Doomstacked Doomstack Doom-Thread: ReDoox

[Drowe]

Stellaris needs large AOE damage bombers like in EVE online to completely mess up your massive fleets. Would encourage fleet splitting an all.

No it wouldn't, it would encourage you to control a lot of small fleets in one battle, a lot of micromanagement, but the optimal strategy would still be massing your fleets together, only less densely.

This has nothing to do with the arguments that were made before. People whined and complained about the amount of warscore it got from doing so. You can't both simultaneously be against big blob combat, and also against smaller dispersed raiding being rewarding.

Rewarding that does not need to be with warscore. Raiding could give you some resources the enemy would have gotten for example. Aside from that, it weakens his economy, which should play a more important role.

Getting warscore should not be the end goal, it should show how well you are doing in the war, the only reason you have it at all is so you and more importantly the AI can tell how well a war is going. For that reason giving warscore for destroying something that's worth less than a corvette is pointless. That doesn't mean, attacking space based infrastructure is pointless in general, it just is in the current state of the game. If space based infrastructure was more valuable, then protecting it would become more of a priority.

Even better if you can decrease the combat effectiveness of enemy ships by taking out his infrastructure, due to supply shortages. Essentially you take out his income and once the stockpile is drained, he can't fully supply all his ships anymore. The idea of having local stockpiles would make that even more effective, since besides income you can also take his stockpiles away from him.

 

[Yakez]

I think doom-stacks just needed to be split in realistic manner. Nothing more.

1. Give admirals fleet power cap.
- More admiral lvl, bigger fleet. (one person could not manage thousand ship armada)
- Later in game, tech to increase admiral power cap to counter number of stacks.

2. Debuff for having more that one admiral in system / not having any / having bigger fleet than admiral lvl, that would progress with any extra fleet power.

Fleet disorganization effects:
- Less accurate weapons to the point of 0 accuracy (so no point even to blob defence)
- Longer FTL cooldowns (more stacks in different places - more mobility)
- Friendly fire in battle (why not? space is not a medieval battle, bad Intel could lead to ff)
- Extra supply consumption (one of the best balancing EU4 features)

3. Supply system to make fleet disorganization more interesting. Simple logistic stations with ammo and fuel.
- No supply, less fleet organisation (could encourage hit and run tactics to cripple bigger fleets)
- Bigger fleet, longer to replenish supply (would render high lvl admirals less powerful in strategic war)
- Bigger fleet more supply to use on FTL (would encourage small task forces for distant wars? as well as limit big fleet movements only to key offences)

 

[HAL.9000.1]

A point in favor of doomstacks is watching them maneuver. A 700-ship fleet on maneuvers looks like a murmuration of starlings, which is kind of neat.

 

[Drowe]

I think doom-stacks just needed to be split in realistic manner. Nothing more.

1. Give admirals fleet power cap.
- More admiral lvl, bigger fleet. (one person could not manage thousand ship armada)
- Later in game, tech to increase admiral power cap to counter number of stacks.

2. Debuff for having more that one admiral in system / not having any / having bigger fleet than admiral lvl, that would progress with any extra fleet power.

Fleet disorganization effects:
- Less accurate weapons to the point of 0 accuracy (so no point even to blob defence)
- Longer FTL cooldowns (more stacks in different places - more mobility)
- Friendly fire in battle (why not? space is not a medieval battle, bad Intel could lead to ff)
- Extra supply consumption (one of the best balancing EU4 features)

3. Supply system to make fleet disorganization more interesting. Simple logistic stations with ammo and fuel.
- No supply, less fleet organisation (could encourage hit and run tactics to cripple bigger fleets)
- Bigger fleet, longer to replenish supply (would render high lvl admirals less powerful in strategic war)
- Bigger fleet more supply to use on FTL (would encourage small task forces for distant wars? as well as limit big fleet movements only to key offences)

The first two proposals are punitive measures designed to keep people from putting all their ships into one fleet. They don't work, because people will still want to bring as many ships to a fight as they can, it'll only force them to micromanage each fleet more, which is straight up annoying.

The only reason why doomstacks are perceived to be a problem is, because it's the only strategy that really works. In most cases you'll win by occupying planets and smashing the fleet, although occupation of planets is only a thing because it gives warscore, it doesn't significantly weaken you if a planet is occupied, nor does it have any benefits to occupy a planet besides warscore.

A supply mechanic would work if it was implemented well, which could be tricky given the three different methods of FTL. One possibility would be forward supply depots, that work similar to wormhole stations, which could serve in that capacity for wormhole users. Now you could either abstract the process of resupplying your ships and only require them to be in range of the station to be resupplied, simulate supply ships that transport supplies to the fleet or fleets, or you could require fleets to dock in order to resupply.

Another option could be that fleets can only carry a limited amount of supply with them, which could be increased by having dedicated supply ships or modules that allow increased supply capacity.

A third option is, that fleets are resupplied by convoys, originating from the nearest possible spaceport. They could be abstracted so they don't appear as actual ships, but you should be able to have a fleet hunt for enemy convoys to raid them.

You could also use all three methods, since each one has its advantages and disadvantages. A Hyperlane user would probably prefer to build supply ships that accompany the fleet rather than have vulnerable convoys that can only take a predetermined path, while a wormhole user could just use his wormhole stations as supply depots, he can never be more than 1 jump from a wormhole station anyway. And warp users would probably be fine with convoys.

 

[Person012345]

No it wouldn't, it would encourage you to control a lot of small fleets in one battle, a lot of micromanagement, but the optimal strategy would still be massing your fleets together, only less densely.


Rewarding that does not need to be with warscore. Raiding could give you some resources the enemy would have gotten for example. Aside from that, it weakens his economy, which should play a more important role.

