Doomstacked Doomstack Doom-Thread: ReDoox

[HAL.9000.1]

Except that in those battles entire fleets weren't sunk leaving nations defenseless. Damage is too high overall and there's no concept of morale -- which is absurd. Capital ships and their crews face inevitable death as they keep going until they blow up into space dust.

There are no critical hits, disabled systems, etc. Nothing in the game works like real naval warfare in the slightest.

Well in many of them, entire fleets were sunk, or at least what was left was no more than the remnants that sometimes manage to panic jump out of a lost doomstack battle. At Lepanto, for example, only about 60 ships out of the Turks original 250 got away. And in a lot of them (Navarino, the Nile, Copenhagen) the entire defending fleet was in fact annihilated. To that let's add Tsushima, which wasn't even on my original doomstack list. The only exceptions to that which I can think of, in fact, are The Saintes and Jutland. Even at Midway, the Japanese lost 100% of their carriers, which was pretty much it for the effectiveness of their fleet. The US just sailed from planet to planet, err, island to island, mopping up after that. Leyte Gulf was probably just the Japanese trying to find an "honorable" way to stop paying maintenance on all those ships they couldn't use anymore.

As for morale, destroying a large enemy fleet does give you warscore (kind of equivalent to morale, in that with enough hits to it the enemy eventually surrenders), although perhaps not as much as it might. Wiping out a large enemy fleet currently only gives you about the same amount of warscore as occupying an enemy planet; maybe it should be more than that.

Regarding critical hits, disabled systems, etc., that level of detail is represented by the percentage reduction in battle effectiveness that comes from accumulated damage. I shudder at the thought of the amount of programming that would be required, or the player management, to cope with that level of detail. If you want something similar to that, I recommend The Saganami Island Tactical Simulator, or as I like to call it, "space-gaming for Rain Man". But I don't really think you do. Anyway, I think that your statement that "Nothing in the game works like read naval warfare in the slightest" is incorrect, or at least exaggerated for dramatic effect. The fact is that there are many similarities, but (thank goodness) not nearly the level of detail that real life throws at us every day.

 

[durbal]

Well in many of them, entire fleets were sunk, or at least what was left was no more than the remnants that sometimes manage to panic jump out of a lost doomstack battle. At Lepanto, for example, only about 60 ships out of the Turks original 250 got away. And in a lot of them (Navarino, the Nile, Copenhagen) the entire defending fleet was in fact annihilated. To that let's add Tsushima, which wasn't even on my original doomstack list. The only exceptions to that which I can think of, in fact, are The Saintes and Jutland. Even at Midway, the Japanese lost 100% of their carriers, which was pretty much it for the effectiveness of their fleet. The US just sailed from planet to planet, err, island to island, mopping up after that. Leyte Gulf was probably just the Japanese trying to find an "honorable" way to stop paying maintenance on all those ships they couldn't use anymore.

As for morale, destroying a large enemy fleet does give you warscore (kind of equivalent to morale, in that with enough hits to it the enemy eventually surrenders), although perhaps not as much as it might. Wiping out a large enemy fleet currently only gives you about the same amount of warscore as occupying an enemy planet; maybe it should be more than that.

Regarding critical hits, disabled systems, etc., that level of detail is represented by the percentage reduction in battle effectiveness that comes from accumulated damage. I shudder at the thought of the amount of programming that would be required, or the player management, to cope with that level of detail. If you want something similar to that, I recommend The Saganami Island Tactical Simulator, or as I like to call it, "space-gaming for Rain Man". But I don't really think you do. Anyway, I think that your statement that "Nothing in the game works like read naval warfare in the slightest" is incorrect, or at least exaggerated for dramatic effect. The fact is that there are many similarities, but (thank goodness) not nearly the level of detail that real life throws at us every day.

C'mon, you're cherry-picking massively decisive battles here. Every battle in Stellaris is Midway, only more decisive and with more damage. Every battle is like Midway with US carriers parked in Japanese ports a week later.

 

[HAL.9000.1]

C'mon, you're cherry-picking here.

