Doomstacked Doomstack Doom-Thread: ReDoox

[Airowird]

You don't need to force it to hyperlane, I would argue only wormholes and jump drives don't need the directionality. But for warp, you can play with multiple things, heck you I would argue you don't even need to slow anything down. Merely forcing the fleet to move to the other side is enough to "slow" FTL.

However, I feel a problem along the way. It might be difficult to "retain" the perceived advantages of each FTL type when you slow things down, that assuming PDX doesn't restructure everything.

Well I think they hinted in the stream that making every galaxy require the hyperlane routes would be more interesting (tactically speaking) compared to the generic blobbing it is now.

For me, I think the FTL choices would be more interesting with the following options:

• All players always use hypermaps
• Warp has a shorter windup, but a slightly lower travel speed and a long cooldown period. As a bonus, they can travel from anywhere in the system.
• Hyperdrives have medium windup & medium travel speed, but a short cooldown at arrival.
• Wormholes remain the same, with long fleet-dependant windup and faster travel speed and a short-medium cooldown, windup/cooldown time can be cut in half with a (cheaper) wormhole station present on either side. (can be enemy station as well to make it more interesting)
• Jump drives get the best of all worlds give or take, with short-medium windup, short cooldown and atleast wormhole speed (+50% for psi) combined into one package.
• As an extra, Emergency FTL timers are now dependant on the windup time (starting only after cooldown time) rather than a fixed timer.

Results:

• Tactical maps (and unique each game)
• Warp is great for more pacifist/cautious plays, as it's slightly benefits fleets inside systems jumping only a few systems further. Best tech for defensive fleets or getting caught of guard. The ideology here is that warp tech 'catapults' you to your destination, so after a jump you need to charge up the warp banks again, but once charged are easier quick to access.
• Hyperdrives are the median tech, being faster than warp on longer distances, but being able to move quickly once arrived. Ideology: You access a hyperspace slipstream (as explained in Advanced Quantum Mechanics 403) and ride this interstellar highway. Accessing this hyperspace takes most of the effort, thus shorter cooldown afterwards and because it's a slipstream you move slightly faster than warp.
• Wormhole tech would allow for a bit more strategic micro, with a superior speed within your own borders, as well as surgical strikes across borders for a first offensive in warfare, but being able to be 'snared' by destroying their wormhole stations. Ideology: You create wormholes to travel near-instantly to the location. Ships now have their own wormhole generator, but a station is can generate a single large one faster, which means you also guarantee to arrive 'in formation.'
• Jump is sort of the culmination of all techs, abusing wormholes to another (smaller) dimension and move there through warp/hyperlanes.
• Emergency FTL is now more balanced around the effective tech with (cooldown+)windup being the limiting factor.

 

[Drowe]

Well I think they hinted in the stream that making every galaxy require the hyperlane routes would be more interesting (tactically speaking) compared to the generic blobbing it is now.

For me, I think the FTL choices would be more interesting with the following options:

• All players always use hypermaps
• Warp has a shorter windup, but a slightly lower travel speed and a long cooldown period. As a bonus, they can travel from anywhere in the system.
• Hyperdrives have medium windup & medium travel speed, but a short cooldown at arrival.
• Wormholes remain the same, with long fleet-dependant windup and faster travel speed and a short-medium cooldown, windup/cooldown time can be cut in half with a (cheaper) wormhole station present on either side. (can be enemy station as well to make it more interesting)
• Jump drives get the best of all worlds give or take, with short-medium windup, short cooldown and atleast wormhole speed (+50% for psi) combined into one package.
• As an extra, Emergency FTL timers are now dependant on the windup time (starting only after cooldown time) rather than a fixed timer.

Results:

• Tactical maps (and unique each game)
• Warp is great for more pacifist/cautious plays, as it's slightly benefits fleets inside systems jumping only a few systems further. Best tech for defensive fleets or getting caught of guard. The ideology here is that warp tech 'catapults' you to your destination, so after a jump you need to charge up the warp banks again, but once charged are easier quick to access.
• Hyperdrives are the median tech, being faster than warp on longer distances, but being able to move quickly once arrived. Ideology: You access a hyperspace slipstream (as explained in Advanced Quantum Mechanics 403) and ride this interstellar highway. Accessing this hyperspace takes most of the effort, thus shorter cooldown afterwards and because it's a slipstream you move slightly faster than warp.
• Wormhole tech would allow for a bit more strategic micro, with a superior speed within your own borders, as well as surgical strikes across borders for a first offensive in warfare, but being able to be 'snared' by destroying their wormhole stations. Ideology: You create wormholes to travel near-instantly to the location. Ships now have their own wormhole generator, but a station is can generate a single large one faster, which means you also guarantee to arrive 'in formation.'
• Jump is sort of the culmination of all techs, abusing wormholes to another (smaller) dimension and move there through warp/hyperlanes.
• Emergency FTL is now more balanced around the effective tech with (cooldown+)windup being the limiting factor.

What do you think about an alternative approach, make Hyperlanes be the default FTL method at game start, but be able to research an alternate method around mid game, those would then be wormhole and warp. Warp can use Hyperlanes too, but also allows to travel between stars without using them, albeit at a slower pace. Wormholes work basically the same way they do now. In the end game, you get jump drives for warp users and permanent artificial wormholes for wormhole users, the former works like the current does, while the latter makes it easy to move large fleets within your empire very fast and across unlimited distances, but you need to build incredibly expensive structures for that, which, unlike wormhole stations, can only be built inside your borders. This means, there is a trade-off between both advanced FTL methods, wormholes give an amazing defensive advantage, but are somewhat limited on the offensive, jump drives are much more flexible, but also slower, especially over long distances. Getting the advanced FTL drives would shake up the galaxy and completely change the game, giving an incredible advantage to those empires who get it early.

