Doomstacked Doomstack Doom-Thread: ReDoox

[Airowird]

"Bouncing" planets to get the raiding bonus over and over again has an easy fix; a planet can only be raided every X months, years or whatever. There has to be a way to touch stored minerals (and energy maybe) for reasons that you actually already stated in your last post:
"(And again, I should have some reserves built up for war anyway, so losing 10-20 energy & minerals a month when I'm knee deep in red numbers doesn't matter if I can win the war in a couple of years)."

True, it would help, maybe I just don't like taking chunks out of the reserve unless you set up an actual transport system and everything in the game. (The reserves now are purely virtual, so in effect you're paying an enemy to occupy your planets? Makes no sense compared to economic downfall) Perhaps I just dislike it because I'm afraid it'll shorten wars more (raid & white out) which is beneficial for doomstack strategies vs one where you can actually rebuild during the war.

Anyway, to respond to this. We're actually trying to achieve the same thing, that is, address Issue #4 in the summary, doomstacks near-instantly deleting smaller fleets. That's what I'm saying too. My suggestion has an automatic introduction of 'evasive manouvers' but without the penalty to damage. (Your -30% hit chance and damage is VERY harsh by the way). You must not have read what I suggested regarding my RP penalty, the addition of a single mining station or corvette to a midgame fleet engagement would have an effect so small that it would be rounded off, because the formula I proposed makes the bonus for evasive manouvers scale to the actual ratio of outnumbering, with values clamped to a certain range so beyond a certain difference it wouldn't matter. (If you've got 2x evasion or whatever the max bonus is, but I've got 10x your forces you're still going to die quick).
Now, does slower combat speed have an effect by itself? No
But does that matter? No. I wasn't talking about doomstack vs doomstack combat. I was talking about doomstack vs smaller, split fleets.
Like I said before, you can't consider any change in isolation. Let's assume the changes we have is something from the high value planets plus this. What is the result? The result is that it's no longer desirable to use a giant fleet to engage things a fraction of its size. The giant fleet will still win handily, but because it takes longer, the side with the split fleets will have time to invade multiple worlds at once.
At the moment, using a giant fleet to kill much smaller fleets is rewarded, overkill is good because you lose nothing and it's so quick you can mop up the enemy so fast.

The problem with defender +Evasion is that you're then on a course towards Corvette swarms hitting 90% Evasion again, meaning you're effectively better off defending with a smaller Corv fleet than adding in your own Cruisers & Battleships. It also doesn't make sense, because if the enemy is firing at the same rate, with 5 ships at your 1, then they could have interlocking fields of fire and pretty much guarantee atleast 1 hit, not miss all 5 of them. If anything, this just screams for a bonus where you get +X tracking and -2X accuracy to simulate blanket firing "rain of fire" (Corvettes die just as fast, Battleships were getting hit anyway, so will survive longer due to attacker's accuracy loss) A more logical change in Evasion would be a penalty for the attacker, but that just means you stack more capital ships and use Corvettes as a secondary line to bombard planets or defend with. (Would this actually work?)
But the Fire Rate thing would work both ways. As said, firing simultaneously can cause issues, think of it as waiting for a hit to see if the target shifts position due to the impact, wait for debris to clear for targeting sensors etc. On the defending side it's more of a "forget targetting computers, just fire and you're sure to hit something" kind of thing

As for the Evasion penalty, I wanted to simulate covering fire, namely just randomly firing in their general direction in the hopes of slowing them down more than actually hitting them. I also wanted to make sure that in all circumstances, the effective military power of an evading fleet would not go up because it was in evasion mode. The 2 penalties are roughly a -50% while the evasion bonus would provide +50% life expectancy for Destroyers & Cruisers (depending on targetting weaponry) actually less for Battleships (too large to dodge with) and more so for Corvettes. To me, this all seems acceptable from a logical/tactical space combat PoV. This would also give players the option to save fleets with a tactical retreat rather than just stuff them in an alternative dimension for a month an hope nobody grows extra limbs when they get back.

As an afterthought to measuring Relative Power: To prevent tech becoming useless, maybe it needs to be scaled to fleet naval amount? If we add some shielding & extra weapon slot to mining stations (god, please do!) they could be strong enough to account for 1 cap in fights; 2-3 Small weapons of starter tech, 1 S Shield, sort of a stationary Corvette, getting military station tech boni as well. Defense stations (2,4,8 "power" seems relatively OK) still wouldn't actively account for Naval Cap, but atleast they would have a power indication on them. Space stations could have scaling strength, say 2 power per level? This would also mean that (a)FE with vastly superior tech are still dangerous, because they don't get penalised as much from having better weaponry and thus remain relevant longer in the game.

PS: No I don't hate Corvettes, but my logic was that they are generally speaking very fragile and if swarmed with enemy ships, should lose out on their Evasion bonus because of crossfire possibilities. Battleships on the other end are expecting to get hit anyway, and have too much inertia to dodge fire anyway, so it makes sense they are built to withstand damage.

 

[Undar]

"Bouncing" planets to get the raiding bonus over and over again has an easy fix; a planet can only be raided every X months, years or whatever. There has to be a way to touch stored minerals (and energy maybe) for reasons that you actually already stated in your last post:
"(And again, I should have some reserves built up for war anyway, so losing 10-20 energy & minerals a month when I'm knee deep in red numbers doesn't matter if I can win the war in a couple of years)."

That's where damaging the buildings should come into play. Lets assume EC are balanced and you almost never have many decades worth stockpiled to sustain a fleet. If your fleet destroys mining stations you will get EC/minerals out of it, either from your enemies stockpile or from thin air.