Well, not intentionally. It is actually much easier for me to think of battles were the opposing fleet was destroyed or so shaken that they slunk away, never to sail again, than it is to think of examples like WWI, where the crafty Churmans lived, and could have come out again, but chose to hide behind an island (Heligoland, I mean) and mine barrage for the rest of the war. They even came up with a plan for a last, glorious sortie, but when the personnel heard it referred to as a "Death Ride" that kind of ended any enthusiasm for the project. (Note: I'm kidding here; the term "Death Ride" was coined for the final action of the German battlecruisers at Jutland, which they, ironically, almost all survived).

 

[Drowe]

C'mon, you're cherry-picking massively decisive battles here. Every battle in Stellaris is Midway, only more decisive and with more damage. Every battle is like Midway with US carriers parked in Japanese ports a week later.

Actually no, cherry picking would be if he claimed all naval battles were decisive battles and cited those examples as his proof. Using counter examples to debunk your argument that those battles didn't end with entire fleets sunk, is not cherry picking.

In any case, I don't think anyone on this thread wants all battles to be that kind of battle. But it should be possible to have such battles. That's one of the reasons why weakening doomstacks is not the way to go. Instead provide incentives to spread a large portion of your fleet out in order to protect your economy and attack your enemy's economy.

 

[Legendsmith]

Summary of Reasons the Doom-Stack is King™
Page 33 Edition
"Every battle in Stellaris is Midway, only more decisive and with more damage. Every battle is like Midway with US carriers parked in Japanese ports a week later" - @durbal

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.
7. Rebuilding Speed Once a fleet is destroyed it cannot be rebuilt in any kind of timeframe relevant to the war. (Suggested by @Summin Cool )

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.
    • A lingering Empire Wide happiness penalty when planets are bombarded.
• 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 (Slow down the rate of death for losing 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.
  • Rebuttals: Doesn't make sense, everyone's easy to hit in space.
• 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."
• System Wide Auras for Stations.
  • Suggested by @Drowe and expanded here by Legendsmith. This concept allows stations to be a meaningful kind of defence without encouraging doomstacks. Defence auras affect whole systems, and yet do not require a doomstack to kill, thus achieving the goal of delaying the enemy.
• Auto-Retreat/Morale mechanics Fleets currently fight to the death every single time unless the player hits emergency FTL. Is every captain and crew a fanatic? Apparently so. There's no way to defeat an enemy without just crushing them physically, which means there truly is no recovery for the losing side. This is related to Issues #1 and #4 .
• Faster Ship building Suggested by @Summin Cool, this change would make ship building faster and allow a loser to recover faster. (Details are apparently to come.)

New things from last summary: Lingering empire wide happiness penalty, auto retreat/morale mechanics, faster ship building, system wide auras, rebuilding.
Summary End. Did I miss anything?

In any case, I don't think anyone on this thread wants all battles to be that kind of battle. But it should be possible to have such battles. That's one of the reasons why weakening doomstacks is not the way to go. Instead provide incentives to spread a large portion of your fleet out in order to protect your economy and attack your enemy's economy.

I disagree, but only partially. The mechanics that make doomstacks the best DO need to be changed. (Such as issue #1 in my summary). This weakens doomstacks, is it then something that we should avoid? I think we should overall not just straight nerf large fleets with hard caps on size with admirals or whatever, because that doesn't really solve the problem, but then saying "We just shouldn't consider anything that makes large fleets less efficient" is limiting our options far too much.
You're focusing on addressing Issue #2, which is a major part of the problem (hence why i made it issue #2), but it's not the entire problem. Don't discount things that address the other issues because the problem with doomstacks is more than #1 and #2. Making them less efficient doesn't make them non-viable, it just means there'll be less situations where they are needed/required/optimal, which is what we want.

 

[GuildenSpur]

I've done a suggestion a few pages back that I don't see in your summary.
It involves combat as done in Ageod games. After a big engagement, you troops suffer from cohesion loss resulting in diminished combat stats.
Troops regain cohesion, and when they do it at a spaceport, the cohesion gains are a lot faster.
Also, big fleets shouldn't be able to travel the whole galaxy without suffering from cohesion loss and should stay within the range of a supply station (spaceport)
If they don't, the cohesion loss rises and when continuing to do so, will result in losing ships.

Another thing I would like is for damaged ships not being fully effective. Now they keep on shooting at full strength until they are destroyed.