More on topic, another thing that would breaks up doomstacks somewhat, is to give your fleets something to do during peace, similar to protecting trade in EU4. It should be something that doesn't require more micro than activating auto explore on science ships, but should have consequences if it wasn't done. Actually it should be something that you should keep doing during war to deter enemy raids on commercial targets, but if you really need the extra ships, you can recall them. Negative consequences could be unhappy sectors and colonies as a result of piracy. Core systems might want a fleet to protect them and object to them being taken out of your borders (-25% happiness because of insufficient protection, or something that ticks up) the same with sectors.

Someone brought up having sectors act more like vassals in CK2, they build their own fleets, and you can raise them like levies. Which starts a ticking penalty to happiness (maybe they could have their own faction where this is applied to), until the ships are returned, which lowers the penalty according to the percentage of surviving ships.

 

[sterrius]

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.

In my head a combination of the two should be enough to fix most of the issue and some others alongside it.
First lets talk about the supply system.

1-> Need to be easy for the AI to be able to understand it and use it well.
2-> Need to be easy so you don´t make mistakes and don´t need to look at a table or excel to know how to min-max it.

Lets start.
Before talking about a supply system we need to talk about the FTL system.

No matter the FTL you choose one thing is clear.
-> Once you jump you're on your own.

There is no gas station, farmland etc on the other side and even if the home system could send help it would stay outside the gravity well. So any idea of "supply chain" can´t exist in stellaris the way it exist in HOI4. Its much more like EU4 where you "live from the land".

So this means every ship must bring all its fuel to keep working. No matter your FTL type all species use Reactors to work on sub-light speed and fire its weapons.

So lets explain this system.

Each celestial body would give a X amount of fuel/day. This amount is based on their type (EX: A gas giant > A barren planet) and also if they are neutral or under enemy control or allied control. (A mined asteroid give more fuel/day. A enemy mined asteroid give 0).

The ships would work like this.

Corvetter - 1 Fuel/day. 30 fuel stockpile
Destroyer - 2 fuel/day. 60 fuel stockpile
Cruiser - 4 fuel/day. 120 fuel stockpile
Battleship - 8 fuel/day 240 fuel stockpile

This means that without help they have enough resources for 1 month. 1 Month moving, fighting, bombing etc. (Jumping to other systems would cost X days based on your FTL method to balance the 3).

Staying still and not moving consume only 40% of the normal consumption rate. This way you can stay combat rdy in system more scarce of resources. (But not all).

Lets say im moving 4 battleships + 6 cruisers + 8 DD´s + 16 corvetters = 100 fuel/day with 3000 fuel Stockpile.

I decide to move from my home system to a ystem close enough that have.

1 K type Star
3 Asteroids (1 being mined).
1 Gas giant.

With my current tech lets say they give.

star -> 10 fuel/day
Asteroids -> 4 fuel/day each.
Mined asteroid -> 7 Fuel/day
Gas giant -> 15 fuel/day

total = 40 fuel/day,

This means that each day i move/fight etc in this system i will lose 60 fuel. This means my fleet will run out of fuel in 50 days.
If i stop my consumption will go from 100 to 40/day. Just enough to stay still and don´t lose everything.

I position myself close to the mining station and wait my enemy almost full.

The enemy have a same size fleet and enters the system.

He also gets resources from the system now. But the mined asteroid is under enemy control. So he don´t get those. Instead of 40/day he only gets 33/day. He better hurry and finish off the enemy or it can become problematic if the fight drags on for too long.


What this system provides.

1-> Doomstack limit -> This system don´t care if you stack is one or multiple stacks. The only thing that matters is how many ships are in the system and how much Fuel/Day you can harvest with your current technology.

This means that outside your borders it becomes quite hard to afford doomstacks outside of rich systems full of planets and gas giants. This "raiload" a doomstack allowing the enemy to prepare a better defense as he know you need to go that route if you want to go all or nothing . (adding strategy).

I used 30 days to explain but in fact fuel must be balanced to be something that is always a problem. Something that can never be fully solved. Attacking should require strategic thinking and planning. Not being just a "click enemy planet, watch fireworks, end the invasion"


2-> Scout becomes a strategy -> How to bring a doomstack to target B with most fuel to spare? It looks like nothing to a close enemy but it can be vital if you need to cross half the galaxy to face the unbidden.


3-> Defense > Attack but not in a unfair way. -> Your stations and planets keep your fleet full of fuel. So in fact staying still in your homeworld can be a strategy hard to crack. Specially early game where you usually only have 1 planet. Its up to the attacker to either kill you by atrittion or make sure you will leave the system to save something too important to lose.

No matter. Head-On attacks are now more difficulty as the attacker have limited supply outside its territory and must execute its plan and retreat to a place where it can prepare itself for another attack.

4-> Easy to see and for AI to also see -> Sure it looks complicated when we talk about fuel like that. But minor UI changes can easily show you how much fuel you will get in each system. Also the AI can easily work on this or even have a help to not be affected so much by it. (Not really cheating).



With doomstacks kind of limited defense stations and dockyards now can be worked out to actually be balanced towards the new values and be worth something outside of just being a slow down. (players and AI that invest in defense should get their reward that is the enemy losing ships to take it).

sure i don´t talked about a lot of things. but the core of the system is here and should at least give new ideas (I hope ).

 

[deathcoy]

Mobile Fortress Megastructure. Being a megastructure it can take on 50k-200k fleets depending on its upgrade levels and its mainly for late game(which is when doomstacks are prevalent).