Getting warscore should not be the end goal, it should show how well you are doing in the war, the only reason you have it at all is so you and more importantly the AI can tell how well a war is going. For that reason giving warscore for destroying something that's worth less than a corvette is pointless. That doesn't mean, attacking space based infrastructure is pointless in general, it just is in the current state of the game. If space based infrastructure was more valuable, then protecting it would become more of a priority.

Even better if you can decrease the combat effectiveness of enemy ships by taking out his infrastructure, due to supply shortages. Essentially you take out his income and once the stockpile is drained, he can't fully supply all his ships anymore. The idea of having local stockpiles would make that even more effective, since besides income you can also take his stockpiles away from him.

I don't think this community will ever be happy with the combat no matter what they do with it.

I'm not even sure what the end goal of these suggestions are? Is it just to make there be multiple fleets instead of one? Because as others have pointed out, this will just result in a style of battle similar to how I play vicky 2, have a bunch of blobs closer together and then slowly feed into the main blob to reinforce morale (which is not something I want). And why, anyway? Short of just making large fleets terrible (which everyone would complain about), you're going to have an extremely difficult time stopping blobbing if more ships > less ships, even if you apply penbalties to large formations. Unless it's enough to make them lose (which it probably shouldn't be) people will still blob. I'm for making combat more interesting if they can do it but I think this big obsession some people have with breaking up big blobs won't lead anywhere productive I think. If that is really an ultimate goal, the best idea might be that of soft-capping how many ships an admiral can command and applying pretty severe penalties beyond that so that a normal empire will have 2 or 3 fleets instead of 1. This would also increase the need for admiralty if you are an aggressive nation who wants to keep all their fleets battle ready at all times vs maybe the economic development of extra governors for a peaceful empire (I would suggest that a defensive war could increase leader cap by 2 temporarily to allow panic recruiting of admirals, though in doing so they would be low-skill ones).

Otherwise, what IS the goal of all this?

 

[Emraldis]

Cue everyone complaining about the raiding fleets. You don't remember that people constantly whined that the AI would send small raiding fleets and accrue a bunch of warscore from destroying mining stations and spaceports? This community will never be happy.

Wow. 4 months and 29 Pages later lol...

 

[Legendsmith]

Every solution creates new problems. Like why would a reinforcing fleet jumping in on the other side of the system suddenly make battleships better or worse at dodging?.

That's not what I meant, I meant per engagement, not per system. That makes no sense.

-snip-

Regarding the idea of fortresses having 'reinforced mode,' It would be kind of annoying but defences are annoying, that's what they're there for. I don't think it'd necessarily be frustrating; it'd still take less time to destroy than a planet's fortifications.

As what I called "combat width", you can call it whatever you like; what it's there to do is to create diminishing returns when it comes to large fleets engaging smaller fleets, so that large fleets don't instantly delete smaller fleets, yet still defeat them.
The idea that smaller fleets wouldn't change their behaviour when on the defensive doesn't make sense.

I'm not married to the above ideas though, but I think something should change. Don't we all?

Cue everyone complaining about the raiding fleets. You don't remember that people constantly whined that the AI would send small raiding fleets and accrue a bunch of warscore from destroying mining stations and spaceports? This community will never be happy.

I think the problem there was that warscore was accrued from the raiding of something that didn't matter too much. Most mining stations pay for themselves in 3.75 years which isn't really that long in game time. The loss of a mining station is like losing a single corvette, so it just shouldn't matter for warscore.
However, as I said before, a planet's loss is no big deal. But it should be.

Otherwise, what IS the goal of all this?

I can't speak for everyone but the point of all this is to make varied combat strategy. At the moment, stellaris combat is solved. There is one thing you do, whoever does it better, wins the war in that single point. It's the same thing, every time.
The point of this thread is to discuss and suggest ways to "un-solve" combat, to make it so there's not one prime strategy.

In the game we already have mechanics for ship supply, there is upkeep. The problem is it's too hard to hit the enemy's upkeep. It's near impossible, in fact. Additionally there's no way to mothball fleets so that they don't take upkeep, you can't touch his resources.
The idea of stockpiles physically existing on planets and thus being raid-able is a really good one. If I can smash my enemy's energy credits/minerals so that suddenly not only is his income hurt, but his stockpile is destroyed/stolen/inaccessible, then his ships drop in effectiveness due to shortages.

However, I think this should require some way of putting fleets in low power/mothballed mode so that players don't have to disband fleets to keep their ships combat-effective. Then as ground is recovered they can bring them online as they regain the ability to support them.

 

[Drowe]

I don't think this community will ever be happy with the combat no matter what they do with it.

I'm not even sure what the end goal of these suggestions are? Is it just to make there be multiple fleets instead of one? Because as others have pointed out, this will just result in a style of battle similar to how I play vicky 2, have a bunch of blobs closer together and then slowly feed into the main blob to reinforce morale (which is not something I want). And why, anyway? Short of just making large fleets terrible (which everyone would complain about), you're going to have an extremely difficult time stopping blobbing if more ships > less ships, even if you apply penbalties to large formations. Unless it's enough to make them lose (which it probably shouldn't be) people will still blob. I'm for making combat more interesting if they can do it but I think this big obsession some people have with breaking up big blobs won't lead anywhere productive I think. If that is really an ultimate goal, the best idea might be that of soft-capping how many ships an admiral can command and applying pretty severe penalties beyond that so that a normal empire will have 2 or 3 fleets instead of 1. This would also increase the need for admiralty if you are an aggressive nation who wants to keep all their fleets battle ready at all times vs maybe the economic development of extra governors for a peaceful empire (I would suggest that a defensive war could increase leader cap by 2 temporarily to allow panic recruiting of admirals, though in doing so they would be low-skill ones).

Otherwise, what IS the goal of all this?

I don't actually see doomstacks as a problem by itself. They do and should have their place in the game. That's one reason for why I don't think arbitrary caps to prevent them are useful, the other being that they don't work well, as you pointed out.