This means you can sustain your economy by looting your enemies. You are getting a flat reward, your enemy loses his monthly income and has to lose more to rebuild after the war.

The same could be for planets. Powerplants give you EC, mines give minerals, research stations give research and farms give food. The more developed a planet, the more juicy a target it is. But since you damage all the buildings, you cant loot it again until its all repaired by the owner of the planet. This earns the victor lots of money and harms the loser with all the unemployed pops, unrest and having to spend minerals to repair.

Of course this alone wont help with the doomstack issue at all. Just one of many things that when combined will improve the warfare and war economy game.

 

[Francech]

You can manage fleets by issuing shit orders and you can order single fleets let's say to do 5-10 tasks in succession, then you just watch and relax. Then you just are going to adjust that one fleet to dodge the doomstack.

And the whole point of splitting fleets is to destroy space stations and to take worlds. You have no time to react to every single attack. So i still do not see the problem.

Then what i see happening is having reserve fleets to counter defense fleets so that you can have several battles, and also baiting that could happen.

I wish that the AI would play like this. This whole argument of doomstack would collpase in an instant. Because what we are witnessing here is an AI problem not a game system problem.

BTW: on a completly different OT thing (feel free to answer in private) why do i keep hearing SC brought up as a bad example of a game, or something bad to consider? It's one of the best example of balancing and interesting asymmetrical game design choices out there.

 

[REJS7]

Surely there is another obvious solution to the blob, and that would be an area effect weapon that is able to strike, daisy chain, or otherwise damage multiple ships in one strike. Blobs, especially of the sort Stellaris encourages, were historically dealt with by concentrated area effect weapons, and logically if you want to counter a blob then this type of weapon would be a reasonable solution.

These could effectively be placed on stations, fortresses etc, as well as being L or X weapons carried by larger ships. This would give the player an incentive to diversify their fleets, build stations, and essentially create a fast moving picket running fleet that could take out blobs before the blob can cause serious damage,

In theory you already have the foundations for this with lightening and mine fields, and if the mechanics could be consistent it would be an ideal counter to a concentrated mass of ships.

 

[EvilKnievel82]

I have posted a suggestion for a weighted supply range system with attrition. Let me know what you think:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ted-supply-range-to-limit-doomstacks.1017390/

 

[Drowe]

You can manage fleets by issuing shit orders and you can order single fleets let's say to do 5-10 tasks in succession, then you just watch and relax. Then you just are going to adjust that one fleet to dodge the doomstack.

And the whole point of splitting fleets is to destroy space stations and to take worlds. You have no time to react to every single attack. So i still do not see the problem.

Then what i see happening is having reserve fleets to counter defense fleets so that you can have several battles, and also baiting that could happen.

I wish that the AI would play like this. This whole argument of doomstack would collpase in an instant. Because what we are witnessing here is an AI problem not a game system problem.

BTW: on a completly different OT thing (feel free to answer in private) why do i keep hearing SC brought up as a bad example of a game, or something bad to consider? It's one of the best example of balancing and interesting asymmetrical game design choices out there.

That tactic only works against the AI, which you can force to surrender, a human player would hunt down your fleets one by one, shifting the balance of power increasingly more in his favour and then turn the table on you and there is nothing you can do to change that except for going back to forming a doomstack. Your smaller fleets can kill spaceports and occupy planets, but you have to reach 100% warscore before that gives you any benefit. If you split your fleet in 15 stacks, I'll split mine in 5 and wipe the floor with 5 of your fleets before you can occupy those worlds, so you get 10 instead of 15. Next I kill another 5 of your stacks and you only get 5 and in the next round I wipe the rest of your fleets, then go and kill your spaceports with my remaining ships and take my planets back, before going on and conquering your planets. This holds up no matter how you do it, in the long run, having one big fleet beats having multiple smaller ones, simply because to counter a fleet you always need a stronger fleet, and all things being equal who ever brings more ships to a fight wins. And since battles are always decided by one party getting destroyed or one party fleeing, this does lead to doomstacks winning in the end.

Star Craft is not a bad game, but it is a different type of game, it's like comparing Age of Empires 2 with Crusader Kings 2.

Surely there is another obvious solution to the blob, and that would be an area effect weapon that is able to strike, daisy chain, or otherwise damage multiple ships in one strike. Blobs, especially of the sort Stellaris encourages, were historically dealt with by concentrated area effect weapons, and logically if you want to counter a blob then this type of weapon would be a reasonable solution.

These could effectively be placed on stations, fortresses etc, as well as being L or X weapons carried by larger ships. This would give the player an incentive to diversify their fleets, build stations, and essentially create a fast moving picket running fleet that could take out blobs before the blob can cause serious damage,

In theory you already have the foundations for this with lightening and mine fields, and if the mechanics could be consistent it would be an ideal counter to a concentrated mass of ships.

This has already been brought up multiple times, it doesn't solve doomstacks except for in the strictest sense of the word. People would get around it by RTS style micromanaging multiple smaller fleets within the same system, which technically is still a doomstack in all things that matter.

 

[skydiver1]

1. As mentioned before I think the "chasing the fleet" minigame is not as bad if the AI is the one playing it.
What's the actual gameplay value in the first place in having the player maneuver the fleets inside the system? For whom is that actually fun?
Why not treat the entire system as one big battlefield where the player can influence events but ships can manage complex behaviour on their own, attacking targets, chasing and being chased. Then mechanics can be introduced that allow smaller fleets to serve as effective "partisan" harrassers, that cannot be ignored and quickly dealt with but require multiple sizable fleets to keep them at bay.