Can single jump to any location but within your borders only though with a moderately long charge up and cooldown.
Slow moving but weapons amplified with double range for further reach in large systems.
Each upgrade level unlocks new weapon and module slots as well as special auras inherent to the fortress that affects allies in the system.
Each upgrade tier also unlocks one of many special fortress specific weapons but you can only unlock a maximum of 4, thus it'll allow players to further specialize their fortress.
Base aura is a FTL snare that is much more effective than current snare aura module and it is system wide.
Final upgrade unlocks a gateway to allow fleets to single jump to its location or an FTL funnel trap with a projected radius of effect that'll cause any hostile fleet that FTLs through or into the radius to directly exit in the same system as the fortress.

 

[Fungineer]

In my head a combination of the two should be enough to fix most of the issue and some others alongside it.
First lets talk about the supply system.

1-> Need to be easy for the AI to be able to understand it and use it well.
2-> Need to be easy so you don´t make mistakes and don´t need to look at a table or excel to know how to min-max it.

Lets start.
Before talking about a supply system we need to talk about the FTL system.

No matter the FTL you choose one thing is clear.
-> Once you jump you're on your own.

There is no gas station, farmland etc on the other side and even if the home system could send help it would stay outside the gravity well. So any idea of "supply chain" can´t exist in stellaris the way it exist in HOI4. Its much more like EU4 where you "live from the land".

So this means every ship must bring all its fuel to keep working. No matter your FTL type all species use Reactors to work on sub-light speed and fire its weapons.

So lets explain this system.

Each celestial body would give a X amount of fuel/day. This amount is based on their type (EX: A gas giant > A barren planet) and also if they are neutral or under enemy control or allied control. (A mined asteroid give more fuel/day. A enemy mined asteroid give 0).

The ships would work like this.

Corvetter - 1 Fuel/day. 30 fuel stockpile
Destroyer - 2 fuel/day. 60 fuel stockpile
Cruiser - 4 fuel/day. 120 fuel stockpile
Battleship - 8 fuel/day 240 fuel stockpile

This means that without help they have enough resources for 1 month. 1 Month moving, fighting, bombing etc. (Jumping to other systems would cost X days based on your FTL method to balance the 3).

Staying still and not moving consume only 40% of the normal consumption rate. This way you can stay combat rdy in system more scarce of resources. (But not all).

Lets say im moving 4 battleships + 6 cruisers + 8 DD´s + 16 corvetters = 100 fuel/day with 3000 fuel Stockpile.

I decide to move from my home system to a ystem close enough that have.

1 K type Star
3 Asteroids (1 being mined).
1 Gas giant.

With my current tech lets say they give.

star -> 10 fuel/day
Asteroids -> 4 fuel/day each.
Mined asteroid -> 7 Fuel/day
Gas giant -> 15 fuel/day

total = 40 fuel/day,

This means that each day i move/fight etc in this system i will lose 60 fuel. This means my fleet will run out of fuel in 50 days.
If i stop my consumption will go from 100 to 40/day. Just enough to stay still and don´t lose everything.

I position myself close to the mining station and wait my enemy almost full.

The enemy have a same size fleet and enters the system.

He also gets resources from the system now. But the mined asteroid is under enemy control. So he don´t get those. Instead of 40/day he only gets 33/day. He better hurry and finish off the enemy or it can become problematic if the fight drags on for too long.


What this system provides.

1-> Doomstack limit -> This system don´t care if you stack is one or multiple stacks. The only thing that matters is how many ships are in the system and how much Fuel/Day you can harvest with your current technology.

This means that outside your borders it becomes quite hard to afford doomstacks outside of rich systems full of planets and gas giants. This "raiload" a doomstack allowing the enemy to prepare a better defense as he know you need to go that route if you want to go all or nothing . (adding strategy).

I used 30 days to explain but in fact fuel must be balanced to be something that is always a problem. Something that can never be fully solved. Attacking should require strategic thinking and planning. Not being just a "click enemy planet, watch fireworks, end the invasion"


2-> Scout becomes a strategy -> How to bring a doomstack to target B with most fuel to spare? It looks like nothing to a close enemy but it can be vital if you need to cross half the galaxy to face the unbidden.


3-> Defense > Attack but not in a unfair way. -> Your stations and planets keep your fleet full of fuel. So in fact staying still in your homeworld can be a strategy hard to crack. Specially early game where you usually only have 1 planet. Its up to the attacker to either kill you by atrittion or make sure you will leave the system to save something too important to lose.

No matter. Head-On attacks are now more difficulty as the attacker have limited supply outside its territory and must execute its plan and retreat to a place where it can prepare itself for another attack.

4-> Easy to see and for AI to also see -> Sure it looks complicated when we talk about fuel like that. But minor UI changes can easily show you how much fuel you will get in each system. Also the AI can easily work on this or even have a help to not be affected so much by it. (Not really cheating).



With doomstacks kind of limited defense stations and dockyards now can be worked out to actually be balanced towards the new values and be worth something outside of just being a slow down. (players and AI that invest in defense should get their reward that is the enemy losing ships to take it).

sure i don´t talked about a lot of things. but the core of the system is here and should at least give new ideas (I hope ).

That would just turn war into a tiresome game of Whack-A-Fleet with 10 small fleets scooting around wrecking your industry. Which is also one of my major bugbears with the AI because the "thousand cuts" strategy as implemented by the AI goes like this:
1. Attack mining stations
2. Get squashed by responder force
3. Rebuild stations
4 GOTO 1

 

[sterrius]

@Fungineer

it will only become like that if the supply is balanced to be too low to allow a good amount of firepower per fleet.

For lategame my idea is having fleets of 50-100k being quite normal as those are the values you need to defeat a unbidden or leviathan.
At the start yes, more "thousand cuts" as it would make no sense to already have this much supply early game where all you have are 15-20 corvettes.

Its all abou the flow.

About the scout part my idea is just sending some corvettes ahead so you know where you're going.

You either allow 2-10 fleets at same time (Plus doomstacks) or live with only doomstacks.
You can´t have both.