 

[Drowe]

I don't think a mechanic that enables smaller fleets to fight a losing battle longer would help at all to solve the doomstack issue. I assume you proposed it with the intention of having them live long enough to use emergency FTL or get reinforced, but I don't think that is a good solution.

The reason why smaller fleets aren't really viable is that a battle has only two possible outcomes, either complete destruction of one fleet or a scattered retreat to the nearest friendly spaceport. But what's missing is the controlled retreat, either within a system or to a specific system, both should be possible.

If a controlled retreat, like in EU4 was possible, you could actually use tactics like hit and run to weaken a doomstack. You could spread out your fleet and not worry about them getting taken out one by one with a doomstack. The emergency FTL should still be an option as a way to retreat safely, but retreating to the next system over or one within your range anyway can often be more desirable, even if the enemy can immediately pursue you.

 

[Hammer54]

Doomstacks

I want to start by thanking for a great summary by Legendsmith. I would also like to say that i like the current state of the game, although its not perfect . Some of this is already in summary, but with an angle.

If i remember correctly, fleet battles are supposed to be simplified in Stellaris (Not HOI in space). It isnt meant to be a tactical space combat game. That means that solutions that devolves the game into a RTS game arent viable or wanted. As it is the game gives players and AI strong incenives to gather opp fleetpower in one big fleet, and it follows that wars are decided by decisive battles, or whom has the bigger blob (few dispute this).

There are many views on what space combat should be like. That said, its probably less like Dominion wars in Star trek, and more like tactical combat i Homeworld (game). This means that there are many arguments for giving doomstacks (or blobs) penalties. Both on logistics, attrition and blue on blue fire. There are also simple limits to how much of a big blob that can engange a small blob, assuming that the small blob does not want to suicide (also think EVE combat, hard for commander and hard for pilots). (Maybe there should be some switch on fleets to give it a state, or an event when two significant fleets meet up, what are Your goals for this action? Is it to survive and keep the other fleet busy, escape, or is it to search and destroy? That should have significant impact on how the fleet engages)

Do we need a solution to stacks? Yes, I think the game would be more fun with less decisive battles (both for winners and loosers). One solution is to give penalties to large stacks, as number of ships that can engage at a time to increase survivability of smaller fleets. Make larger stacks slower to move, slower to turn, and slower to enter FTL. Also, conqering planets could be made to give incentives for smaller fleets. Make sieges longer, and give the attacker some form of attrition (for example from planetary weapons). This way, if you want to win a war in a reasonable amount of time, you want to siege several planets, and by that divide your fleet.

There is one thing missing from the game that could limit stacks. There is no supply, so no need to control space. There are no supply transports to raid and strand a big fleet (or make it less effective, think battlestar galactica and attrition). One possibility is to introduce a strategic "box" for each system, where you can leave raiders in enemy systems and gurilla warfare ships/escorts in your own. This could force the larger empire to disperse fleet power in more systems, and gives the weaker party something to do when they cant engage the blob. The point with a strategic "box" is that you dont have to micro it, you can just leave the corvets there. They'll do damage over time, and wont be killed off instantly.

These suggestions could give the weaker player ways to recover from a loss in a decisive battle, and could make wars more interessting for both parties. So Back to Legendsmiths summary, im in the Diminishing firepower returns school, slower fleets school, supply chains school, and some more.

 

[Herbert West]

Doomstack exmples from real life

All fair and good, but there are several key differences between those, and Stellaris doomstacks:

• Real life doomstacks were temporary arrangements for a single battle/campaign due to logistics. There is not a single reason not have your doomstack always as a doomstack in Stellaris
• Real life doomstacks werent the whole fleet of their respective powers. You still needed patrols, commerce raiders, reserves (!!!!), etc. Not so in Stellaris. A ship is either in your all-or-nothing single-fleet doomstack, or useless.
• In all your examples, there were severe logistical issues with the doomstack, and I suspect, real diminishing returns (the famous incidents in the later stages of the pacific campaign where ships could not fire their guns for lack of targets in a bombardement springs to mind). Stellaris has NO diminishing returns. Nada. Zilch. Echoing the comment above (@Hammer54 ), this makes very little sense even as an abstraction, and also directly contributes to doomstacks being the one way to play.

Imagine, for a moment, if during the Pacific Theathre, all, and literally, all of the ships of the USN were in one fleet, under one command, with one logistical tail, and what an utter mess that would have been, and how that would have ceded initiative to the japanese. Yet, in Stellaris, that is exactly what you have.