2. Regarding mechanics that could make such "partisan harassing" feasible some were already mentioned but here are some others:
- Spaceports are semi-suicidal to take head-on. Instead specialized "siege artillery" ships can be deployed to take them down, but they need escort and protection as their tracking is too bad to hit any moving target, making them defenseless against any ships, large or small
- Small ships can go into hiding (think hiding behind an asteroid lore-wise though in gameplay would just be disappearing). The enemy does not know their location or numbers but they are still lurking in the system and can go out of hiding at any time to strike a target of opportunity
- Having a fleet in enemy space requires reliable supply lines (represented by stations similar to wormholes, spreading between your worlds and enemy spece). Having these stations destroyed by harassers can cripple invading armies and large ships behind enemy lines
- Invasions are slow, go through multiple stages and require transports to regularly deliver reinforcements and evacuate wounded, these transports also needing protection
- Ect.

The whole idea is basically make invading a weaker enemy a major slow chore (which half the suggestions here are about anyway) and have the AI deal with it in place of the human.
The human/strategic AI's job should be balancing resources between multiple harassment and invasion fleets slowly doing their work and managing the risk/reward between:
-having many small invasion fleets vulnerable to setbacks but not anihilation
-having few big invasion fleets that can't be stopped without a showdown but get things done slower and still need to protect their supply lines by leaving chunks of the fleet behind in already secured systems to handle harassers
While losing siege ships should be common, losing entire fleets of combat ships should be a very rare occurrence due to gross mismanagement of supply lines, not a "damn, I miscalculated that doomstack" or "damn, I didn't move to warp out fast enough" moment.

 

[Legendsmith]

I think it's worth reiterating something here. What are we trying to achieve? We don't want to just 'nerf doomstacks,' as suggestions like the AOE weapons do. We want to tweak the rules of the game so that a person who uses a doomstack vs a number of smaller fleets will lose a war as all his planets are bombarded and then captured at the same time, or some other similar situation. Suggestions should try to enable that, not solely make doomstacks more annoying to field.

Summary of Reasons the Doom-Stack is King™
Colour Coded p35 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. The Enemy fleet is the only meaningful target for each side. 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.
   At the moment unless a reinforcement fleet warps on top of the fight, by the time they get to the fight it'll already be over. Therefore sending reinforcements is useless because the friendlies will already be dead.
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 ).
   This might not matter so much if there was less need to rebuild entire fleets.

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.
Red topics have been discussed to death and need to stay dead.
Green topics have been regarded as near universally good moves by the denizens of Paradox Forumland
White topicscould be good, could be not good, or where the consensus is unclear.

• 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/Redeployable 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?
  • Redeployable fortresses makes them less of a permanent minerals sink that can never be moved from a position that could become strategically irrelevant later.
• 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, especially due to the AI's ability to hit it ASAP.
• 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 and suffers from the same problem that @Drowe elaborated on with AOE weapons (below); it stops doomstacks in name only.
• Planets as high value targets aka Consequences of invasion & bombardment
  • This seems to be universally accepted as a good idea.
  • THIS DOES NOT JUST MEAN MAKING PLANETS WORTH MORE WARSCORE, though it could include that.
  • 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.
    • Loot resources, possibly from enemy's stored reserves by destroying buildings on occupied worlds - Suggested here by @Undar
    • 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.
  • A proposed implementation is Weighted supply range by @EvilKnievel82
• 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. Fleets 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 basically removes Issue #1 altogether.
• Greater Abstraction/Automation:
  • Strategic box variant 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.
  • System-Battlefield Suggested by @skydiver1: ? Why not treat the entire system as one big battlefield where the player can influence events but ships can manage complex behaviour on their own, attacking targets, chasing and being chased. Then mechanics can be introduced that allow smaller fleets to serve as effective "partisan" harrassers, that cannot be ignored and quickly dealt with but require multiple sizable fleets to keep them at bay
• AOE weapons. To discourage large blobs, AOE weapons that damage large numbers of ships a once could be used. Suggested by @REJS7
  • This would just make AOE weapons the most OP thing in the game, and what's to stop a larger AOE equipped doomstack from just killing a smaller fleet faster?
  • "This has already been brought up multiple times, it doesn't solve doomstacks except for in the strictest sense of the word. People would get around it by RTS style micromanaging multiple smaller fleets within the same system, which technically is still a doomstack in all things that matter." - @Drowe

New things from Last Summary: Added Weighted supply range by @EvilKnievel82 under supply limits/chains. Added @Undar's variant on planet/resource looting under planets as high value targets. Changed the wording of issue 4, and planet solutions. Renamed Strategic box solution point to "greater abstraction/automation", Added System-Battlefield by @skydiver 1 under greater abstraction/automation. Added REJS7's AOE weapon suggestion, and @Drowe's response so it doesn't get brought up again. Changed colour of thoroughly rebutted suggestions to red.

Summary end.

I think @Francech has missed the mark, but he's closer than others here seem to think.
Why do we have this situation? Because before, when bombardment gave warscore, players would split their fleets and position them strategically to move in on a large number of enemy planets as soon as the war began. Isn't that closer to what we want? Of course it is.
The problem is that Paradox 'fixed' that not by making the AI create garrison/picket fleets, but by just nerfing the amount of warscore bombardment gave so that the AI could continue to have all their fleets sit in their capital, making it the only target that mattered since it was the only source of meaningful warscore anymore. We used to have high value planets, though arguably simple bombardment giving warscore was a bit too much reward for little risk.