The issue is not so much that doomstacking does occur, but that doomstacks are an almost inevitable result the balance settles on. There is no room for battles between smaller fleets, because there is no incentive to protect low value targets like mining stations and there is no way to really hurt someone's economy with small fleets through disrupting trade and supply lines.

Regarding the idea of fortresses having 'reinforced mode,' It would be kind of annoying but defences are annoying, that's what they're there for. I don't think it'd necessarily be frustrating; it'd still take less time to destroy than a planet's fortifications.

Then it's not really adding anything to the game. If it makes no difference, then why do it at all? Making them more durable would have a similar effect.

As what I called "combat width", you can call it whatever you like; what it's there to do is to create diminishing returns when it comes to large fleets engaging smaller fleets, so that large fleets don't instantly delete smaller fleets, yet still defeat them.

How would that improve anything? It would make it more annoying to be intercepted by individual ships on their way to reinforce a fleet, otherwise it will do nothing about doomstacks. You can't solve doomstacks by placing arbitrary limitations on them, unless you make them so weak, that they can be defeated by a smaller force, which just shifts the balance to a different optimum that requires more micromanagement. You need to provide an incentive for smaller fleets, by giving them something they can do better than one large fleet can and is vital to your war effort. That will cause a new solution or hopefully multiple ones to emerge from gameplay instead of imposing a play style on the player.

 

[Foefaller]

I feel like this gets repeated every few pages (and that I'm often the one who does it) but here goes.

You are never going to get rid of doomstacks by adding limits to fleet size/ships in system/numbers advantage vs. smaller fleets. You'll just make it more annoying and mirco-intensive to do so. This is because it does not solve the two underlining problems with Stellaris warfare that make doomstacks the superior way to go at nearly all times;

The first problem: the single greatest risk in war is losing too much of your fleet. I feel like that statement alone doesn't sufficiently describe the gap in importance between your fleet and everything else. So let's put it this way:

If you were to list the top 20 most precious things to protect during a war:
1-15 would be your fleet
16 would be the last world(s) your opponent would need to take before you have to concede defeat.
17-19 would be the spaceports where your Cruiser, Battleship and Destroyer construction yards are (in that order)
...and #20 is literally everything else.

Having a planet taken from you during a war should be a *significant* loss that goes beyond simple warscore value; depending on your opponents ethos, that planet should be losing buildings and pops constantly, providing your enemy with a strategic foothold and economic advantage for further conquest, and probably more than a few consequences that can reverberate beyond that planet or the system/sector it's in.

Also, I feel that ships themselves should be easier to replace, so losing one too many fleets early on doesn't mean an inevitable loss even if no hostiles have ever set foot in your systems. However, I am not sure of the best way to do that without resulting in an even greater disparity between the ability of large and small empires can contribute to wars.

The second problem: Movement is too easy. This has some part to do with the above, since being able to respond immediately to a crisis isn't that important when most of the bad things that can happen are a slap on the wrist. However, even so, it is still very easy for a single fleet (particularly with warp, wormhole or jump drive) to respond to all the threats within your empire and still go on the offensive with very little actual damage being done. That simply shouldn't be possible beyond the first few decades of the game, and absolutely shouldn't be the case when your empire is a quarter of the galaxy and is fighting a 4-empire federation.

FTL needs to be overhauled so that Warp and Wormhole are just as vulnerable to chokepoints and galaxy "terrain" as Hyperdrive, and defenses, while not more deadly, need to be better able to slow down incoming fleets in ways that aren't overcome simply by throwing more ships at them.

Until you make hostile fleets in your system a threat that cannot be ignored, and make it borderline impossible to respond to all such threats with a single fleet (especially if said fleet is already engaged elsewhere) Doomstacking is always going to be the safest way to win a war.

 

[jaava]

Honestly i think there is something in how HOI makes me not to stack the entire RN into one fleet. Combine some kind of stacking penalty that makes it not optimal to have too many ships in a single battle with slow movement that forces me to have separate fleets to protect different parts of the empire. And then there is the max range from the home base (in stellaris context that would require some thinking as we still want to allow attacks to the other end of the galaxy).

I would also want to have a peace time function for the fleets. EU does that with the trade protection mechanic. Now i have a huge armada just sitting for decades unless i want to start a war.

 

[Person012345]

The problem with making ships slower and less responsive is that offense just becomes even more powerful. An attacker can blob and then move into it's target, a defender, the person with less fleet, is unable to respond to it and slowing down ships would encourage doomstacks even more because otherwise it'll take them forever to reinforce each other.

 

[Drowe]

The problem with making ships slower and less responsive is that offense just becomes even more powerful. An attacker can blob and then move into it's target, a defender, the person with less fleet, is unable to respond to it and slowing down ships would encourage doomstacks even more because otherwise it'll take them forever to reinforce each other.

That is a good point, a possible solution would be for smaller fleets to be a bit faster than large ones. The smaller fleets can evade a battle until reinforcements arrive, to counter splitting up your fleet but still moving them together, the speed should depend on how many of your ships are moving from A to B simultaneously, not how big the fleet is. You could split up your fleet to go from A to B with half your fleet taking a different route, but I think that would be fine.

 

[Person012345]

That is a good point, a possible solution would be for smaller fleets to be a bit faster than large ones. The smaller fleets can evade a battle until reinforcements arrive, to counter splitting up your fleet but still moving them together, the speed should depend on how many of your ships are moving from A to B simultaneously, not how big the fleet is. You could split up your fleet to go from A to B with half your fleet taking a different route, but I think that would be fine.

I'll be honest, this is actually how I originally thought the system was supposed to work before I found out it didn't, and it makes a lot of sense to me. A large fleet SHOULD have a longer windup/cooldown time imo.