What I'd like to see is the possibility of doomstacks if you cant overcome a fortified position/need local superiority against an overall superior opponent, but at a significant expense. Adding a trade/piracy system, and having piracy and corruption run rampant as your patrol fleets are drained dry to get the doomstack rolling would be a good balance. So you could doomstack for a short amount of time, but a prolonged doomstack style campaign would leave your home empire in total disarray.


Edit: With regards to diminishing returns, I mean them in a sort-of abstracted way. Let's say that after a certain fleet size (proportional to your fleet cap, but never more than 50-60%), no penality is applied. However, once you reach that limiting factor, each ship you add in only operates at a diminishing efficiency. The first extra BB only adds 90% of its combat power. The last extra BB, the one that makes all your ship in one doomstack, only adds a whopping 1%, with an exponential saturation function between the two.

 

[Drowe]

All fair and good, but there are several key differences between those, and Stellaris doomstacks:

• Real life doomstacks were temporary arrangements for a single battle/campaign due to logistics. There is not a single reason not have your doomstack always as a doomstack in Stellaris
• Real life doomstacks werent the whole fleet of their respective powers. You still needed patrols, commerce raiders, reserves (!!!!), etc. Not so in Stellaris. A ship is either in your all-or-nothing single-fleet doomstack, or useless.
• In all your examples, there were severe logistical issues with the doomstack, and I suspect, real diminishing returns (the famous incidents in the later stages of the pacific campaign where ships could not fire their guns for lack of targets in a bombardement springs to mind). Stellaris has NO diminishing returns. Nada. Zilch. Echoing the comment above (@Hammer54 ), this makes very little sense even as an abstraction, and also directly contributes to doomstacks being the one way to play.

Imagine, for a moment, if during the Pacific Theathre, all, and literally, all of the ships of the USN were in one fleet, under one command, with one logistical tail, and what an utter mess that would have been, and how that would have ceded initiative to the japanese. Yet, in Stellaris, that is exactly what you have.

If you take away supply lines and raidable commerce, that's exactly what you would get. The US would have one big fleet in the Atlantic and one big fleet in the Pacific if they could get away with it. But since there are trade routes to protect and other things to consider, it's not happening. Those factors that are keeping doomstack fleets from being the single best option, or even viable in the long term, are missing in Stellaris. Most of all an economy that needs protection, which would in my opinion automatically lead to more spread out fleets that only form up to fight a doomstack.

 

[Aswan]

Summary of Reasons the Doom-Stack is King™
Did I miss anything?

Yep, you again missed the suggestion of having a more RTS-Style control that allows for a more direct control and use of weapons (like a player aimed AoE weapon, or just flying away while the other fleet shoots at you).

 

[durbal]

If you take away supply lines and raidable commerce, that's exactly what you would get. The US would have one big fleet in the Atlantic and one big fleet in the Pacific if they could get away with it. But since there are trade routes to protect and other things to consider, it's not happening. Those factors that are keeping doomstack fleets from being the single best option, or even viable in the long term, are missing in Stellaris. Most of all an economy that needs protection, which would in my opinion automatically lead to more spread out fleets that only form up to fight a doomstack.

There's also the element of stationary defenses to consider -- without them, a smaller, faster fleet could simply seize whatever it wanted due to ports and such being defenseless. Currently, all 'ports' might as well be defenseless in Stellaris.

The idea that entire PLANETS have zero defenses against things like corvettes and cruisers (which would have next to no ability to damage surface defenses) is insane to me. As I said before, it'd be like a fleet of rowboats bombarding Gibraltar. Planets should innately have defenses and should have more buildable ones as well. The scale of planets (and space, really) is very off in Stellaris in general.

 

[Drowe]

There's also the element of stationary defenses to consider -- without them, a smaller, faster fleet could simply seize whatever it wanted due to ports and such being defenseless. Currently, all 'ports' might as well be defenseless in Stellaris.

The idea that entire PLANETS have zero defenses against things like corvettes and cruisers (which would have next to no ability to damage surface defenses) is insane to me. As I said before, it'd be like a fleet of rowboats bombarding Gibraltar. Planets should innately have defenses and should have more buildable ones as well. The scale of planets (and space, really) is very off in Stellaris in general.