Also, @Foefaller's point on page 34 about naval capacities being a joke is relevant, the problem is, smaller nations often need to go over naval capacity in order to not get annihilated by an opponent larger than them. However, if defence structures weren't such a joke themselves then they might not need to.

Surely there is another obvious solution to the blob, and that would be an area effect weapon that is able to strike, daisy chain, or otherwise damage multiple ships in one strike. Blobs, especially of the sort Stellaris encourages, were historically dealt with by concentrated area effect weapons

I don't think that's ideal honestly. Blobs in land combat were dealt with weapons, but the thing is they didn't make force concentration go away; they just made large engagements spread out over a larger front, and made people use terrain to hide. While nowdays there are nuclear anti-ship missiles that can take out entire carrier groups I don't think that's the solution, a fleet would just spread out just enough to avoid that; the AOE weapons would become ridiculously OP, it's not a solution. How would it stop a doomstack from just having AOE weapons too and killing the smaller split fleets even faster?
The reason IRL that navies aren't all in a giant doomstack isn't just because of nukes, it is also because they have a lot to defend and that there's more to be gained by spreading their firepower out among more strategic targets, and having 1 huge fleet also makes you extremely predictable. There is something to be said about minefields and such though, see the 'system wide auras' linked in the summary.

That's where damaging the buildings should come into play. Lets assume EC are balanced and you almost never have many decades worth stockpiled to sustain a fleet. If your fleet destroys mining stations you will get EC/minerals out of it, either from your enemies stockpile or from thin air.

This means you can sustain your economy by looting your enemies. You are getting a flat reward, your enemy loses his monthly income and has to lose more to rebuild after the war.

The same could be for planets. Powerplants give you EC, mines give minerals, research stations give research and farms give food. The more developed a planet, the more juicy a target it is. But since you damage all the buildings, you cant loot it again until its all repaired by the owner of the planet. This earns the victor lots of money and harms the loser with all the unemployed pops, unrest and having to spend minerals to repair.

Of course this alone wont help with the doomstack issue at all. Just one of many things that when combined will improve the warfare and war economy game.

Now that's an idea I like; loot the planet and the enemy's stored stockpile by destroying buildings. That's an excellent suggestion that uses existing mechanics to some extent, well done.
However I don't think it should apply to mining stations; they are already quite awful, so giving them a stealth buff by making them a source of un-lootable income is a desirable side-effect.

True, it would help, maybe I just don't like taking chunks out of the reserve unless you set up an actual transport system and everything in the game. (The reserves now are purely virtual, so in effect you're paying an enemy to occupy your planets? Makes no sense compared to economic downfall) Perhaps I just dislike it because I'm afraid it'll shorten wars more (raid & white out) which is beneficial for doomstack strategies vs one where you can actually rebuild during the war.

Well a game situation where a number of raiding fleets smash and grab at multiple worlds, then force a victory, while a doomstack is lumbering around trying to catch them 1 by 1 isn't actually a bad state of affairs because it means that doomstacks are not ideal against that strategy.

The problem with defender +Evasion is that you're then on a course towards Corvette swarms hitting 90% Evasion again,

Alright I see what you're saying, though my proposal would see corvettes hitting like 50% evasion tops. Maybe just an attacker fire rate nerf might be a better way to go about it. I think the specifics don't particularly matter, the general idea is just "slow down combat/stop losers losing so hard & fast." (Issue #4). Paradox will implement whatever version they think works best if they think it's a proper issue to be solved.

1. As mentioned before I think the "chasing the fleet" minigame is not as bad if the AI is the one playing it.
What's the actual gameplay value in the first place in having the player maneuver the fleets inside the system? For whom is that actually fun?
Why not treat the entire system as one big battlefield where the player can influence events but ships can manage complex behaviour on their own, attacking targets, chasing and being chased. Then mechanics can be introduced that allow smaller fleets to serve as effective "partisan" harrassers, that cannot be ignored and quickly dealt with but require multiple sizable fleets to keep them at bay.
.

The idea of treating an entire system as a battlefield like that might be good, but of course I there would have to be a way for fleets ships to try to run through it. (Avoid issue #1 basically). It might also be costly in system resources to do, which is a consideration we must take into account.

- Spaceports are semi-suicidal to take head-on. Instead specialized "siege artillery" ships can be deployed to take them down, but they need escort and protection as their tracking is too bad to hit any moving target, making them defenseless against any ships, large or small

Spaceports are currently only suicidal to take on in the early game. Past that they are too weak. I think buffing them MIGHT have a place but stronger defences just discourages players from targetting planets, which is not good. Furthermore, it would be better to have doomstack fleets with only a few siege ships, or even no siege ships which are instead built once the enemy's fleet is defeated. It would be another layer to war that would be even more pointless than ground invasions, and far more annoying.

That said, I think you are right on this last point; "losing entire fleets of combat ships should be a very rare occurrence ... not a 'damn, I miscalculated that doomstack' or 'damn, I didn't move to warp out fast enough' moment."
What do you think guys, should that be one of the summary header quotes?

 

[Foefaller]

I now believe the devs actually read this, because in today's designer devstream, not only did they talk about doomstacks, they mentioned several things that have been discussed in the last few pages. A Brief summary on their thoughts.

-It would take 0 effort to make the AI do the sort of thing @Francech would like to see. However, it would be, in @Wiz very words, "The very definition of frustration and unfun." Micro is not a aspect of the game, and setting up the AI to require you to be a Pro SC2 player (their words, not mine) to fend off is completely off the table.

-In fact, they don't particularly see doomstacks as the root of all that is wrong with warfare (if there is a single thing, from what Wiz was saying, it would probably be FTL types) but they do agree that having a 200-star empire have only 1 fleet and 1 admiral is a bit silly.