 

[Legendsmith]

We really need a new thread on this, with a summary of the findings of this thread as the OP. Or I could just keep posting summaries.
Here's my current take of
Summary of Reasons the Doom-Stack is King™

1. Every engagement is a full pitched battle. This makes doomstacking the best because in a pitched battle you want your maximum force there. There's no squadrons of fast torpedo corvettes raiding the lumbering enemy battleship blob with bombing runs.
2. There is only one high value target for each side, the enemy fleet. Doomstacking is the safest way to win any war because hostile fleets that are not targeting your fleet can be ignored, and then mopped up.
3. Non-fleet defences are useless. Fortresses and starports are speedbumps at best."The impotency of starports and fortress' means that stellaris does multi-front or pan-galactic war very poorly, as of now your only defensive force is your blob fleet, which is also your offensive fleet." - wastedswan
   We could also include defensive armies in this category, as they're irrelevant at best.
4. A losing fleet loses hard, and is quickly wiped out, this makes smaller fleets suicide because they die so quickly with no chance of reinforcement. Admirals apparently never fight delaying actions in Stellaris. (Related to #1)
5. You can't outrun the enemy except with superior technology. Every fleet has the same strategic movement capability and thus the same capability to respond to threats. This is related to #1. Again, there's no squadrons of fast torpedo corvettes raiding the lumbering enemy battleship blob with bombing runs. (if there was, defence stations/forts/platforms might be actually useful.)
6. Smaller fleets are currently too risky. See #1, #4 and #5, for reasons why smaller fleets are discouraged, and additionally #2, because there's no incentive.

These reasons are quite varied, and no single change can address all of them. Thus critiquing any suggestion because it will not solve doom-stacking completely is not a valid critique, it must be shown why it would only slightly change the problem, such as that of admiral fleet capacity caps turning the problem into everyone having 2 doomstacks instead of 1.


Summary of Suggested Solutions (and some Problems/Rebuttals)
These are in no particular order.

• Slower FTL
  • This doesn't change much, and could make colonisation and exploration slower for no reason.
  • This change could scale with ship size, corvettes (And civilian ships) being the fastest, while the increasing sizes of other ships = progressively slower FTL, whether it be windup, cooldown, or transit time. This partially addresses #4
• Admirals as a size limit for fleets
  • Not a solution because everyone just has their doomstack turned into 2, 3, or 4 mini doomstacks that behave exactly the same way. Even combined with other changes it would be those other changes having the impact, rather than this one.
• Rebuildable/Reinforcable Fortresses
  • Making defences less of a waste of minerals that can't survive encourages people to build them. A fortress that could actually be defended by a friendly fleet rushing to its aid allows smaller fleets to have a 'home turf advantage' from the fortress's firepower.
  • This could make defences more annoying
  • But defences are supposed to be inconvenient.
  • What if fortresses could be captured?
• Directly increase fortress HP/Damage/Power
  • This doesn't solve doomstacks itself because the increase in power means that fleets want to concentrate more firepower in order to beat the strong forts, but combined with other factors it could have a place.
• Faster retreat times
  • Nobody really wants this, but it's been suggested. Faster retreat times are extremely frustrating and turn warfare into a game of "chase down the enemy fleet" or "run from the enemy doomstack" as soon as one side starts to lose the first battle.
• Flanking Bonuses.
  • As far as I can see, the general response to this is that it is a post-hoc mechanic that has more elegant solutions.
• Planets as high value targets
  • This seems to be universally accepted as a good idea.
  • There's many ways to do this;
    • Long term happiness debuffs for any planet that's invaded, or bombarded.
    • The ability to destroy buildings with invasion and/or bombardment. Planetary combat has to happen somewhere, why doesn't a mine get wrecked or a farm shelled to bits?
    • The ability to capture and, destroy, steal, or render-inaccessible portions of the enemy's stored resources upon capturing a planet.
    • You know you want to have an epic back-and-forth war over a couple of vital farm/mineral/energy planets.
• Supply limits/chains. This could really be done well or awfully.
  • Done well, supply chain/supply limits discourages sending a doomstack around for every single task, and makes sending a fleet deep into enemy territory a costly endeavour.
  • Done poorly this just creates another variation on the doomstack theme that will be immediately min/maxed out again.
• Diminishing firepower returns for large vs small fleets.
  • This can be called combat width, coordination penalty, or whatever. Basically it means that larger fleets will still defeat, but not immediately 'delete' smaller fleets. They will kill them more slowly, up to a point (unless the smaller fleet is very significantly smaller in which case it'll still be deleted). This slows down battles a bit and makes splitting fleets up a less risky move. The slowing of battle also means that it's not a great idea to send your whole fleet to kill something a quarter of its size because it'll be tied up for too long in a battle that yes it will win, but it's just so much overkill.
• Hearts of Iron TFH style combat tactics.
  • Pretty sure someone suggested this, it seems like it might be good, it could help address issues #1 and #4. It could also make admirals more important. It's related to to "Diminishing firepower returns for large vs small fleets."

Summary End. Did I miss anything?

Then it's not really adding anything to the game. If it makes no difference, then why do it at all? Making them more durable would have a similar effect.

But it IS though, it's making defences actually able to be defended. Wouldn't it be great if those minefield stations actually existed for more than 1 day during a war? It makes them far less of a resource drain because yes they can be overrun, but it means that overrun isn't the same as totally annihilated.

How would that improve anything? It would make it more annoying to be intercepted by individual ships on their way to reinforce a fleet, otherwise it will do nothing about doomstacks. You can't solve doomstacks by placing arbitrary limitations on them, unless you make them so weak, that they can be defeated by a smaller force, which just shifts the balance to a different optimum that requires more micromanagement. You need to provide an incentive for smaller fleets, by giving them something they can do better than one large fleet can and is vital to your war effort. That will cause a new solution or hopefully multiple ones to emerge from gameplay instead of imposing a play style on the player.

I assume you've forgotten where I stated earlier that no one single change will fix doomstacks, we need many changes. This is one of them. Incentives are another. I've said this already. Additionally, as I said when I first suggested this, there is a cap, a single corvette will still be immediately deleted. Nor does it make larger fleets weaker. It slows down a defeat, meaning that reinforcement can actually happen. This removes some of the risk of a smaller fleet if it can be reinforced in dire situations, which is a nessecary thing to do. At the moment smaller fleets are too risky.

