemy still doomstacks. He picks off the defensive fleets because no one can reinforce each other, then makes his way through my planets.
Alternatively, if I'm on the offensive, I have to decide whether to attack with a split fleet or a doomstack. But if I split the fleet and one of his defenses surprises me, I can't reinforce in time. So instead I consolidate, knowing that I can then smash through each individual defense force one by one then take his worlds at will once his fleet is destroyed.
Third option, a mix of offense and defense. I split half my fleet among my planets, and take the other half to war. The enemy doomstacks in and picks off my defense fleets. He can then take planets at will, because he has twice as many ships in my empire as I have in his (and even if I could get back in time to defend, my fleet would be half his size).
I don't see a situation where a spread out defender beats a doomstack, nor an advantage to trying. The only alternative is if both players send everything they have at the other guy's territory. Then, since no one can get back in time to defend, it's just a race to see who can run up warscore the fastest.
I think static defenses absolutely should be improved and made relevant, but if anything they'd just doomstacks more necessary. They would create a minimum fleet strength to take the system. My best response to that currently is simply overwhelming force.
At least, that's my take on it...
The energy cap is low enough that you can easily run it dry in less than a year, and with a large fleet it can take more than a year just to move your fleet to engage an enemy that's not trying to run away. I nearly bankrupted myself against a FE because I could only afford my fleet while it was docked with crew quarters -- I had to trade for extra energy three times just to last long enough for the battle.
I kind of wonder if locking pops to unemployment while being bombarded isn't actually working, because it doesn't seem to be doing anything.
You seem to be describe situations where the defending force can only move slowly, if at all, and the attacker force is moving at normal speed. How is the enemy able to pick off all of these defensive fleets before anyone can reinforce each other? Are the defending fleets just standing still and waiting patiently to get stomped? With slower FTL, a single doomstack offensive approach will make for a very slow conquest.
Let's not give the advantage to one side or the other and say we have two larger adjacent empires who know they are likely going to war with each other for some time (no sneak attacks). One player, called "Doomstack" keeps his entire fleet in a built-up system near the center of the border. The other player, "Nodal" keeps his fleets in 3 nodes distributed behind the border so at least one fleet can respond to attacks anywhere along the border.
War is declared. Doomstack moves his fleet to the closest enemy system. Nodal divides sends half of each nodal fleet into enemy territory. When Doomstack's fleet arrives at the border, Nodal decides to move his 3 defense fleets closer to Doomstack, but resolves to keep his distance. The three defense fleets will keep an eye out if Doomstack converts to a raiding strategy but will not engage, and will surrender one system at a time (and try to recover it when Doomstack moves on).
On the other hand, Nodal now knows where all of Doomstack's ships are, and there are none defending his territory. The three offensive fleets can no longer be intercepted by Doomstack, so they are free to combine or disperse as needed to raid and capture territory. Doomstack has more offensive forces, but his options are constrained while Nodal's offensive forces have a hugely simplified operational problem.
Note that I am positing a model where tactical surprise is hard. Even though detection range may be shorter, ship speed is slower still, so a defending fleet can get out of the way of an attack (as long as they have somewhere to go). Similarly, fixed defenses would be area denial system that could either detected at range or avoided if encountered in a system (basically mobile ships don't have to blunder into range of a fort). Stuff like warp magnets aren't good for strategy IMO. On the other hand, operational surprise is a definite possibility, since you can't move your systems out of the way of an approaching fleet, or whistle up a defense from other side of your empire.
The answer? 40% of most modern navies are made up of Support craft and these ships have little combat effectiveness over-all. In Stellaris "every" ship built is a fighting vessel.
P.S. And the Nuke problem too I suppose.
The answer? 40% of most modern navies are made up of Support craft and these ships have little combat effectiveness over-all. In Stellaris "every" ship built is a fighting vessel.
P.S. And the Nuke problem too I suppose.
I thought that in a real war most navies historically *did* put all their ships in a single fleet, with the exception of things like convoy escorts and raiders.
I wrote this in earlier today in another thread, but this is probably a better fit. So I am just gonna quote myself a bit if that is allowed:
Or in short: To make a player use multiple fleet, you must provide multiple targets.
This is of course extremely obvious, but also something most people seem to overlook (maybe because it is obvious and already debated to death?) and instead opting for convoluted ways of inhibiting mobility, increasing defensiveness, and so on. And while some of these suggestions probably would deepen the strategy and make the game more interesting, they also wouldn't change the fact that that I win when, and only when, I beat the opposing fleet. Regardless of if I had to crawl out from a tarpit while they took a planet, or if I had to bench some ships and only fight directly with 60% of my fleet.