-A couple of ideas that the mentioned that they were looking at include: a sort of width penalty to fire rate when attacking smaller fleets, combat penalties to having massive fleets that your tech or naval capacity cannot sustain, and other tweaks to make sure that, regardless of how much you concentrate your firepower, you *are* going to lose ships and have a cost for victory.

There were also a couple other things related to warfare they mentioned (in fact, most of the stream was about warfare) that tangentially affects what some have considered for fixing doomstacks.

-FTL overhaul. Right now, they are leaning towards everyone starting out with Hyperdrive, while unlocking other FTL types that not only(or rather than) add new modes of travel, add new geography to take advantage of, like unlocking Wormholes will let you use natural wormholes that will let you travel to another part of the galaxy.

-Borders. Instead of naturally expanding borders, you have to set up Frontier outposts (that will no long be destructible) in any world you want to claim. Would be balanced to be cheaper mineral-wise and have no influence upkeep, but still cost ever-expanding influence to build the further you go (so you aren't just gobbling up everything) Idea is that they could now be a wargoal, and since they exist outside your colonies, wars can be fought that don't involve taking everything (meaning an empire that has made all their planets fortress systems can still lose territory in wars.

-Defenses. One idea they are toying with is having Defenses come with a naval capacity cost, with defense being more "efficient" in terms of the amount of firepower you get. Like you can get a corvette that takes 1 fleet cap, and has 100 fleet strength, or you can build a station instead that has 175 fleet strength.

-Invasions. Most was about the actual invasions themselves, but one part that stood out was... planet-based defense, including a planet based FTL inhibitor which meant that to move past this planet and deeper into enemy territory, you *have* to take the world.


AND REMEMBER FOLKS!

 

[REJS7]

This has already been brought up multiple times, it doesn't solve doomstacks except for in the strictest sense of the word. People would get around it by RTS style micromanaging multiple smaller fleets within the same system, which technically is still a doomstack in all things that matter.

No, micromanaging would still not work, as the game engine is not geared towards having all fleets in a system fight over a protracted distance. The only way to overcome an aread effect would be for a re-write of the combat system, which at present means only battleships hang back, while the rest of the ships in a fleet/fleets converge on a singular point. No matter how hard the player, or AI, tries to micromanage, all ships will engage at a singular point, which is why area effect weapons would overcome even the most determined of micro-managers.

Ultimately, regardless of whether doomstacks are a 'bad thing', the real issue is player enjoyment, and how to make combat/the game overall a better experience. As a fundamental this would mean re-evaluating combat as a whole - what is it for, why do factions fight, and what purpose does it serve in the over scheme of a 4x game. Do players actively want more combat, better combat, or simply to have combat form part of an effective part of progressing within the game?

Having played Stellaris from day one of release combat has never been that satisfying, though at least you get a visualization of it unlike HoI4 or CK2. For me having to build a doomstack simply to defend against a big bad (of whatever variety) is not really a challenge, as it is a fairly straight forward task to achieve, and then in single player being able to out-manoeuvre the AI is easy enough. It strikes at the heart of the game's experience, namely that to progress there must be conquest, there must be violence, and there must be a ton of resources sunk into armies and ships. No matter how pacifistic you wish to play, you still need to build up a fleet and armies to overcome whatever end game crisis and awakened fallen empires come your way (unless you turn them off).

So, to come back to the doomstack, what, realistically, can be done to get around this core concept within the game? If you tinker around the edges with additional mechanics these will invariably be worked around. If you make it too resource intensive for the player or AI to amass a large fleet then you penalise empires when the time comes to defend against the big threats that are encountered throughout the game (fallen empires, monsters etc). Which begs the question as to where solely relying on fleets and armies to solve military problems is going to be an answer to the fundamental question raised in this thread.

One solution I am thinking of modding over the summer is a quest mechanism that helps solve threats like fallen empires and crisises without resorting to massive fleets and wars. Think Mass Effect, Star Trek, Fire Fly etc, where one ship/crew/person can provide the solution to a galactic problem. Ultimately, whatever mechanic, events, or solution is put in place has to make the overall game experience better than the one we currently have.

Edit:

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that we are looking at the wrong question, as it fundamentally fails to see the big Stellaris picture. As I was writing this entry pieces of the puzzle started falling into place, namely the raw fire power needed to defeat most of the threats a player or AI empire faces within the game. Simply put, at present any nerfing or regression of doomstacks without first addressing the fundamental imbalances posed by galactic threats will invariably lead to a significant issue for all empires. I see this repeatedly in games where fallen empires awaken or one of the crisis events triggers externally to my empire. The AI is ill equipped to handle large threats (even to the point of not taking down monsters), so to introduce a new set of parametres that penalise concentrating your forces without given empires the capacity to handle large scale threats will result in games becoming very unbalanced.

I appreciate that this topic has been focused on empire v empire conflict, and to a point I think there is a great deal that can be done to resolve this, but if the changes that result from this meant that empires are left in a position where effective countering of fallen empires and crisis events becomes harder/impossible then I would have to question the changes.

Ninja rejig of my prior AoE comments:

I appreciate that AoE has been done to death, and I hold my hand up for not reading all 34 pages of comments. My main observation is that the quickest way to deal with blobbing is a weapon that can take out multiple ships/damage multiple ships. I completely appreciate that this will be abused, which is why I suggested making this L or X weapons - possibly static defense only. Of course this is not a perfect solution, and while I think they have a place in the game, they would easily overshadow anything else in an empire's arsenal.