I feel like this gets repeated every few pages (and that I'm often the one who does it) but here goes.

Yeah it does, as I said before. Partially because most people posting haven't read the thread, and also because every suggestion is met with "This doesn't fix doomstacks!" But like I said, no single change will, multiple changes are required. Carrot and stick if you will.

You are never going to get rid of doomstacks by adding limits to fleet size/ships in system/numbers advantage vs. smaller fleets. You'll just make it more annoying and mirco-intensive to do so. This is because it does not solve the two underlining problems with Stellaris warfare that make doomstacks the superior way to go at nearly all times;

The first problem: the single greatest risk in war is losing too much of your fleet. I feel like that statement alone doesn't sufficiently describe the gap in importance between your fleet and everything else. So let's put it this way:

Exactly, which is why I suggested the efficiency limitation, as a partial solution to issue #4, and #1

Until you make hostile fleets in your system a threat that cannot be ignored, and make it borderline impossible to respond to all such threats with a single fleet (especially if said fleet is already engaged elsewhere) Doomstacking is always going to be the safest way to win a war.

Exactly.

 

[halander1]

I could imagine that building something like a mega fortress would cost 75% or to make, and its upkeep seriously reduced. In turn, you invest tons of minerals at one point, for the ability to say... put 50 rail guns on a fortress. Or, at the very least, make a normal fortress that has a longer ftl inhibition range. I mean, not one system, but 5, if people can jump to any nonsense system they want, why not avoid the fortress, or at the games current state, ignore the fortresses very existence because it is meaningless. It makes plenty of sense to defensively put a mega fortress... or 2, in the center of a "tall" built empire, and fight at the fortress rather than random space. Plus, who doesn't wanna see an epic battle between a stronghold and enemy ships.

 

[Drowe]

We really need a new thread on this, with a summary of the findings of this thread as the OP.
Here's my current take of
Summary of Reasons Doom-Stacks are The Best™

1. Every engagement is a full pitched battle. This makes doomstacking the best because in a pitched battle you want your maximum force there. There's no squadrons of fast torpedo corvettes raiding the lumbering enemy battleship blob with bombing runs.
2. There is only one high value target for each side, the enemy fleet. Doomstacking is the safest way to win any war because hostile fleets that are not targeting your fleet can be ignored, and then mopped up.
3. Non-fleet defences are useless. Fortresses and starports are speedbumps at best. "The impotency of starports and fortress' means that stellaris does multi-front or pan-galactic war very poorly, as of now your only defensive force is your blob fleet, which is also your offensive fleet." - wastedswan
4. A losing fleet loses hard, and is quickly wiped out, this makes smaller fleets suicide because they die so quickly with no chance of reinforcement. Admirals apparently never fight delaying actions in Stellaris. (Related to #1)
5. You can't outrun the enemy except with superior technology. Every fleet has the same strategic movement capability and thus the same capability to respond to threats. This is related to #1. Again, there's no squadrons of fast torpedo corvettes raiding the lumbering enemy battleship blob with bombing runs. (if there was, defence stations/forts/platforms might be actually useful.)
6. Smaller fleets are currently too risky. See #1, #4 and #5, for reasons why smaller fleets are discouraged, and additionally #2, because there's no incentive.

These reasons are quite varied, and no single change can address all of them. Thus critiquing any suggestion because it will not solve doom-stacking completely is not a valid critique, it must be shown why it would only slightly change the problem, such as that of admiral fleet capacity caps turning the problem into everyone having 2 doomstacks instead of 1.


Summary of Suggested Solutions (and some Problems/Rebuttals)
These are in no particular order.

• Slower FTL
  • This doesn't change much, and could make colonisation and exploration slower for no reason.
  • This change could scale with ship size, corvettes (And civilian ships) being the fastest, while the increasing sizes of other ships = progressively slower FTL, whether it be windup, cooldown, or transit time. This partially addresses #4
• Admirals as a size limit for fleets
  • Not a solution because everyone just has their doomstack turned into 2, 3, or 4 mini doomstacks that behave exactly the same way. Even combined with other changes it would be those other changes having the impact, rather than this one.
• Rebuildable/Reinforcable Fortresses
  • Making defences less of a waste of minerals that can't survive encourages people to build them. A fortress that could actually be defended by a friendly fleet rushing to its aid allows smaller fleets to have a 'home turf advantage' from the fortress's firepower.
  • This could make defences more annoying
  • But defences are supposed to be inconvenient.
  • What if fortresses could be captured?
• Directly increase fortress HP/Damage/Power
  • This doesn't solve doomstacks itself because the increase in power means that fleets want to concentrate more firepower in order to beat the strong forts, but combined with other factors it could have a place.
• Faster retreat times
  • Nobody really wants this, but it's been suggested. Faster retreat times are extremely frustrating and turn warfare into a game of "chase down the enemy fleet" or "run from the enemy doomstack" as soon as one side starts to lose the first battle.
• Flanking Bonuses.
  • As far as I can see, the general response to this is that it is a post-hoc mechanic that has more elegant solutions.
• Planets as high value targets
  • This seems to be universally accepted as a good idea.
  • There's many ways to do this;
    • Long term happiness debuffs for any planet that's invaded, or bombarded.
    • The ability to destroy buildings with invasion and/or bombardment. Planetary combat has to happen somewhere, why doesn't a mine get wrecked or a farm shelled to bits?
    • The ability to capture and, destroy, steal, or render-inaccessible portions of the enemy's stored resources upon capturing a planet. BURN THE HOUSES, SALT THE EARTH!
    • You know you want to have an epic back-and-forth war over a couple of vital farm/mineral/energy planets.
• Supply limits/chains. This could really be done well or awfully.
  • Done well, supply chain/supply limits discourages sending a doomstack around for every single task, and makes sending a fleet deep into enemy territory a costly endeavour.
  • Done poorly this just creates another variation on the doomstack theme that will be immediately min/maxed out again.
• Diminishing firepower returns for large vs small fleets.
  • This can be called combat width, coordination penalty, or whatever. Basically it means that larger fleets will still defeat, but not immediately 'delete' smaller fleets. They will kill them more slowly, up to a point (unless the smaller fleet is very significantly smaller in which case it'll still be deleted). This slows down battles a bit and makes splitting fleets up a less risky move. The slowing of battle also means that it's not a great idea to send your whole fleet to kill something a quarter of its size because it'll be tied up for too long in a battle that yes it will win, but it's just so much overkill.
• Hearts of Iron TFH style combat tactics.
  • Pretty sure someone suggested this, it seems like it might be good, it could help address issues #1 and #4. It could also make admirals more important. It's related to to "Diminishing firepower returns for large vs small fleets."