How we came to this is harder to answer, theoretically, the planets should be the main targets of the war (they are what you want and where the war score is earned), but the are quite clearly not. Instead a war (at least for me) opens with you searching for the opposing main fleet, then proceeds with a the fleets fighting. After this the war is decided and you clean up by raking up war score.
Someone smarter than me can hopefully explain the mechanics behind this and maybe suggest solutions. I however cannot. the new food system will maybe help, less decisive battles (more fleeing) as is often suggested is probably key (but will lead to eu3 style ping ponging as long as the fleeing fleet remains your prime target). I am however positive that this is the angle we have to approach this problem from.
Or in short: To make a player use multiple fleet, you must provide multiple targets.
This is of course extremely obvious, but also something most people seem to overlook (maybe because it is obvious and already debated to death?) and instead opting for convoluted ways of inhibiting mobility, increasing defensiveness, and so on. And while some of these suggestions probably would deepen the strategy and make the game more interesting, they also wouldn't change the fact that that I win when, and only when, I beat the opposing fleet. Regardless of if I had to crawl out from a tarpit while they took a planet, or if I had to bench some ships and only fight directly with 60% of my fleet.
How we came to this is harder to answer, theoretically, the planets should be the main targets of the war (they are what you want and where the war score is earned), but the are quite clearly not. Instead a war (at least for me) opens with you searching for the opposing main fleet, then proceeds with a the fleets fighting. After this the war is decided and you clean up by raking up war score.
Someone smarter than me can hopefully explain the mechanics behind this and maybe suggest solutions. I however cannot. the new food system will maybe help, less decisive battles (more fleeing) as is often suggested is probably key (but will lead to eu3 style ping ponging as long as the fleeing fleet remains your prime target). I am however positive that this is the angle we have to approach this problem from.
You are not in a minority here (or at least if you are, we happened to find the same one.)
When you split your fleet, you run the risk of the enemy not doing that. If you split to attack two targets, and they doomstack one, you're now at half fleet capacity, and only took 1 target, giving them the major advantage. So, logically, the thing to do is to doomstack, to protect your fleet, which is where we run into the problem. As you stated above, the planets aren't the objective of a war, the enemy fleet is. Once you have destroyed the enemy fleet, you have near free reign in their territory to bombard/invade/destroy stations. So you will keep your fleet together, to present as little weakness to the opponent as possible, while trying to catch them when they show a weakness.
Going back to the example of two targets, the best move is to either take one target with your stack, forcing them into one of three options. Cede the target (giving you a net gain of 1 target with no losses), fight your fleet for it (doomstack v doomstack), or take one of yours in turn (resulting in even result, assuming planets of equal importance/position etc.etc.). What you can do to gain advantage is play the game of numbers. If your doomstack is smaller than their doomstack and they aren't being aggressive, hit their starports. Prevent their number from getting bigger while yours does, catch small fleets moving to join the main. Theres lots of little details to exploit even in doomstack warfare.
Imposing artificial limiters on doomstacks would feel just that, artificial, and wrong.
When you split your fleet, you run the risk of the enemy not doing that. If you split to attack two targets, and they doomstack one, you're now at half fleet capacity, and only took 1 target, giving them the major advantage. So, logically, the thing to do is to doomstack, to protect your fleet, which is where we run into the problem. As you stated above, the planets aren't the objective of a war, the enemy fleet is. Once you have destroyed the enemy fleet, you have near free reign in their territory to bombard/invade/destroy stations. So you will keep your fleet together, to present as little weakness to the opponent as possible, while trying to catch them when they show a weakness.
Going back to the example of two targets, the best move is to either take one target with your stack, forcing them into one of three options. Cede the target (giving you a net gain of 1 target with no losses), fight your fleet for it (doomstack v doomstack), or take one of yours in turn (resulting in even result, assuming planets of equal importance/position etc.etc.). What you can do to gain advantage is play the game of numbers. If your doomstack is smaller than their doomstack and they aren't being aggressive, hit their starports. Prevent their number from getting bigger while yours does, catch small fleets moving to join the main. Theres lots of little details to exploit even in doomstack warfare.
Imposing artificial limiters on doomstacks would feel just that, artificial, and wrong.