 

[redeemer216]

I think there should be attrition when orbiting a non occupied enemy planet. I like the idea of smaller fleets getting an accuracy bonus against larger fleets as well. There should be some sort of logistics system at least. Right now there isn't one to speak of, which is a major issue with this game for me atm. There needs to be an attition system. No, ships should not get damaged, just the longer a ship is outside friendly territory, the more inefficient they become. Larger fleets incur this penalty faster.

Also as someone mentioned, why is there no concept of morale in this game? I haven't played in a while, but can ships retreat by sublight yet? None of the logistical concepts of real naval warfare exist, which is the real problem right now.

As others have said, a soft cap on fleet size (based on admiral skills), is a good idea, makes sense realistically and would play a part in partially solving doomstack issues.

Really doomstacks are only ONE effect of the biggest issue with this game, and that is the complete lack of a logistics system. The devs need really need to think about a patch focusing entirely on fleet and ground troop logistics.

 

[sterrius]

I think there should be attrition when orbiting a non occupied enemy planet. I like the idea of smaller fleets getting an accuracy bonus against larger fleets as well. There should be some sort of logistics system at least. Right now there isn't one to speak of, which is a major issue with this game for me atm. There needs to be an attition system. No, ships should not get damaged, just the longer a ship is outside friendly territory, the more inefficient they become. Larger fleets incur this penalty faster.

Really doomstacks are only ONE effect of the biggest issue with this game, and that is the complete lack of a logistics system. The devs need really need to think about a patch focusing entirely on fleet and ground troop logistics.

Atrittion can be done while you bomb planets. I always think its too safe for fleets to bombard planets.

I remember imperium galactica II. A 2000´s game from a dead developer but still one of the best out there (if you don´t played do it, its on steam now). It does have a very interesting siege mode where entering the planet the planet itself have Earth => Space weapons that can target ships. And they where not something to laugh and ignore.

The distance from surface / orbit is nothing compared to the distance of the space itself.

this alone should damage your fleet forcing you to stop after each planet. (At least the heavy populated ones). Or even lose some ships.

 

[redeemer216]

Atrittion can be done while you bomb planets. I always think its too safe for fleets to bombard planets.

I remember imperium galactica II. A 2000´s game from a dead developer but still one of the best out there (if you don´t played do it, its on steam now). It does have a very interesting siege mode where entering the planet the planet itself have Earth => Space weapons that can target ships. And they where not something to laugh and ignore.

The distance from surface / orbit is nothing compared to the distance of the space itself.

this alone should damage your fleet forcing you to stop after each planet. (At least the heavy populated ones). Or even lose some ships.

Wow, that game looks amazing, can't believe i've never heard of it. Outdated, but in some of the comments people are calling it the best 4X game. Might be a little outdated, but I definitely like those concepts.

 

[REJS7]

To reiterate the point I made previously, if you tackle doomstacks in a way that nerfs fleets for player or AI, you are going to have to change the fundamental way in which Stellaris is designed.

Consider the following:
1) If you put a distance cap on resources you effectively limit the player's ability to tackle crisis events that happen externally to their empire. This is fine if the crisis is contained, but often the AI is simply not up to the task of handling a war in heaven or an end game crisis by itself.
2) Doomstacks are a symptom of the way the game is fundamentally designed, and if you want to introduce changes you will have to rework the entire combat mechanic from the ground up. This is not impossible, but will it change the game in such a way as to make a better experience for the player?
3) Are doomstacks ruining the experience of Stellaris, or is it the fact that it combat by its nature is spoiling your experience? If it is large stacks of ships sinking your resources in order to defend against all possible scenarios that is your issue with the game then that means the combat is the issue. If is the fact that in order to win the game more-often-than-not you need to have a large military to achieve success then that begs the question that the game needs valid alternatives to combat in order to succeed within the game.

I have read through all the responses on the thread so far, and I want to get to the heart of the games development angle on this issue. Doomstacks cannot be nerfed, as they are at the heart of many of the original design decisions that went into the core concept of the game. Without the ability to field a large fleet, or field a large fleet without significant penalties, the game will need to be rebalanced in order to reward diplomacy, trade, and spying. Without strong mechanics in these areas the player is left without a fundamental alternative to massive fleets, as they are then left exposed to the uber threats that will decimate any empire without a strong military.

Whatever solution that is decided upon, without going back to the basic principals of why combat is so important Stellaris will invariably bog down in another mire of combat over everything else.

Now, all of this said, here are some ideas I had that could address the military imbalance within the game without detrimentally effecting the ability to deal with the large threats:

1) System/monitor ship - ships that are only capable of navigating within a system, and cannot travel to other systems. These ships could be titan sized or larger in scope and cost, with the ability to defend against marauding fleets. There are many downsides to this, namely the resource sink they would take, but they could act as essentially mobile fortresses that can add weight to your defenses early to mid-game before doomstacks become a thing.

2) Shield cool down - make shields have a cool down period after FTL, giving defenders a chance to attack marauding fleets before shields can come on line. This would up the risk to an attacking fleet, giving the defenders a temporary advantage. The downside to this is that players would shift their fleet to armour over shields. The fix would be tech that allows for faster shield recycling, deploying a scout to check where the enemy fleet is prior to jumping, and having an overwhelming fleet.

Stations have the ability to effect a fleet's movement, health/shield restoration, so it would not be a stretch to make this core part of the game.

3) Choke points - other people have touched on choke points in the past, and the devs have used choke points and impassible terrain in HoI4, EU4, and CK2 to make those games more strategic. Given that space is, well, space, the idea of a terrain choke point is harder to effectively design. One example could be to make nebulas and other stellar features have more of a direct impact on FTL speeds, shields, damage etc, forcing more strategic deployment of forces. This would have the added advantage of helping better shape empire shape, and also forcing the bigger threats into taking stellar terrain into account when they move across the map. The biggest downside to this would be programming the AI to take account/advantage of the terrain changes.