Summary End.
But it IS though, it's making defences actually able to be defended. Wouldn't it be great if those minefield stations actually existed for more than 1 day during a war? It makes them far less of a resource drain because yes they can be overrun, but it means that overrun isn't the same as totally annihilated.

I assume you've forgotten where I stated earlier that no one single change will fix doomstacks, we need many changes. This is one of them. Incentives are another. I've said this already. Additionally, as I said when I first suggested this, there is a cap, a single corvette will still be immediately deleted. Nor does it make larger fleets weaker. It slows down a defeat, meaning that reinforcement can actually happen. This removes some of the risk of a smaller fleet if it can be reinforced in dire situations, which is a nessecary thing to do. At the moment smaller fleets are too risky.


Yeah it does, as I said before. Partially because most people posting haven't read the thread, and also because every suggestion is met with "This doesn't fix doomstacks!" But like I said, no single change will, multiple changes are required. Carrot and stick if you will.



Exactly, which is why I suggested the efficiency limitation, as a solution to issue #1.


Exactly.

First, a fine summary, very well done.

To answer the two points you addressed at me, a mechanic that makes much more powerful fleets less effective at killing a smaller fleet does not make a lot of sense from a logical point of view. There is simply no justification for it. But there is for a variation of it. They could have a slightly higher movement speed, so they could outrun a massive fleet, and/or shorter emergency FTL cooldown. This would increase survivability of smaller fleets facing a doomstack without putting arbitrary restrictions on larger fleets. And that's what bothers me most about combat width or any kind of mechanic geared in that direction, it's an arbitrary penalty to larger fleets that doesn't make any sense. They will defeat the smaller fleet anyway so it makes more sense to help the small fleet avoid the engagement, than to help it fight a bit longer.

The thing about the proposal for stations to go into a defensive state, is that it causes a lot of logical issues and contributes little to nothing to the game. Sure the stations would live a little bit longer, but the aura they project has little effect if there attacking fleet isn't fighting and there is no defending fleet around. The mines are an exception, but they won't do much. What if instead of making defenses indestructible, you increase their range to cover the entire system. That makes a well defended system painful to take regardless of how big your fleet is. Especially if large fleets move more slowly, they will spend more time moving through the system than fighting the defenses, and constantly getting attacked by the station.

Edit:
It also means that a fleet will be engaged the moment it enters the system and wouldn't be able to disengage until all defenses in a system are cleared except for emergency FTL. This would make FTL snares superfluous, since you have to deal with the defenses anyway or retreat. It would also make defending systems easier, and they would present an actual obstacle, mostly because it costs a lot of time allowing reinforcements to arrive. Time is one of the crucial factors in the game, so everything that delays your fleet gives your opponent more time to react to you.

 

[Foefaller]

First, a fine summary, very well done.

To answer the two points you addressed at me, a mechanic that makes much more powerful fleets less effective at killing a smaller fleet does not make a lot of sense from a logical point of view. There is simply no justification for it. But there is for a variation of it. They could have a slightly higher movement speed, so they could outrun a massive fleet, and/or shorter emergency FTL cooldown. This would increase survivability of smaller fleets facing a doomstack without putting arbitrary restrictions on larger fleets. And that's what bothers me most about combat width or any kind of mechanic geared in that direction, it's an arbitrary penalty to larger fleets that doesn't make any sense. They will defeat the smaller fleet anyway so it makes more sense to help the small fleet avoid the engagement, than to help it fight a bit longer.

The thing about the proposal for stations to go into a defensive state, is that it causes a lot of logical issues and contributes little to nothing to the game. Sure the stations would live a little bit longer, but the aura they project has little effect if there attacking fleet isn't fighting and there is no defending fleet around. The mines are an exception, but they won't do much. What if instead of making defenses indestructible, you increase their range to cover the entire system. That makes a well defended system painful to take regardless of how big your fleet is. Especially if large fleets move more slowly, they will spend more time moving through the system than fighting the defenses, and constantly getting attacked by the station.

Edit:
It also means that a fleet will be engaged the moment it enters the system and wouldn't be able to disengage until all defenses in a system are cleared except for emergency FTL. This would make FTL snares superfluous, since you have to deal with the defenses anyway or retreat. It would also make defending systems easier, and they would present an actual obstacle, mostly because it costs a lot of time allowing reinforcements to arrive. Time is one of the crucial factors in the game, so everything that delays your fleet gives your opponent more time to react to you.

It makes a lot of sense, because it's a real problem when it comes to large-scale engagements in the real world; before you can bring your entire overwhelming force to bear on a smaller opponent, you first have to get everyone into a position where they *can* fire while keeping friendly fire to a minimum and doing the best to stay out of each other's way, which history has shown can be a massive tactical and logistical nightmare, even if you discount the Thermopylaes of the world where the smaller force picked a location were that was effectively impossible. At the very least, you could and a hard cap to the number of ships that can target a single ship, one that increases as the battle goes on to signify other ships getting into a position where they can fire freely.