 

[Schneeente]

Hey, beautiful thread!

I read most of the 35 pages and I'm really amazed by the variety of different proposals, their benefits and ultimately their rebuttals. What an interesting, civilized discussion.

I think this "doomstack vs. doomstack" topic is a serious problem and one of the few things that from my point of view needs improving. Apart from that I think the game is awesome since the last expansion.

But keep in mind that many players here (here as in playing Stellaris) do not even view the "militaristic side" as the most important one. They prefer empire building and there are a bunch of people who don't even like ship-customization so it is a small miracle how Paradox managed to get all these different players with their different playstyles into the game. If you keep that in mind some ideas like "split your 150k fleet into 10 pieces and invade all the enemy planets simultaneously while avoiding the enemy doomstack" might be feasible for a minority of players but I think we need a broader solution to the problem.
Something that appeases the "militaristic" guys (mostly present here in the Forum) and the "empire builder" folks and the "roleplay" people as well.

So we need something that is not too complex, something that does not require too much skill in in micromanagement and at the same time addresses the issue.


I have been thinking and I came up with a few ideas of my own, feel free to point out the weaknesses

There are several possibilities to address the doomstack issue.
First: Make it less profitable and thereby reduce the impact doomstack vs. doomstack fights have

You could change the way fleets fight. Right now if a 30k fleet attacks a 20k fleet the attacking fleets loses literally nothing and the defender loses everything. If we change the superiority-bonus and let the attacking fleet suffer some more losses, like up to 10-15k, that would be a start. At least that way you can't just conquer one empire after the next once you have more fleet then your neighbors. And if this would change the impact in warscore if you lose your fleet isn't that big of a deal anymore. It doesn't get rid of the doomstack problem but it hurts less if you are the loser because you at least inflicted significant damage. I admit, it's a boring "solution".

My next idea is directly tied to the same theme, to make it less worse if you lose your entire fleet: There could be a building, that increases the warscore for certain planets if you build them. For example, depending how big your empire is, you can build a certain amount of them. Lets say if you have 20 planets you can build 5 of these buildings. And their effect is that a planet costs double or triple for the enemy to cede during war. That way you can reduce your losses.. And again, it's not the end of the world if you lose the all important engagement. Because your most precious planets will still be there after the war. Or you'll lose significantly less territory if they decide to take exactly one of your favorite planets.

And my favorite idea to make doomstack vs. doomstack less painful is the idea that encounters of a certain produce debris. But mineral debris that you can exploit during or after the fight. If you fight a defensive battle and the enemy is deep inside your territory and you know exactly which 5 planets he is going to cede once he won, and you manage to fight somewhere else, somewhere he doesn't have borders once he won and ceded your planets.. then you can build a mining station and have all the space-rubble for yourself. If it only contains 10-20% worth the minerals destroyed in that battle, that gives you a big advantage to rebuild your empire even after you lost the war.
But it is a double edged sword because if he manages to engage your fleet and then get the debris you are screwed, so maybe it requires to much micromanagement to pull off effectively..

Okay, so much for my ideas to make a loss less painful. Now explore some mechanics that could discourage people from using a doomstack and nothing more. But I want to remind everyone that too much micromanagement is not wanted by many players. Some people here argued that "even if you have to split your fleet twice or thrice it is essentially the same as having 1 doomstack, because they will always fly next to each other" - I want to say that it makes a big difference for a lot of players having to navigate 3 fleets instead of one:

Ideas I already read here include some nice thoughts:
Make it more expensive if your fleet is outside of your borders. (Doesn't solve the doomstack problem, just delays the time until you can attack / get attacked)
Make your fleet weaker the further it is away from your borders. (Essentially the same as above)
Increase the strength of defensive platforms. (Doesn't change that the enemy is going to attack with his full stack, "only" increases his losses)

My own thoughts on that matter are:
We need to increase the damage that bombarding does to a planet. If you can deal significant damage to the enemy empire DESPITE losing the war, he might reconsider if winning the war is really the most important objective. What I mean is, imagine the enemy has 100k fleet and you only have 80k. Right now if you'd fight he'd wipe you out, maybe losing 20k fleet and then he'd start invading your planets and you lose the war, lost your fleet, lost some planets and in 10 years he can take the rest.
If you drastically improve the damage that can be done to a planet.. you can ruin his empire as well. That way both of you are screwed after the war
Right now Armageddon bombardment has 15% chance to kill a pop, 20% chance to destroy a building and 15% chance to create a tile blocker. PER MONTH. And that is the worst you can do right now. http://www.stellariswiki.com/Orbital_bombardment
We need something that scales up. The more fleet bombarding the planet the more damage they inflict. And I am talking about significantly more damage. Imagine the enemy with his doomstack is in your territory, invading your planets. But at the same time you are in his territory and are trashing his planets. Killing his pops, destroying buildings and even creating tons of tile blockers. The economic damage your fleet can do is staggering. So that could change the way war works and encourages people to split their fleets. Because they don't want their planets being bombed to smithereens and if they are, they want at least pay the enemy back.
Also, defending planets with orbital fortfications becomes much more attractive so that small raiding parties are not able to trash your whole planet while your doomstack is in another galaxy.