4) Bring in a form of planetary defense network, such as cannons, fighter squadrons, minefields - things that are present in Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG etc. These would have the effect of giving planets the ability to defend themselves without the need to bring a fleet in, with the added bonus of requiring an attacker to commit more heavily to a planetary assault. You could place these building either in a new tab or rejig the army tab to include them in the same way CK2 has hospitals and palaces (you could also move planetary shields to this tab as well). If planets were not as exposed to assault, especially when you can have one corvette besieging a planet if the station has been destroyed, it would enable more tactical and strategic game play.

Planetary defenses would have a maintenance cost, and would be nerfed by orbital bombardment, with the ability to repair them much in the same way shields and ships are repaired now.

For me this is would add a whole new dimension to the strategic equation, add good fluff to the game, and enable the tall player to better withstand the mechinations of a wide empire.

5) Diplomacy - this is a thorny issue, as this is a circular discussion about the game that is being tackled in many other threads. It cuts to the heart of a major issue with the game, namely that you need a doomstack to forestall wipeout by a powerful aggressor. If the diplomatic options were more nuanced, especially if you have the ability to win over even the most intractable opponent, then nerfing or building doomstacks would only be one option available within the game. At present mutually assured destruction is often the only thing stopping an AI attacking you (or vice versa), so a way of talking through issues would mean that doomstacks would not be the most practical means of dealing with your opponent.

This could even go as far as enabling diplomatic options for fallen empires and end game crisises if the right technology or ascension perk is taken, thus dealing with those threats without having the raise a massive fleet.


TLR: If you nerf doomstacks, or impose penalties, without first addressing the fundamental imbalance in alternative game mechanics you will end up screwing over all empires when it comes time to deal with the overarching threats within the game.

 

[Legendsmith]

To reiterate the point I made previously, if you tackle doomstacks in a way that nerfs fleets for player or AI, you are going to have to change the fundamental way in which Stellaris is designed
...
2) Doomstacks are a symptom of the way the game is fundamentally designed,.

No it's not. I can not say that enough. Doomstack superiority is a symptom of the current mechanics and rules of the game but it is not a symptom of Stellaris' fundamental design. Previous to the recent patches, when blockades gave warscore, players would position fleets along borders, and then declare war. Their fleets would quickly travel to enemy planets and start blockading/bombarding them immediately, often ending the war extremely quickly. No doomstacks there.

What changed was that bombardment/blockading no longer gave warscore and planet captures gave very little warscore too. Combined with the fact that there was no consequences to a planet for letting it be captured, there was no reason to target anything else other than the enemy fleet, and thus Stellaris warfare became about combatants throwing their biggest fleets at each other and then mopping up afterwards, especially as combat is so deadly that a defeated fleet sustains complete losses, or near complete losses.
None of the things described above are fundamental to Stellaris.

You are however, correct in saying that doomstacks should not just be outright nerfed. But that has already been extensively discussed in the thread and lightly mentioned in my summary. That's why I made the summary, to stop people making the Nth suggestion of 'admiral fleet caps' and other such things that don't actually solve the problem and just slow down discussion.) The next summary is going to state this more clearly so we don't have to keep having discussions about how we shouldn't straight nerf doomstacks). That's not what participators in this thread are saying anyway.
That all said; your suggested changes are superficial at best. While I like some of them in principle (choke points are a good idea, and defence networks = system-wide auras), they don't really fix the problem at all, or even begin to address it.
It's true that we need to retain the ability to deal with large threats such as the end game crisis (another reason that doomstacks shouldn't be rendered impossible), but adding monitor ships (which will encourage doomstacks, and will either replace defence stations or be inferior to them), or giving shield cooldown only changes the balance of the game in an annoying way for the devs to deal with and don't address the problem.

is the fact that in order to win the game more-often-than-not you need to have a large military to achieve success then that begs the question that the game needs valid alternatives to combat in order to succeed within the game.

Also you seem to be labouring under the wrong impression. Nobody is complaining about the need to retain a large military. They are complaining about the fact that every war, and every battle is won the same way; by a single large fleet comprising of 100% of their forces (that is, a doomstack), killing the enemy's own doomstack (or easily mopping it up if it is split into smaller fleets) and then simply grinding through taking planets until surrender. The monotonous, boring, samey warfare that has no nuance, no subtlety. No strategy. That's the problem, not the fact that "you need to build lots of ships."

The changes that need to be made to the warfare gameplay are this:

1. Give more viable targets than the enemy fleet (Make planets matter in warfare).
   
2. And make the AI spread its forces out to defend them properly.

Those are the 2 fundamental changes, and they're not hard, and they won't fundamentally change the game. Every other change just goes into supporting those 2 design choices and making them even more interesting and varied. We actually had #1 before, but the AI wasn't doing #2, and the targets (blockading enemy planets) were too easy to achieve in the first place, so the devs took the 'easy way' of just removing #1 instead of implementing #2 and tweaking #1. We got Doomstacks as a result.

 

[Zer0k]

Planets as high value targets aka Consequences of invasion & bombardment

Hmmm, I might have an idea on how else this might be achieved. Some feedback and back and forth would be awesome.

The moment a war is declared, planets in your empire go into what I would call "fortification" mode. So what does fortification mode entails? I have several ideas:

1. Every month that pass, planet HP increase by some amount. Same goes for defending armies, they could get a damage buff on top of the HP one. Maybe 1% per month?

1. Fleets that are in orbit (or near the planet) get a shield/repair buff.

1. Spaceport can get the option of going into suborbital position. Spaceport now does a % of its damage to enemy fleets in orbit. Can't be too big, just enough that you'd want to get to the planet fast enough so the planets fortification isn't too high.