As for defenses, I've held the opinion for a while that they should be like walls; at their best when someone mans them. If you make it so they can delay a massive fleet for a significant amount of time on their own without having to do anything to support them, you run the very real risk of making doomstacking even *worse* than it is now. That means their focus "should" be about supporting the flleet that's there, not annoying them with system-wide engagment range. And it probably means that HoI3 TFH-type strategies, including one for smaller fleets were they size up the defensive stations guarding a system and go "F this, We're heading for the next one."

 

[Adamsrealm]

Another thng that may alleviate doomstacks or allow them to be, would be restricting weapons tech to a specific line, for example missles can only research missle based tech, energy can only research energy based, and the same for kinetic.

There would be some grey areas that crosses over, for example strike craft and neutron torpedos, but it would allow each set to be balanced against one another.

To augment this, I propose time base restrictions on what techs can be researched, to stop some parties running off ahead and then later decimating the galaxy with stupidly superior tech, this could also allow crisis to be more easily balanced due to tech time restrictions potentially serving as triggers or conditions that must be met before they can be triggered.

Additionally, restricting weapon tech lines would allow for more weapon variation without sacrificing overall balance seeing as they can't be used by all parties.

(As for utilities, such as point defence, I'd like to see three variations of them, one energy, one kinetic, one missile, each with thier own strengths and drawbacks.

One more thing I think needs changing (or undoing, in a mannor of speaking) is the hard fleet caps being set at 9999, as well as being over ship cap, i propose harsher penalties for being overcap when not at war (much harsher) and that pops contribute to ship cap based on their happiness and their planets unrest, with certain pop debuffs completely preventing them from adding to fleet cap, and slaves contributing only a small amount, this would prevent conquering empires from snowballing due to happiness problems within their empire and would balance slaver recourse outputs.

 

[Legendsmith]

<everything concerning stations>

I'm looking for ways for defences to be more cost effective, because they need to be. In HOI and EU, fortresses aren't destroyed, they're captured.This provides a risk-reward system. Tougher to attack but if you do win? You've now got those fortifications. Not so currently in Stellaris, fortresses are one offs that annoy an enemy fleet a little bit. System wide auras though... I'm now inspired. I think the concept below achieves what the 'reinforced mode' was trying to do but in a far more elegant way.

System Wide Auras
What I'm getting at is making stations more cost effective. I'm open to any method that achieves this. Large fleets moving more slowly in addition to system wide coverage could be a good idea. However, do we need to avoid the "fortification means stacking every aura in a system"? That's easy.
Under this system, auras change to system wide, every single aura is system wide. Multiple stations contribute to each Aura (with outposts, stations, and fortresses contributing consecutive amounts). The more stations with that aura, the more effective it is, up to a certain cap. However, every Aura shares the same cap. So no system can have 100% of every Aura. It can have either 100% of one, or a fractional amount of others.
Here's a mockup I did of what this may look like. This is a fully reinforced system (as it all adds up to 100%). The percentage numbers are how strong that effect is in the system, while the numbers on the icons is how many defensive structures there are with that aura type. The "+" next to the mine's 30% means that there are redundant stations so killing 1 mine station might not make it drop immediately, and killing stations of other types means that the mine percentage may actually increase proportionally due to some aura room freeing up.

So what do the percentage numbers mean? Well that's the level of the effect. Currently subspace snares give a 400% increase to jump charge time, so at 40% of 400, they will suffer a 160% increase. That seems good! Also, with system wide auras there's no need to have snares force fleets to appear atop them. Perhaps that could be an option, not sure.
I think that the maximum effectiveness level of an aura should be increased a bit, because 30% of the nanobot cloud's 5% regen isn't very much, so maybe the base number should be like 8% due to the now much larger investment required to reach that level, same with the subspace snare.
The reason for this logic is that no single station can take a system's aura level to 100%. Say that Fortress Auras contribute 15% each, Stations 10% and Outposts 5%. Getting a system to 100% aura means that 20 outposts, 10 stations, or 6 fortresses need to be constructed in order to achieve that level. That's a serious investment, but then again, the result is a serious effect that is not instantly deleted, instead it is whittled down, and that takes time, and that's the goal. The cap of 100% that is split proportionally means that there's an absolute cap for how effective Auras can be so defences can still only be so strong, while still creating interesting mechanics. I think the spacing requirement between stations can also be decreased a bit now with this mechanic too.

...Maybe I should have made a new thread for that. I hope the devs are looking at this one still.

It makes a lot of sense, because it's a real problem when it comes to large-scale engagements in the real world; before you can bring your entire overwhelming force to bear on a smaller opponent, you first have to get everyone into a position where they *can* fire while keeping friendly fire to a minimum and doing the best to stay out of each other's way, which history has shown can be a massive tactical and logistical nightmare, even if you discount the Thermopylaes of the world where the smaller force picked a location were that was effectively impossible. At the very least, you could and a hard cap to the number of ships that can target a single ship, one that increases as the battle goes on to signify other ships getting into a position where they can fire freely.

Yeah, this is exactly what I mean. Thanks.

As for defenses, I've held the opinion for a while that they should be like walls; at their best when someone mans them. If you make it so they can delay a massive fleet for a significant amount of time on their own without having to do anything to support them, you run the very real risk of making doomstacking even *worse* than it is now. That means their focus "should" be about supporting the flleet that's there, not annoying them with system-wide engagment range. And it probably means that HoI3 TFH-type strategies, including one for smaller fleets were they size up the defensive stations guarding a system and go "F this, We're heading for the next one."

Yes, this is what I want to achieve too.

Another thng that may alleviate doomstacks or allow them to be, would be restricting weapons tech to a specific line, for example missles can only research missle based tech, energy can only research energy based, and the same for kinetic. ... Additionally, restricting weapon tech lines would allow for more weapon variation without sacrificing overall balance seeing as they can't be used by all parties.