Also the proposed "fleet cap per admiral" seemed like such a nice idea when I first read it. Doesn't have to be that way, if we give huge fleets some penalties because they are hard to manage/control/command we at least don't have 1 single doomstack anymore. And that alone could lead people to split their fleets more often. And it is guaranteed that it will happen more often. The moment you have 2 or 3 fleets chances are sooo much higher that you split them on purpose (fleet 1 takes planet A and fleet 2 takes planet B) or that you just forget 1 fleet in a system and only one fleet engages or whatever. So it does not solve the problem but I think it eases it. Because keep in mind, most of the Stellaris players are not playing online and are experienced in warfare, some even don't like the ship customization! And if you combine this "admiral fleet cap idea" with the first idea I brought up, that you do significant damage to the other fleet even if you lose the battle.. It is not such a huge loss anymore if a part of your fleet dies because it did damage at least. And did not just vanished into thin air.

The proposed AoE damage.. hmm... I can't really see the mechnism how that should work. I mean why should it be better against a 200k fleet then against a 100k fleet? They both are a huge blop on the screen and if you shot anywhere into the middle of either fleet you hit exactly the same amount of ships? Because the AoE can't possibly be THAT huge to incorporate the whole fleet?


Another idea I had while reading this thread:
What happens if the defender is able to mine his solar system? It has to be costly of course but if the mines are more probable to be triggered by a big fleet then a small fleet.. that could encourage people not to attack with too big fleets? Maybe the mines, once active, attack friend and foe alike? So you'd have a significant advantage with the smaller fleet if you fight in a mined solar system? And the beauty is, even if you split your doomstack you still get more damage from the mines because your overall ship strength is still higher? So you could actually stand in front of the system, you see that it is mined and decide to split your doomstack now, to jump only with half of it into this system or just ignore it completely? Mhhh..

From all these suggestions I still like the "more damage via bombing"-idea most. Because from my prospective that would be a way to strongly encourage splitting fleets without restraining the player of forcing him to do anything. It just makes sense in such a situation to have multiple fleets.
But as I wrote in the beginning, the biggest downside is that mircro management pros have a huge advantage with that system.. unless you significantly improve defensive stations to prevent him from crippling your whole empire in a few years ^^

My final thought: It would be nice if we could influence the actual battle. Telling our corvettes what ship class to focus on.. and how to behave.. during battle. Kind of as if we were the admiral ourself. Using them as living interceptors for the enemy missiles or to charge ahead or whatever. Having a better / more effective rock-paper-scissors system would be nice as well. Improving missiles would be nice as well, nobody uses them or torpedoes, that's so sad.
And if anyone wants to play a coop against the AI, message me in German or English!

I hope I was able to contribute.

 

[Undar]

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?

I think you have it backwards here. They can complement the defensive stations.

The idea I was thinking of was for example if you build a corvette assembly plant in a station, it would also come with x number of un-customisable corvettes that come with the max tier researched starting weapon. When an enemy fleet enters the system, they will deploy just like fighters/bombers deploy from a battleship. The same would apply of course to fortress stations so you are able to build them in systems without planets.

 

[FireLion1983]

My own thoughts on that matter are:
We need to increase the damage that bombarding does to a planet. If you can deal significant damage to the enemy empire DESPITE losing the war, he might reconsider if winning the war is really the most important objective. What I mean is, imagine the enemy has 100k fleet and you only have 80k. Right now if you'd fight he'd wipe you out, maybe losing 20k fleet and then he'd start invading your planets and you lose the war, lost your fleet, lost some planets and in 10 years he can take the rest.
If you drastically improve the damage that can be done to a planet.. you can ruin his empire as well. That way both of you are screwed after the war
Right now Armageddon bombardment has 15% chance to kill a pop, 20% chance to destroy a building and 15% chance to create a tile blocker. PER MONTH. And that is the worst you can do right now. http://www.stellariswiki.com/Orbital_bombardment
We need something that scales up. The more fleet bombarding the planet the more damage they inflict. And I am talking about significantly more damage. Imagine the enemy with his doomstack is in your territory, invading your planets. But at the same time you are in his territory and are trashing his planets. Killing his pops, destroying buildings and even creating tons of tile blockers. The economic damage your fleet can do is staggering. So that could change the way war works and encourages people to split their fleets. Because they don't want their planets being bombed to smithereens and if they are, they want at least pay the enemy back.
Also, defending planets with orbital fortfications becomes much more attractive so that small raiding parties are not able to trash your whole planet while your doomstack is in another galaxy.

Yes, please!

 

[Drowe]

@Legendsmith
There is one thing missing on your summary, and that's making space mining a more important aspect. They could be a strategic target if planets become overall harder to take.

[Edit]
They would have to become more valuable for that to work, right now they are just too worthless. Could be done by making the stations be less numerous but with a higher income, or overhauling the whole orbital resource system.
[/Edit]

One possibility to make defenses more worthwhile would be if they weren't completely destroyed when their hull points reach zero but get turned into a ruin instead. This turns the station invincible, and can be restored to full power for a fraction of the time and resources it took to build them. You can also deconstruct disabled stations with a construction ship to get part of the minerals back, however the attacker can do the same. This could be restricted to fortresses.

An additional way to strengthen them was if over time they spawned a number of defense platforms (which ones can be defined in the ship designer) that act much the same way as those of the enigmatic fortress, just not as powerful and numerous. As a trade-off the fortress itself gets a bit less firepower and more costly to build. I think that could give the fortress a bit more teeth and, since the fleet needs to kill multiple targets instead of one, makes stations a bit more of an obstacle without overpowering them.

I like the idea of construction ships being able to tow defensive stations, I'm gonna attack my enemies with towed fortresses , would be really cool for RP.

Another idea I had to reduce the problem was by involving sectors more. Essentially, sectors get their own faction (one for each sector), that have various demands, one of which could be to have a defensive fleet, you can either let them build it themselves, thus paying for it themselves too, but in exchange they contribute less force limit and you don't get to control it directly. Or you can build the fleet yourself, thus paying for it, but have more control over the sector fleet.