1. Suborbital spaceport can still build ships, just at a higher price.

1. Suborbital spaceport has a chance to destroy perhaps some of the troop transports. Can't be too many, we don't want attacking to be frustrating and too long.

1. Suborbital spaceport is destroyed once the planet's HP is reduced to 0.

1. Additional tech/edict/civic that has an effect on how big the buffs are, etc...


I feel like this can be further built upon to make the player want to split his fleets, taking one doomstack to one planet at a time make it that as time goes by it is going to be very difficult to occupy more and more planets. If you add on this less a "fear" of losing ships, such as many of the suggestions. I feel like this might work.


Now, it is the time to analysis this.

 

[sterrius]

@Legendsmith.

I still strongly support that while doomstacks should never be nerfed to ground. (We all like a battle of yavin/ ME3 showdown) we still need some kind of soft cap.

Fleet size can´t be that cap. We need something to adress the fact that doomstacks right now have a infinity potential. They can grown and grown and no amount of giving multiple targets can fix that.

Admirals having a fleet limit, supply limit etc while not adressing the problem of Stacking it does fix one of the main problem. It does put a cap.
Things that have a cap are much more easy to balance. You don´t have to guess what the potential strenght of a fleet in 2350 anymore. You know the strenght of that fleet.

It don´t have to be a small cap, or even a hardcap. But some kind of limit must exist. EU4 have atrittion, HOI4 have width, Stellaris must have something to deal with this issue.

if this is not adressed we can´t even begin to talk about defenses, atrittion and other things.

About the 2 problems you gave.

1-> I will even say more. Planets are too few and far beetween to matter in this question. They will just add half a dozen targets and in the end very little will change.

What you need is to give potential for every system to matter.

How?

1-> Space stations not linked to planets -> Allow empires to create "Mass system Dockyards" with multiple stations. This way empires can "Hide" their production bases and striking planets is not anymore a sure way to victory as the enemy can rebuild, and rebuild fast until that dockyard is found and dealt with.

Empires would think twice before doing a DOW in a empire that have a very hidden ship construction base somewhere, likely hidden in a good chokepoint. (Reason the federation won the federation/klingon war even with them losing most of their ships on a battle, the federation had time to rebuild its fleet and updated strategys).

2-> More station customization -> We really can use some extra upgrades to stations to really make them a "jack of all trades". They are kind of fine on the production area but they still lack production and defense modules.

3-> Resource flow during war -> Outside of running system by system and destroying suicidal stations there is little you can do to limit the flow of resource both sides of the war take. Again this beat to some kind of supply system where you can interrupt the flow of resources to the empire capital and force the enemy to react or face starvation.

How to defend this with the actual systems?

We would need new tools. Why think small and of system only systems?

1-> Anti-FTL Field -> Ships can´t enter in a specific system until the defense station is killed. That defense station is in another system. The radius is kind small so you don´t have to search much and you can´t have 2 stations defending the same system. (To avoid spam). Also changing the system is impossible. (You need to choose what system to defend on the moment you create the station).

2-> Planetary Shield -> A Station that can shield a whole planet. This way you can make a hell of a defense in one side of the system while the planet is protected from any bombardment until the station is dealt with. Again, same mechanic. After choosing the planet they can´t change the object they defend.

Those are just two ideas, many more can appear to make systems become valid military targets by denying the opponent their real target until the problem is dealt with.


About planets.
Planets need to stop being colonized only by resource purporses. Sometimes a planet is the best chokepoint you can think off. Being a Defense planet is totally possible if you give them enough tools for that.

Planetary cannons/missile/lasers to help fleets.
Planetary shields already exist
Planetary bombardment reaction force. (To slow harass random ships and inflict dmg).

A better ship/planet combat is really badly needed. Something some players talked since 1.0.
This way you also reduce the potential resources of a planet, slowing the game a little >). Everyone will want some defenses on the border planets.


Also another way of making planets matter more is to heavily slower the ground combat. Right now there is 0 hope of ever getting reinforcements from another planet. The combat ends too quickly.

Taking a planet by force combat should take months/years. Not days.

I think the initial combat is fine, it just that need to be A LOT SLOWER. Taking at least 6 months when both sides have equal strenght.
This add the opportunity of reinforcements to both sides.

After winning the main battle it should have a "guerrila phase" where your troops needs to clear sector by sector any POP from any resistance. That should take weeks to months for each POP in the planet and depends on the amount of traits/tech etc the planet have.

So taking a 25sized planet with 25 pops now would take 4-5 years to pacify everything. Slowing a lot the attacker.

With this you make planets very hard to take.

1-> First they can shoot back the moment the enemy enters orbit. So now you need to take the planet itself out.
2-> After that you need to leave quite a number of ships otherwise they will not withstand the harass and will die.
3-> Troops must com a lot of them will be trapped in a guerrilla war shutting down any resistance. (X-Com never surrender ^^).

This make the option of striking multiple planets much much harder.


The problem 2. Can only be solved after you imput a limit to the doomstack size and fix the problem 1.

The AI can never catch up to a human in efficiency and is always going to be a flaw in their coding allowing you to "bait" the AI. So for them to spread their fleet first you need to give a reason for the AI to do so. ALso a reason for the players.

 

[Drowe]

We don't need a soft cap. We have relatively few causes that together result in doomstacks.

1. The way battles work. Every fight only ends when one side is annihilated or flees. Fleeing is only possible if you can survive for at least a month. A fleet that is engaged in battle will always fly towards the enemy, whether it has any chance to win or not.
2. Lack of targets. Only your fleet directly influences your ability to fight. Spaceports serve as secondary targets only because they have the ability to produce ships. Planets only give warscore and armies, so they are mostly irrelevant to the outcome of a war. Space based defenses can do little more than slow an attacker down and space based industry is even less valuable than that.
3. Lack of interaction between warfare and economy. You can't seriously reduce an empire's capability to fight by targeting the economy. You also can't win a war because of a superior economy. And targeting the economy doesn't have long term consequences.