I'm strongly against this. It's more to balance, and it could drastically decrease variety. I think it adds needless complexity and makes developing harder because now new weapons need to be developed for every role. Plus thematically, why wouldn't we be able to research such a variety? Additionally it also breaks one of the primary tech catch up mechanics in the game, that of researching enemy ship debris.

that pops contribute to ship cap based on their happiness and their planets unrest, with certain pop debuffs completely preventing them from adding to fleet cap, and slaves contributing only a small amount, this would prevent conquering empires from snowballing due to happiness problems within their empire and would balance slaver recourse outputs.

I think this idea has real merit and is worth delving into.
I've suggested happiness debuffs for planets that are bombarded and/or invaded. If this suggestion is implemented in addition to mine then it could provide a great incentive to protect worlds, if your fleet cap drops drastically due to losing a planet then suddenly you'll be paying a lot more in maintinence. Still, it's not enough on it's own (nothing is) but I think it could play a significant part.

First, a fine summary, very well done.

Thanks.

To answer the two points you addressed at me, a mechanic that makes much more powerful fleets less effective at killing a smaller fleet does not make a lot of sense from a logical point of view.

See foefaller's post for what I'm getting at.

 

[Drowe]

It makes a lot of sense, because it's a real problem when it comes to large-scale engagements in the real world; before you can bring your entire overwhelming force to bear on a smaller opponent, you first have to get everyone into a position where they *can* fire while keeping friendly fire to a minimum and doing the best to stay out of each other's way, which history has shown can be a massive tactical and logistical nightmare, even if you discount the Thermopylaes of the world where the smaller force picked a location were that was effectively impossible. At the very least, you could and a hard cap to the number of ships that can target a single ship, one that increases as the battle goes on to signify other ships getting into a position where they can fire freely.

You don't take into account how big space is, and how far apart the effective engagement range is. Real world battles are simply not comparable to space battles. You can easily position your ships many kilometers apart and still be considered in a formation, you are also not limited to the two dimensions we tend to think in when it comes to naval battles. Then there is the enormous distance two fleets can shoot and hit each other at. Depending on how maneuverable ships are, this could be in the millions of kilometers for battleships that are a slow as bricks to a few thousand kilometers for agile corvettes and a few hundred kilometers for fighters and bombers. That is still not a distance at which you need to worry about getting in each other's line of fire, since your ships will be spaced out over an area of hundreds if not thousands of kilometers like a wall of ships with very big holes in it, ideally coordinated by a Fleet-AI to make sure every ship is where it's supposed to be. The chance for any ship not being able to target any other ship, without risking friendly fire, for more than a second is so low it can be ignored for all intents and purposes.

As for defenses, I've held the opinion for a while that they should be like walls; at their best when someone mans them. If you make it so they can delay a massive fleet for a significant amount of time on their own without having to do anything to support them, you run the very real risk of making doomstacking even *worse* than it is now. That means their focus "should" be about supporting the flleet that's there, not annoying them with system-wide engagment range. And it probably means that HoI3 TFH-type strategies, including one for smaller fleets were they size up the defensive stations guarding a system and go "F this, We're heading for the next one."

But that is already the case, if you have a fleet as well as defenses, then they do make a huge difference with their auras, the problem is that they die too quickly if they are on their own without making a dent in the enemy's fleet. They can't cover each other very well, so you can pick them off one by one, without many losses. This would change if all defensive structures could shoot at you from anywhere in the system, taking them out with one big fleet will result in much higher losses than splitting up your fleet and attacking from multiple directions at once, which in turn makes you vulnerable if the defender can add his own ships to the mix, they wouldn't have to fight the whole fleet at the same time, having the option of taking on one fleet first, then the other, which gives them a fighting chance. If on the other hand the attacker doesn't split his fleet, then the stations can fire at him for longer than they would otherwise be able to, giving the defender more time to bring in his own fleet or launch a counter attack while his attacker's fleets are tied up fighting defenses. It would be essentially hav the same effect as the flower of death (one fortress with a snare near the star, surrounded by as many fortresses as you can place, the overlapping auras look like a flower), except that you may not need to kill them all to move on, and at best three fortresses can shoot at you simultaneously. If they have more range, then attacking such a system is costly and time consuming, and can go terribly wrong if a defending fleet comes in. Although if that were implemented, cost and build time would need to go up significantly. It has some logical issues too, since hitting something across a solar system would be very unlikely, but the Dimensional Horror has an incredible range too, so maybe it could be hand waved.

I think this idea has real merit and is worth delving into.
I've suggested happiness debuffs for planets that are bombarded and/or invaded. If this suggestion is implemented in addition to mine then it could provide a great incentive to protect worlds, if your fleet cap drops drastically due to losing a planet then suddenly you'll be paying a lot more in maintinence. Still, it's not enough on it's own (nothing is) but I think it could play a significant part.

I'm not sure, that seems kind of absurd to me, how would it be justified? I think a better approach would be for having a planet bombarded or invaded to have long lasting consequences, that will weaken you long after the war is over and during the war too. An empire wide happiness penalty, that ticks up during bombardment and occupation and additionally a planet modifier that reduces overall production for that planet that also ticks up during bombardment and occupation and only starts ticking back down once the planet is liberated or no longer bombarded. Maybe in a way that it takes up to 10 years until the planet is back to 100% efficiency. If it only recover slowly in the beginning, say for example going from 10% to 20% efficiency takes 5 years, going from 20% to 30% 2.5 years from 30% to 40% in 1 year and after that 10% per month. Not sure about that either though, there are probably better solutions.

I think doomstacks can't be solved with different combat mechanics, they just alter the balance so the optimal strategy changes a bit, mostly by requiring micromanagement to optimize. What would have the biggest impact is, if not protecting your territory has long term consequences for your economy and conquering planets would also provide you with benefits beyond warscore.