At the level of technology you start at Stellaris, planet bound defenses are actually not a very good idea. Orbital defenses don't have to fight gravity and the atmosphere. It's possible, but not very practical. They would instantly be located and destroyed. It doesn't actually take a lot of effort use kinetic bombardment to take them out, it doesn't need all that big projectiles either.

Any civilization capable of interstellar travel could easily glass a planet, so it may just be common sense to place your defenses in orbit instead of on the ground, they can be much more numerous since you don't need to avoid placing them in populated areas and if they have some limited maneuverability, they could even have some ability to evade fire. Ground based ones can be more powerful, but they also need to be more powerful for the same effect. They also have a more limited field of fire, since the longer what ever they are shooting has to spend in the atmosphere, the less effective it's going to be, which means you need more of them. And the more you have the less are you able to spread them out and avoid populated areas. In interstellar warfare, building ground based anti ship weapons may be considered equivalent to using human shields.

 

[Undar]

Lots of pages in this thread so not sure whats already been said, I only read the most recent stuff.

A few of the suggested solutions on the list @Legendsmith posted is how the total war series solves the doomstack issue. Its not an entirely perfect system, but one that I think best suits the gameplay of stellaris.

• Admirals as a size limit for fleets
• Rebuildable/Reinforcable Fortresses
• Directly increase fortress HP/Damage/Power
• Planets as high value targets
• Auto-Retreat/Morale mechanics

Having sectors as high value targets means that the player will want to defend all his frontier boarders (In Total War, sacking a city earns the attacker quite a lot of money, damages all buildings and causes a huge amount of unrest).

Having a limit on the amount of admirals allows the player to easier manage his spread out military as well as have specific fleets for specific jobs. Such as smaller and cheaper defence focused fleets to defend at home and more expensive, fully kitted out ones for attack.

Better fortresses will allow smaller defending fleets to face much larger ones. They may still lose, but the time spent attacking the small fleet and its defences will give time for your larger ones to help out. Or it will cost the attacking fleet enough ships that they may return home to repair instead of taking on another system.

So with these combined, what tends to happen is in total war is

1. The weaker civ focuses on defending cities and giving no easy targets to the stronger army. If the stronger army does attack a city, even if he wins, his losses will be quite large and he will need to retreat to his borders to replenish. The weaker civ will hope the attacker over extends himself and look out for openings to send in a smaller force to sack/raze a city, doing massive damage to the economy and unrest
2. Equal civs fighting against each other is very costly and often not worth it unless their borders are undefended and you can do some significant damage in a short amount of time. Such as when someone else attacks them and they divert their armies, or they need to divert armies to quash a rebellion.
3. A stronger civ attacking a weaker one needs to keep a smaller defensive army or two behind his main force to reinforce any cities that are counter attacked where the main force cant get back in time. The attacker also needs to be careful of an ambush from either the special ambush stance armies have, or from a few of the defending armies blobbing them
4. A significantly weaker civ. They don't have many options, about all they can do is pull all their defending armies out and push into the enemies territory and hope to do enough damage that they pull their main attackers from your territory to kill you, or they accept a peace offer before you can do any more damage.

And with the retreat/morale system It means that a defeated attacking fleet can retreat home and become an efficient defensive force.

 

[Airowird]

Time to pitch in with my 2c...

A lot of the current proposals seem good at first, but (imho) only shift the issue:

1. Admiral/Fleet caps
A flat fleet cap is pointless, because 2 half-doomstacks flying together still have the same effect as a single one.
The same goes for admirals, it just makes late-game more annoying by 'forcing' you into any and all leader pool & level techs & traits. It provides no incentive to split fleets, only rules. Game Design 101: Any arbitrary rule to limit players only limits enjoyement of min-maxing, not the reason/source of the problem.

2. Fortress improvement
I admit, stationary defenses could use a bit more HP right now, but even then, as fleets keep getting bigger, they get outclassed yet again. There is reasoning in making them inactive at 1 HP and anyone can repair them to own them (and possibly gain tech) or some sort of tactical mechanic, but with all but hyperdrive FTLs being able to jump anywhere they wish, the chokepoint effect is severly lost, compared to the history-based Paradox games. #MapsMatter

3. High-value planets
While a lot of people have suggested to "make them more valuable," very little actual ideas have come forward. Warscore increase would just make wars shorter (or doomstack fights a 0-effect part of war, but still decide the victor) but don't actually solve the doomstack issue by themselves, because they punish all combat, not just doomstacks.