Regardless of which option you choose, not having a fleet in the sector will start to have costs, like pirates spawning, unrest and lower income from taxes. If a sector is unhappy with you, it might start building a hidden fleet and at some inconvenient time declare its independence.

If you do not have control over a sector fleet, during war you can take command of it for a small influence cost (for example 10 to get control and then 1 per month), if you take it out of the empires borders, the influence cost increases significantly. The influence cost would also depend on the warscore, if you are losing you need less if you are winning you need more.

Sector AI would try to defend in its own territory first, but wouldn't ignore threats outside of its borders unless they are very unhappy with you, but in that case it would probably seize the opportunity to declare war on you to become independent.

It's only tangentially related, but would help make war less a doomstack vs doomstack affair, since influence is probably the most precious resource you have.

 

[Summin Cool]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/space-warfare-regarding-doomstacks.1017481/

Here is the suggestion I was talking about, it's a bit of a mix of ideas.

 

[Drowe]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/space-warfare-regarding-doomstacks.1017481/

Here is the suggestion I was talking about, it's a bit of a mix of ideas.

A good starting point, but needs a bit of further work.

 

[Schneeente]

I can't see the thread:

You do not have permission to view this page or perform this action.

 

[Summin Cool]

You need to link a copy of Stellaris to your paradox account

Here's the post in question:

Spoiler

It's well established that Doomstacks are an issue, and I do believe that we should be able to use more fleets as a single fleet doesn't feel right.

I feel that the core issues regarding Doomstacks is the effective power projection of a fleet, the intensity micro of commanding several fleets and the issue where it's often the case that the first inital battle is the deciding battle for a war.

I believe that the effective power projection can be reduced via two changes.
-Reducing the ability of planets to hold up a fleet while breaking down defenses
-Reducing Military FTL speeds by such a degree that a single stack usually isn't enough to defend an empire.

There are a few consequences, good and bad that arise from these changes:
-The amount of micro is reduced per fleet, thus allowing more fleets to be controlled reasonably by the player
-The lack of mobility for scouting that could be fixed via a dedicated scouting/interceptor ship section for corvettes that returns the full FTL speed.

For the final issue where it's often the deciding factor for the initial battle:
- Reduce the build cost and the build speed of ships to the point where it's possible to reasonably rebuild the entire fleet within the average war.

While losing ships is a bad thing and it should be, I believe that the speed at which you can replenish fleets is far too punishing for the losing player, they should be able to make a comeback if they can, but not be too excessive.

This change would reduce the deciding factor of the initial battle and thus reduce the intention of targeting the opposing fleet In addition the change ties into the reduction of the defences of planets as increasing both shouldn't skew the effects of losing too many planets too quickly and make the war a rush taking planets.

Lastly I was thinking about three additional, but not required (for the previous parts of the suggestion that is) warscore changes:
-Taken planets generate ticking warscore rather than a flat amount.
-Limiting the ability to take planets to being occupied planets only
-Allowing a condition where if you have 100 warscore in a war, and control 70% of an Empire you can fully annex said empire.

With it being less of a wait to take over a planet, a more strategic method of attacking ie you actually have to commit to an attack and still have the ability to take and hold small amounts of an empire rather than more risky all out attacks in order to overwhelm the opposition.

Therefore you have multiple choices as to your goals as well as methods of winning a war, that should help improve the experience a bit I hope.

Thank you for reading this rather long post.

 

[Francech]

I assume that there are veterans of other EU titles around. For example i dislike very much EU4 shift to doomstacks doing pingpong around the map which was a big departure from the EU3 multiple stacks that could have been up until to 30-40 different stacks at end game. It was micro intensive in EU3 and i think a lot of the appeal for tactical decision of EU3 was right there. Good players could prevail against bad players only by virtue of how you did use your stacks and how you could wipe enemy stacks.

I see a lot of parallels between EU3 and Stellaris. Planets and Spaceports are high reward objectives that have to be defended and taken out on the offensive and defensive. Which makes playing this game quite interesting from a tactical point of view in multiplayer.

Troops also are quite interesting because you could use overwhelming numbers and upgrades to win without bombardment which would add a layer to the warfare in Stellaris in which ground combat is actually meaningful.

Why should this tactical dimension be frustrating and cumbersome? Especially if you play in single player where you can pause and issue all order that you need to give? Streamlining where tactical decision basically are reduced to nil, and it becomes a grind fest don't add anything to the game into my opinion.

My two cents: Stellaris has already a very interesting combat that offers many defensive and offensive objectives with meaningful ground and space combat. The AI needs to be better at dealing with tactical decisions and it would be an amazing game and not just a good game.

 

[Bozobub]

Don't like "doomstacks"? Simply make the economy for them unsupportable, at least w/o a strong research investment in exactly that (thus, ignoring research in other areas). It would be quite easy to add this in as a selectable option during game generation.

For example, you could easily have selectable fields for:

• "Soft" (current) ship cap.
• "Hard" ship cap.
• Fleet caps. In other words, after a certain point any ship built is on its own and can only join an existing fleet. You would have to combine this with...
• Ships-per-fleet caps, modified by admiral skill, if one is present. Fleets with no admiral should have a set cap (say, 10-20 points).
• Economic penalties (basically, selectable maintenance costs).
• Ship build cost multiplier (say, 0.5x for beginners and 5x or even more, for bored masochists).

Wanna make a "Stack O' Doom™"? Fine! But that may not go over so well, if you had to neglect ship quality to do so, or your economy can't handle the load.