Those three things all support doomstacks and discourage spreading your fleets to attack or defend multiple targets. Point one means a small fleet engaged by a doomstack gets destroyed, leading you to create doomstacks to protect your fleet. Point two means under no circumstances are you willing to sacrifice your fleet to protect any target, unless not doing so would cause you to lose the war. And point three only compounds point two, since if you can prevent losing a war by recapturing planets, protecting planets is usually more costly than retaking them once the enemy fleet has moved on, especially if you can't win a pitched battle.

 

[mostballerwizard]

I really appreciated that summary. It goes a long way towards making a 37 page thread approachable.

I think the problem isn't doomstacks, exactly. The problem is that Stellaris combat isn't very satisfying. The ship designer appears designed to give players choices about how to configure their fleet over the course of a war, but you can't really get information on enemy fleets before the war starts, and the single engagement nature makes it hard to take advantage of the information after the fact. You can't make any real choices during the fight itself, either, and if you could the game would probably suffer from the micro.

I like the morale pitch - letting defeated fleets retreat seems like it'd solve a lot of problems. You could reconfigure your fleet to match their configuration, or change to what you think will counter whatever they change to. You also wouldn't have the problem where a 10% advantage leads to both of you virtually wiping one another out, which forces the player to spend a lot of time rebuilding but isn't very fun.

 

[REJS7]

No it's not. I can not say that enough. Doomstack superiority is a symptom of the current mechanics and rules of the game but it is not a symptom of Stellaris' fundamental design. Previous to the recent patches, when blockades gave warscore, players would position fleets along borders, and then declare war. Their fleets would quickly travel to enemy planets and start blockading/bombarding them immediately, often ending the war extremely quickly. No doomstacks there.

With respect I disagree. Naval combat in Stellaris is a core mechanic around which almost every other mechanic within the game is build. Research, unity, colonisation, and diplomacy all pretty much hinge on naval prowess/combat strength, and if changes are made to how naval forces operate within the game virtually all the other mechanics will have to be rebalanced.

I think I am coming at this problem from a different angle to the rest of the thread - namely I am trying to look at the game holistically when trying to address the doomstack issue, rather than attempting to address it piece meal. You said I was looking at things superficially, and yes, to I point, I am, because I do not see doomstacks as a real issue per se with the way the current balance in the game is set up; rather, I see the balance of the game as a whole as the root cause of the current issues.

As a fundamental redesign of the game's balance and structure are not on the cards at this point in time outside of a full mod overhaul, the question then comes down to how to address the issues of wars, fleets, and player enjoyment of the Stellaris combat experience. No matter how this is fixed, and this thread has raked over every point in a deep and meanful way, ultimately the solution has to present the player with a challenge and provide an experience that will keep people playing the game.

Stellaris is aiming to be the best 4x game on the market, and to achieve this has a combat mechanism that is a simulation based on a set of hard wired numbers for the various elements that make up a ship and fleet. I appreciate that I am being fairly basic with this, but please bear with me. In order for the fleet mechanics to be a more indepth combat simulation, one where the player has any direct control over the fleets and combat, Paradox will have to change their overall approach to combat within their games - simply put, direct combat and manipulation of force control within combat has never been a part of a Paradox game. Granted the devs can/will learn how to program an effective combat simulation, but for the forseeable future this runs against the grain of all the other games that Paradox has produced.

So, this begs the question as to how to fix the doomstack problem without having a fundamental rethink of how Paradox approaches combat from a development perspective. If a satisfying approach for the player is to provide a more hands on combat simulation then the devs will need to tackle combat in a new way for Paradox; otherwise, the visual simulation that is presented to the player whenever two fleets engage will need to have a more concerted rewrite in order to provide a satisfying experience to players of all ability levels.

My ultimate point is that doomstacks, and all the solutions this thread has suggested, will only be resolved if a) the solution provides for a better player experience and b) if the devs choose to take a different approach to combat than the ones which Paradox has historically taken. Once you take these into account, unless the devs do a root and branch rethink, any solution to this problem will be tinkering around the edges, rather than changing the fundamental naval mechanics that are presently in the game.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

What if larger fleets get a longer cooldown/travel period?

I think that could be a fairly useful idea. It makes sense that a larger fleet could be slowed down for a variety of reasons. However, I'd still like to see an across-the-board reduction in FTL speeds.

 

[sterrius]

@REJS7

The fact we don´t have direct control over our fleet is no problem at all for stellaris.

Some games like Sword of Stars and Endless space does give some control, but they are not the main factor of a fight. Its just there to give the player something to do as watching a fight for 3+ minutes doing nothing can be boring. (And reward the player for using the system).

The real main problem of combat in stellaris is not within the combat itself. (While it can have improvements to become more strategic, right now i agree its too simple).

It really is about how fast the war is managed. Its about logistics, strategic targets and the speed/flow of the war.

-> In EU games you can recover easily as forts will slow down a attacker even if you lose badly. You can buid chokepoints that will stop or slow the enemy buying you time to recover.

-> In HOI4 its possible to spam units to fight a atrittion battle, slow down enemys with forts. A lot of ways to control or manipulate the direction of the war.

-> In Sins of a solar empire taking planets take time and defense is stronger than offense for most of the game. So unless you know what you're doing you will have to face huge losses to pierce the enemy defenses. After taking it not much will be left forcing you to replenish your forces and secure the new system. WHile at same time stopping the defender from striking somewhere else.

-> In Endles space fleets have a MAximum Cap. This means doomstacks there have a power limit and after that point its about technology and good building strategy. Two fleets can fight one after another but not at same time. Thx to being turn based.


I can use more examples but you always end with a system that either.