4. Combat complication
To me, this includes any fleet power reduction, supply line or other pure combat/economy mechanic added to counter doomstacks. Any such mechanic will simply be the "anti-stack, anti-fun" mechanic. Most of these suggestions only focus on the effect on doomstacks but ignore any additional effects as well. For example, the supply chain will incentivise strictly circular expansion, to reduce the amount of border the enemy can cross and raid your supplies. As stellaris lacks geography, this means circle empire = best empire. (Relative) Fleet power reduction does nothing outside of making fights lasts longer, as you still want to build up a doomstack as much as possible just in case the other guy brought more friends than expected.


My actual 3* cents:
(*) That inflation!

1. Defensive measures
If anything, a smaller radius on stationary defenses (e.g. the range space stations have when building defensive structures) would allow you to scale up defensive power per system as the game progress, almost as if having a non-FTL battleship fleet hanging around ... with auras. Having the option to move stations (e.g. 3 month windup+cooldown for FTL, but can't fire weapons while doing so, and/or arrive at low HP) could also help in making them feel more engaging and important. More so if you would add the immortal/capturable effect on them.

Alternative: Defensive fleets with greatly (factor 2?) increased FTL speed & reduced upkeep, but can't go out of your own borders. Toggling defense on/off has a cooldown, similar to policies etc. Should allow non-expansionists to max out their fleet caps very easily, without limiting their economy (and thus, scientific progress) which would thus force the aggressor to shorten the war (by splitting a fleet into planet assault squads) in order to survive economically, as they are effectively paying double for the same fleet power.

PS: Why are shields on space/research/mining stations still not a thing? Especially with extra shield regen! This would greatly improve them vs smaller raiding fleets (a couple of Corvettes can take out any station at end-game right now) while having little extra longevity against actual fleets. I know it's counter to what I said as

2. Evasive maneuvers
The option to set a fleet to Evasive during combat. Evasive fleets have 30% more Evasion, but 30% less Accuracy and Damage, and will try to move out of the gravity well to jump back to the last 'safe' system. (or towards the nearest safe system you own) Evasive maneuvers can only be stopped by jumping into a safe system.
To differentiate: Emergency FTL will now jump (with movement speed, but no range limiter) each ship to a random system you own, rather than have a mystery timer. Damage/Losses remains as is. Once jumped, each ship will try to gather the fleet again, moving towards the largest, oldest ship (e.g. oldest Battleship, or Cruiser if no BB alive and so on)
This pushes Evasive Maneuvers forward as a 'controlled escape', while still allowing you to skedaddle out of traps, albeit with a disorganised fleet. EM would be auto-engaded for Evasive-stance fleets, so science ships would be relatively safe unless truly ambushed.

3. Planet value
It might not be as much of an aid right now, but what if occupying a planet turned the current pops into your slaves for you? It would mean you can 'loot' enemy planets for resources while still needing debris for research, while ending a war with occupied planets returning is a massive grievance for non-slaving empires.


Hope I contributed something useful here

 

[Legendsmith]

Summary of Reasons the Doom-Stack is King™
Page 34 Edition
"Every battle in Stellaris is Midway, only more decisive and with more damage. Every battle is like Midway with US carriers parked in Japanese ports a week later" - @durbal

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. Also related to Issue #4 as every battle ends with total, or near total annihilation of the loser.
2. There is only one high value/meaningful 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. Nothing has an meaningful impact on your current war situation except losing your fleet. Nothing impacts your post-war status except a loss or win. Pyrrhic victories are virtually impossible.
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) The speed at which a doom stack can mop up smaller fleets contributes to its superiority.
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.
7. Rebuilding Speed Once a fleet is destroyed it cannot be rebuilt in any kind of timeframe relevant to the war. (Suggested by @Summin Cool )

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. Not all of these are necessarily good, but must be included in the summary so they're not re-suggested for the Nth time.