Scenario 1 and 3 you would pull back and consolidate as the enemy doomstack tries to smash it's way through your static defense. Improved defenses, as I see it, wouldn't mean more lethal stations, but tougher ones built to provide primarily support to friendly fleets, as well as ways to impair enemy fleet movement in ways that can't be circumvented simply by more muscle (such as planet-based weaponry and FTL traps that stop any sort of travel to and from the system for a period of time) That, coupled with the geography of your empire + changes to FTL (which would be less of a slowing things down across the board -which I know is more or less the direct interpretation of what I said in my last post- and more of giving non-hyperdrive FTL types opportunities to being trapped and forced to go through systems they would rather avoid) would give you the time to build more ships and/or retrofit them to best counter the enemy fleet. Also, now that your opponent's way in is restricted regardless of FTL type, you now almost always have the opportunity to circle around the doomstack and park one of your smaller fleets to catch and destroy any troop transports or reinforcing ships to make sure you're always gaining on his fleet in size and limiting his ability to convert his time in your territory into warscore.
Scenario 2... might be the place where you need more things other than combat ships in space to win wars. Tactically, attacking multiple places at once should, even with each place defended, give you the chance of succeeding in at least one location before that single doomstack is able to destroy more than one of the fleets involved. The FTL trap I mentioned before? In my mind it should stop friendly movement as well, meaning that if defender sets it off while their doomstack is in it to wipe out that fleet, that doomstack will be stuck there giving the enemy free reign, while if they set it off to keep them there until they spread out to take as many fleets as they can, that gives those fleets free reign within the system to do whatever they want, likely dismantling as much of the defenses within the system as they can so that next time they can go a little deeper. However, as it has been said multiple times, the fleet is the most important target during wars, so that strategy (which is something I've pulled off vs. the AI multiple times with the mechanics as-is) only works when it results in you taking a planet to improve warscore, otherwise it's a waste of time and likely ships too.
As has been mentioned, it appears the best solution to doomstacking is by increasing the risk of leaving worlds undefended rather than creating hard or soft caps to fleet size. This would encourage maintaining defense fleets, without preventing a doomstack from being formed in the first place.
I think this could very simply be implemented, and will probably make a mod to this effect once Utopia is out. It would require changing only two things:
I think this could very simply be implemented, and will probably make a mod to this effect once Utopia is out. It would require changing only two things:
- Change the chance of building destruction during bombardment so that it is drastically increased. Full bombardment should guarantee the complete destruction of all buildings by the time that fortifications have been depleted. Light bombardment should guarantee the destruction of at least 50% of buildings by the time fortifications are depleted. Now, ignoring invasion fleets has a serious, long-term impact to your economy that necessitates strong defense forces. It may also be necessary to increase pop death chance by a similar amount.
- Greatly improve the strength of fortresses and other space-based static defenses so that a reasonable amount them, coupled with a defense fleet 25-50% the size of the invading fleet has a realistic ability to fight them off. This ensures that all of a player's offensive capability isn't tied up defending their own planets, and ensures that the fight doesn't devolve into trying to catch the enemy's doomstack with your own in your own space before moving on to attack theirs.
Interesting, I just came here to show a mod I found that makes bombardment a lot nastier, making leaving your home worlds undefended much more costly, and by proxy, discourage doomstacking. This mod seems really promising to try that idea out and see if it has merit. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=844499510
There are a number of arguments that have been presented here, some clearly wrong, some with merit. Here are my thoughts.
First, I should note that I agree with the premise that the doomstack vs. doomstack fight is a problem with the game, and reduces the wartime strategic gameplay down to something boringly simplistic. It has a number of bad consequences as well – such as the fact that a coalition of allied fighters will almost always be effectively weaker than one large opponent, even if they are bigger in aggregate (because their respective, smaller, doomstack fleets are not coordinated and thus will not necessarily be in a position to combine). But that’s just one minor example among many.
So why are doomstacks present in the game but not present in history? A number of false suggests have been put forward (e.g. speed of spaceships) – most of these are mostly or completely incorrect –e.g. speed of fleets has nothing to do with – if the fleets are the same speed as each other, this is essentially equivalent to speeds of naval Wwii fleets being equivalent to each other. Similarly people have put forward the concept that the defenses are too soft, and you need to harden defenses to put down doomfleets. This is largely incorrect – no naval installation could have fought off a WWII BB/CV task force – take, for example, the Normandy coast. It really had no ability to directly challenge the fleet that stood offshore from it.
The fundemental reason has been mentioned in previous posts, but I’ll try to restate and clarify it: In Stellaris, a fleet overwhelming another fleet means that the victorious nation will have unchallenged access to achieve all subsequent wargoals (e.g. conquering planets). In real life (WWII for example) this was equally true. If the US had lost all its carriers in Midway, Japan would have (at least for a year) had unchallenged access to all pacific holdings of the US. So whats the differences between these two scenarios?