A) Stop the enemy from moving foward after a victory. Either by consuming time or by doing enough damage that further progress is either suicidal or too costly.

B) The stop must be a defense you can build or geography to help low forces to beat a stronger opponent. Harder to do in space and in stellaris but far from impossible. Its just defense and tools to create chokepoints are close to non existant.

B) It gives enough time to the defeated player to rebuild. It should be more than enough time as the resources must be the restriction to how many ships he can build back.


Having 3 different kinds of FTL do make things harder but not impossible. (Sword of stars did it right).



- War must be slower. Right now the only time consuming part is taking planets but by them the war is over already.

- tools to create chokepoints must exist.

I already said some new ideas, far from being the only ones...

-> Station that stop a fleet of doing a FTL to X system until its destroyed.
-> Station that re-direct a FTL Fleet to system Y forcing them to attack there.
-> Station that creates a shield around a planet, forcing you to again hunt for them in a specific place.
-> the Station that slow FTL should have a galaxy radius instead of being only on orbit. This way slowing the enemy too much too be ignored.

Some others already said.

-> Better "universe hazards".
-> Nebulas need to slow more FTL. Maybe also make a debuff to lasers.
-> Maybe some system having a asteroid field to give debuffs to missiles / projectiles in orbit. (Yes, kind of not realistic, but its fun).
-> Blackholes Eating shields (so your armor fleet fight better there).
-> Pulsars reducing armor if your shields are down.


With tools to create chokepoints and hazards to reduce the places a enemy can use to invade a player can finally work some kind of defense to really slow the enemy down.
Sure some FTL´s are more difficulty to defend, with wormwholes again having a advantage but this can also be balanced.


But nothing above means anything without a good defense system. SOmething to not only slow down. To also damage the enemy in a way that he needs to wait for new ships to keep pushing.

For that the defense stations need to start working.
But for them to work doomstacks need to have a limit. Otherwise no matter how much you buff them you will eventually turn them useless.

A limit also works to keep the T1 and T2 defense stations useful.


Also not only space defense. THe planets themselves need to be difficulty to take and easy to defend. Taking a planet of 5 billion people with just some thousand troops should never be easy no matter how much you bomb the planet. Its a lot of people that will fight to the end as the option usually is not pretty. (With so many slavers, purifiers etc ).

 

[Drowe]

A) Stop the enemy from moving foward after a victory. Either by consuming time or by doing enough damage that further progress is either suicidal or too costly.

Alternative solution, you need to protect your rear to guard supply lines, because even a couple of corvettes can take on a freighter. They'd also be impossible to catch with a doomstack.

Another solution is to have lasting consequences for not defending your space based industry. If it takes years to rebuild a destroyed mining complex and even longer until it runs at full capacity (assuming fewer mining stations with higher yields) then leaving your empire unprotected is not a good idea. Or if leaving your system open for bombardment had both immediate and long-term consequences if someone did it. You don't need a full battle fleet to overcome a spaceport, a cruiser and a couple corvettes should do the trick. And just bombarding the planet for as long as they can before retreating might actually hurt your economy quite a bit (assuming the consequences mentioned above). If you can systematically destroy an empire's ability to support their fleet and if that has consequences for the fleet's ability to fight (lack of ammunition/expendable coolant for beam weapons) then running a doomstack is pretty risky unless you are fighting something like an endgame crisis.

B) The stop must be a defense you can build or geography to help low forces to beat a stronger opponent. Harder to do in space and in stellaris but far from impossible. Its just defense and tools to create chokepoints are close to non existant.

No it doesn't, there are plenty of alternative solutions to achieve the same thing. If a weaker force can disrupt your economy for a long time and damage the ability of your doomstack to fight at full power, then no matter how strong you are covering more systems needs spreading out your fleet. Creating choke points isn't strictly necessary if you need to spread out your fleet because even a weaker fleet can harm your ability to fight.

B) It gives enough time to the defeated player to rebuild. It should be more than enough time as the resources must be the restriction to how many ships he can build back.

Also solved by enabling weak forces to harm your economy in a meaningful way.

None of your proposed solutions actually make doomstacks less common. Going with a doomstack is still your best bet, because none of your proposals actually address the core issues for why we have doomstacks in the first place. All you do is slow down how fast wars are resolved. Sure more slowly resolved wars aren't a bad thing in my opinion, but you are still going to use doomstacks, you actually have to use them to crack choke points and defensive structures. You will want a big fleet to bombard a planet because that allows you to do it faster, taking a small force to harass enemy planets isn't a tactic that would work if you could create artificial choke points, so you don't have a reason to spread out your fleet.

I'm not saying your ideas are bad, they might work very well, but it doesn't actually address the topic we're discussing.

 

[Legendsmith]

With respect I disagree. Naval combat in Stellaris is a core mechanic around which almost every other mechanic within the game is build. Research, unity, colonisation, and diplomacy all pretty much hinge on naval prowess/combat strength, and if changes are made to how naval forces operate within the game virtually all the other mechanics will have to be rebalanced.

I think I am coming at this problem from a different angle to the rest of the thread - namely I am trying to look at the game holistically when trying to address the doomstack issue, rather than attempting to address it piece meal.

You might be trying to address it holistically, but you're failing. You've fundamentally misunderstood the discussion here. Your failure here is that you are confusing a particular with the whole (so you're doing the opposite of addressing it holistically). This became especially apparent in your reply just now.
Doomstack superiority is not the same as space combat itself.
You are talking as if the current state of space combat is the same as space combat itself. It is not. We are talking about the state of the meta, that is, doomstack superiority. Not the fact that space combat exists. Changing how opposing fleets interact and making planets more valuable will not require every other mechanic to be rebalanced.

Stellaris is aiming to be the best 4x game on the market

Stellaris is a space Grand Strategy more than it is a 4X.