• 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.
  • @Airowird's way of putting it: A flat fleet cap is pointless, because 2 half-doomstacks flying together still have the same effect as a single one...It provides no incentive to split fleets, only rules. Game Design 101: Any arbitrary rule to limit players only limits enjoyement of min-maxing, not the reason/source of the problem.
    
• 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
  • They'll still get outclassed if this is all.
• 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. It's also very situational.
• Planets as high value targets aka Consequences of invasion & bombardment
  • This seems to be universally accepted as a good idea.
  • THIS DOES NOT MEAN MAKING PLANETS WORTH MORE WARSCORE
  • Suggestions that fall under 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.
    • Auto-enslavement of occupied populations.
    • Diversion of produced resources to occupier's empire.
• 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 (Slow down the rate of death for losing 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.
  • Rebuttals: Doesn't make sense, everyone's easy to hit in space.
  • @Airowird's rebuttal: "(Relative) Fleet power reduction does nothing outside of making fights lasts longer, as you still want to build up a doomstack as much as possible just in case the other guy brought more friends than expected." (But making fights last longer still helps mitigate doomstacks)
• 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.", as the different tactics that the combat AI uses could slow down the combat with 'fleet manouvers' that provide -#% damage to enemy, and similar things.
• System Wide Auras for Stations.
  • Suggested by @Drowe and expanded here by Legendsmith. This concept allows stations to be a meaningful kind of defence without encouraging doomstacks. Defence auras affect whole systems, and yet do not require a doomstack to kill, thus achieving the goal of delaying the enemy. Every station contributes to an aura score for the system, which maxes out at 100%.
• Auto-Retreat/Morale mechanics Fleets currently fight to the death every single time unless the player hits emergency FTL. Is every captain and crew a fanatic? Apparently so. There's no way to defeat an enemy without just crushing them physically, which means there truly is no recovery for the losing side. This is related to Issues #1 and #4 .
• Faster Ship building Suggested by @Summin Cool, this change would make ship building faster and allow a loser to recover faster. (Details are apparently to come.)
• In-Combat Controls/RTS Controls. I'm putting these two things under one header because they are both a similar thing; the ability to affect fleet behaviour during combat (other than emergency FTL which just ends combat).
  • @Airowird 's post here has some suggestions. Summary: "The option to set a fleet to Evasive during combat. Evasive fleets have 30% more Evasion, but 30% less Accuracy and Damage, and will try to move out of the gravity well to jump back to the last 'safe' system."
  • This seems unlikely to happen as Stellaris is not an RTS and does not operate on an RTS scale, plus it would create a lot of micro if doomstacks weren't the go-to strategy, because there'd be more fleets to manually manage.
• Movable/Redeployable stations/Fortresses
  • Stations that can FTL but are rendered inoperable during and for a period afterwards
  • Alternately, allow construction ships to deconstruct and then reconstruct stations for an energy-credits cost.
• More cost-effective Defensive fleets that can't leave an Empire's borders.
  • Do we really need to make fortresses and defence stations even more irrelevant though?
• Organisation/Fleet Cohesion loss After a big engagement, your ships suffer from cohesion loss resulting in diminished combat stats. Troops regain cohesion, and when they do it at a spaceport, the cohesion gains are a lot faster.
• Moving under fire, aka "Not charging into battle just because you're in the enemy weapon range". This bsically remove Issue #1 altogether.
• Auto Raiding (Strategic Box): Suggested by Hammer54: One possibility is to introduce a strategic "box" for each system, where you can leave raiders in enemy systems and gurilla warfare ships/escorts in your own. This could force the larger empire to disperse fleet power in more systems, and gives the weaker party something to do when they cant engage the blob. The point with a strategic "box" is that you dont have to micro it, you can just leave the corvets there. They'll do damage over time, and wont be killed off instantly.

New things from last summary: Finally added RTS controls suggestions (Sorry @Aswan!), added movable/redeployable stations. Added some more detail to Why admirals as fleet cap is a bad idea.
Summary End. Did I miss anything?

@Airowird, that's a great post, but you seem to have missed some things.