First: In real life, territory was far more fragile/vulnerable. If you didn’t have a naval force protecting either an infrastructure center (e.g. oil fields, factories) or a military objective (e.g. defense or invasion of an island, Guadalcanal) it was vulnerable to an opposing task force decimating it. Thus, you really did need to, relative to the risk/reward proposition, defend everything with some naval capacity. If you let an enemy task force raid behind your lines immense damage could be done to your warfighting ability. Similarly, and more commonly in WWII, opponents commerce raiders (e.g. Graf Spree, American submarines, etc.) could do huge damage behind your lines to sea lines of communication/logistics.
The first of these effects can be replicated in Stellaris easily – bombardment of planet could wreck infrastructure quickly, destroying ability to produce minerals/energy. The second effect is harder, because stellaris abstracts commerce. But it could be implemented in some way – e.g. for each fleet driving around in someone’s territory, a production hit is put on the empire. And such an effect might scale as the square root of the size of the fleet – pound for pound small fleets of commerce raiders are more effective than 1 fleet of twice the size. (you don’t need a big task force to kill merchant ships).
Ultimately, what we need is mechanics that require both the combatants to have lots of vulnerable infrastructure and supply lines that need defended. Then you need to allocate priorities. It becomes more of a game of how much defensive firepower are you willing to concentrate to make an offensive push in one area, at the risk of weaking yourself to a counterattack in another area.
My fear is that if someone tries to just mod this in, the AI will absolutely suck at fighting, because it wont account for this, but IMO some system like this really needs to be implemented.
My 0.02.
First, I should note that I agree with the premise that the doomstack vs. doomstack fight is a problem with the game, and reduces the wartime strategic gameplay down to something boringly simplistic. It has a number of bad consequences as well – such as the fact that a coalition of allied fighters will almost always be effectively weaker than one large opponent, even if they are bigger in aggregate (because their respective, smaller, doomstack fleets are not coordinated and thus will not necessarily be in a position to combine). But that’s just one minor example among many.
So why are doomstacks present in the game but not present in history? A number of false suggests have been put forward (e.g. speed of spaceships) – most of these are mostly or completely incorrect –e.g. speed of fleets has nothing to do with – if the fleets are the same speed as each other, this is essentially equivalent to speeds of naval Wwii fleets being equivalent to each other. Similarly people have put forward the concept that the defenses are too soft, and you need to harden defenses to put down doomfleets. This is largely incorrect – no naval installation could have fought off a WWII BB/CV task force – take, for example, the Normandy coast. It really had no ability to directly challenge the fleet that stood offshore from it.
The fundemental reason has been mentioned in previous posts, but I’ll try to restate and clarify it: In Stellaris, a fleet overwhelming another fleet means that the victorious nation will have unchallenged access to achieve all subsequent wargoals (e.g. conquering planets). In real life (WWII for example) this was equally true. If the US had lost all its carriers in Midway, Japan would have (at least for a year) had unchallenged access to all pacific holdings of the US. So whats the differences between these two scenarios?
First: In real life, territory was far more fragile/vulnerable. If you didn’t have a naval force protecting either an infrastructure center (e.g. oil fields, factories) or a military objective (e.g. defense or invasion of an island, Guadalcanal) it was vulnerable to an opposing task force decimating it. Thus, you really did need to, relative to the risk/reward proposition, defend everything with some naval capacity. If you let an enemy task force raid behind your lines immense damage could be done to your warfighting ability. Similarly, and more commonly in WWII, opponents commerce raiders (e.g. Graf Spree, American submarines, etc.) could do huge damage behind your lines to sea lines of communication/logistics.
The first of these effects can be replicated in Stellaris easily – bombardment of planet could wreck infrastructure quickly, destroying ability to produce minerals/energy. The second effect is harder, because stellaris abstracts commerce. But it could be implemented in some way – e.g. for each fleet driving around in someone’s territory, a production hit is put on the empire. And such an effect might scale as the square root of the size of the fleet – pound for pound small fleets of commerce raiders are more effective than 1 fleet of twice the size. (you don’t need a big task force to kill merchant ships).
Ultimately, what we need is mechanics that require both the combatants to have lots of vulnerable infrastructure and supply lines that need defended. Then you need to allocate priorities. It becomes more of a game of how much defensive firepower are you willing to concentrate to make an offensive push in one area, at the risk of weaking yourself to a counterattack in another area.
My fear is that if someone tries to just mod this in, the AI will absolutely suck at fighting, because it wont account for this, but IMO some system like this really needs to be implemented.
My 0.02.