2. Fortress improvement

I admit, stationary defenses could use a bit more HP right now, but even then, as fleets keep getting bigger, they get outclassed yet again. There is reasoning in making them inactive at 1 HP and anyone can repair them to own them (and possibly gain tech) or some sort of tactical mechanic, but with all but hyperdrive FTLs being able to jump anywhere they wish, the chokepoint effect is severly lost, compared to the history-based Paradox games. #MapsMatter

Agreed, but then, I basically stated as such in the summary. The jump-capable forts are interesting, but I'd rather see them 'redeployed', that is, torn down by a construction ship to be rebuilt somewhere else. (No mineral refund, but rather just reconstructed with a slight speed bonus). How about Drowe's system-wide Aura's idea?

3. High-value planets

While a lot of people have suggested to "make them more valuable," very little actual ideas have come forward. Warscore increase would just make wars shorter (or doomstack fights a 0-effect part of war, but still decide the victor) but don't actually solve the doomstack issue by themselves, because they punish all combat, not just doomstacks.
...
3. Planet value
It might not be as much of an aid right now, but what if occupying a planet turned the current pops into your slaves for you? It would mean you can 'loot' enemy planets for resources while still needing debris for research, while ending a war with occupied planets returning is a massive grievance for non-slaving empires.

It seems that you didn't actually read what high-value planets meant, because you've suggested something very similar. When I say "planets as high value targets," I'm not talking about warscore. There have been many ideas about how to make planets more valuable in a war. If attacking planets hits the enemy's economy, happiness, or whatever, then that means that smaller fleets have something to target that the enemy actually has to care about, unlike now. That has been suggested and discussed.

.The option to set a fleet to Evasive during combat. Evasive fleets have 30% more Evasion, but 30% less Accuracy and Damage
...
(Relative) Fleet power reduction does nothing outside of making fights lasts longer, as you still want to build up a doomstack as much as possible just in case the other guy brought more friends than expected.

Yes, it does nothing outside of making fights last longer, but that is all that suggestion is trying to achieve, because currently fights are too fast, and too deadly. That does need to change. Furthermore, your suggestion about 'evasion mode' is very similar, it'd make fights last longer, except the player would have to trigger it creating more micro, especially if there are more fleets to be concerned about.
That aside, making combat last longer WILL help in conjunction with other changes. If planets matter more then having your whole space-navy tied up in a long battle, even one you're winning, means that all your planets are undefended for that entire time. Currently the speed at which a doom stack can mop up smaller fleets contributes to its superiority.

Lots of pages in this thread so not sure whats already been said, I only read the most recent stuff.

That's why I post this summary every page.

 

[Summin Cool]

Actually the more I think about it the more the extended details become less about the issue in question beyond what's already discussed and more about wars in general. Sorry to disappoint but I'd rather post it as a suggestion rather than in this thread.

 

[Drowe]

Actually the more I think about it the more the extended details become less about the issue in question beyond what's already discussed and more about wars in general. Sorry to disappoint but I'd rather post it as a suggestion rather than in this thread.

Agreed, I don't think doomstacks themselves are the problem at all, they are just the symptom of a plethora of more fundamental issues. Warfare in general is among those, but that is partially rooted somewhere else too.

 

[Legendsmith]

@Drowe @Summin Cool Yeah I agree, that seems to be the conclusion of the thread. Warfare is inherently borked, doomstacks are the result. When you do post it @Summin Cool, could send me a link, or post it in this thread?

 

[Undar]

That's why I post this summary every page.

Indeed, and thank you for it. Allows returning people like me to try to contribute without going through the 30 pages

Agreed, I don't think doomstacks themselves are the problem at all, they are just the symptom of a plethora of more fundamental issues. Warfare in general is among those, but that is partially rooted somewhere else too.

Agreed, many of the causes are because of other, seemingly unrelated features not being fleshed out at all. There is already a supply limit system in place in the way of increased energy cost when undocked. A feature quite a few 4X games use to good effect, but in Stellaris, energy is a pretty useless resource which in turn means you can undock your doomstack for decades without hurting your economy in the slightest.

Happiness and unrest would also play a part in it, but as of right now it is a part of the game you can totally ignore with no ill effects.

The economy as a whole also contributes to the doomstack because war does not harm your sectors development at all. Energy is useless, and unless you are losing lots of ships and need to replenish, your mineral income is not effected at all either. Even if the enemy destroys your mining stations, each one brings in so little that they have to practically destroy the majority of your mining stations and invade a few planets to make any real dent in its income.

Plenty of other factors as well. But i think its perfectly far to say that "Warfare is inherently borked"