Doomstacked Doomstack Doom-Thread: ReDoox

[sterrius]

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.


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.


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.

sorry if i was not clear, i kind talked less about doomstacks there and more about how to make war something you can have at least a couple of battles before its decided. Even with some kind of doomstacks if you have that option you can at least fight back and recover.

For doomstacks itself my suggestion was done in the last pages. We need to first put a limit to the fleets, like Endless Space and other space games do it.

This of course is also useless if you don´t have some kind of supply system to make sure you don´t stack your smaller fleets in a super doomstack.
It should not be impossible to stack fleets. (Ex: You need to do it to fight a leviathan or fallen empre, they are supposed to be impossible odds fights not something you can easily beat just by putting more ships to the problem), but that way you put difficultys and challenges to pull this off. Something that is possible but can´t be done in a minute or without tech or specific ships.


Other ideas like.

-> HOI4 Strategy where each admiral get strategys that help/harm them in that particular battle. Making them more important.
-> Morale to flee impossible odds. (they run but leave 10% of their ships behind to slow the enemy down).
-> Planets being more harder to take (Like said above).

All are also nice ideas and the game can benefit a lot from it, but alone they are not enough.


but if we add everything we talked in the last 2-3 pages the problems should be fixed and we should get a much better war and doomstacks while still existing they would not be a solution to every single problem.

 

[Michaelp]

In sword of the Stars planetary defenses actually worked. I had the options to build up to ten of each light,medium and heavy defense platforms around my worlds than didn't cost upkeep,and the planet itself had the ability to fire missiles,admittedly slow missiles at the start but they could be upgraded later.That at least would be a start.Why planets are unable to defend themselves remains a mystery.

 

[Drowe]

For doomstacks itself my suggestion was done in the last pages. We need to first put a limit to the fleets, like Endless Space and other space games do it.

No, that is only necessary for your solution to work. There are other solutions to the problem that do not need such limits because they rely on other mechanics that are not copied from other games.

There are a lot of alternatives that have been discussed in this thread, most have to do with requiring fleets to cover more ground, something a single doomstack is incapable of doing, to protect numerous soft but valuable targets. The second factor is increased survivability for smaller fleets, either by making it possible for them to survive long enough to retreat or by giving them the ability to avoid engagements with doomstacks entirely. The third factor is being able to destroy an empire's ability to fight by destroying soft targets.

There are more than one possible solution. And there is no best solution either, some may be better than others in certain aspects, but other solutions are better in other aspects. A solution that works for endless space or other 4X games is not necessarily good for Stellaris, because Stellaris is a hybrid of grand strategy and 4X.

 

[Legendsmith]

@sterrius I'm not big on hard capping large fleets. When the end game crises happen there's supposed to be clashes of giant fleets. (The crisis enemies don't usually have planets to defend after all). Huge unified fleets should be part of the game in situations that call for it, what needs to happen is remove the current gamestate where a huge unified doomstack is the answer to every situation. Diminishing returns, combat width, whatever you want to call it is part of that.

Also everything @Drowe said.

 

[sterrius]

@sterrius I'm not big on hard capping large fleets. When the end game crises happen there's supposed to be clashes of giant fleets. (The crisis enemies don't usually have planets to defend after all). Huge unified fleets should be part of the game in situations that call for it, what needs to happen is remove the current gamestate where a huge unified doomstack is the answer to every situation. Diminishing returns, combat width, whatever you want to call it is part of that.

Also everything @Drowe said.

The idea is not to stop giant clashes to happen, is to make it harder to pull off everywhere. Specially early game and some part of the midgame.

Stellaris need to be a "crescendo". Where you start small with small fleets and go bigger and bigger. It makes sense a faction learning space battles improve their strategy with time. After a time you can start to stack your fleets and by the end of the game the doomstacks we already know would be possible.


Defenses also should work exactly like that. To keep up with the increase in firepower so you can always rely on them to defend at least from small fleets and even medium or some large fleets if you put a lot of resources to it. (Defenses should give exactly what you pay for it. Want a defense to defeat a big fleet? pay almost the same price and you get it).


By end game of course this would be much more easy around your territory and immediate borders. (Or allied territory). This would actually make things a little more harder to defeat endgame crisis like its supposed to be. As most crisis work by building some kind of infrastructure to keep expand so also you would need to build infrastructure and defenses to keep pushing.

When i see those big clashes i remember a lot the last Mass Effect 3 space battle where multiple species with their fleets join together to fight the reapers. (A endgame crisis). It was a giant blob but made of multiple fleets. I always want to keep a battle like that happening, but not on the first 20-30 years of the game where everyone still barely have destroyers and cruisers.


@Drowe

the mechanics you say are extremely hard to pull of and fix the problem because it depends a lot on the map settings and the fact you need lots of important as essential targets to make the spread necessary. Unless you make every system matter its not going to work as you have most of the time too few planets to make them worth and would need to make a siege last too long to be really fun.

Sure it will start to matter when you have 10+ planets but it will be a very poor solution for most of the earl/mid game where the empires are small and have few key systems. We need solutions that work from early where you have just couples of corvetters and DD´s to late game where we use mass battleships.

Also no matter how much survival you put to small fleets, they will not be able to change much if the amount of targets is too little. It will be just like HOi4 where you have some uses for smaller fleets but a doomstack is still the best way of doing things where it really matters and dealing killing blows.

We need a tempo. some "road" that we can follow to bigger battles instead of allowing them at the first year of the game. Its much better when you feel rewarded you can finally put a huge fleet to defeat a hard enemy than having the hability from day 1.

 

[EvilKnievel82]

There are more than one possible solution. And there is no best solution either, some may be better than others in certain aspects, but other solutions are better in other aspects. A solution that works for endless space or other 4X games is not necessarily good for Stellaris, because Stellaris is a hybrid of grand strategy and 4X.

Exactly. I think the hard cap on fleet size in endless space seemed very arbitrary although it kind of worked. It would not work in stellaris simply because of the scale of the game that constantly grows while you play it. Think in the end the best way forward is probably an approach from multiple sides:

• For example on the one hand discourage doomstacks directly by using some kind of soft cap that gives a downside to amassing your fleets in one system (e.g. Weighted supply range to limit doomstacks).

• At the same time space battles itself need to be reworked somehow so that a smaller fleet can still destroy some ships in the larger fleet and not be flat wiped out if they are less than half the size. For example ships could be forced to keep a larger distance between each other always and most weapon ranges could be reduced. I do not know if the first point could even be implemented in the given engine but it would certainly give smaller fleets a big boost because parts of a doomstack could not even fire at the enemy.
  
  
• Sectors reacting positively to fleets being present in the sector and negatively to no fleets being present (undefended). There needs to be some economic downside if you move all your ships out of your empire.
  
  
• Buffing stationary defenses significantly. For example early game a spaceport is a significant threat but very soon it becomes irrelevant. I feel like spaceport levels should severely buff the combat strength of a spaceport. At the same time military space installations should be buffed alongside. I would not mind seeing a lategame space fortrest @ 20k+ strenght. Of course they should take longer to build and be more costly but if all types of bases are stronger you can always take a defense platform lategame if it still gives a few k in fleet power. And for the love of god remove the limitation on stacking space installations (remember that episode of DS9 with a large federation fleet attacking defensive satellites?).
  
  
• Adding new means of system defenses: minefields, very long range weapons (even a doomstack looses ships then)
  
  
• Giving more control over occupied planets, i.e. being able to transfer/purge pops, loot buildings while in control.
  
  
• Making warscore react more strongly on actually occupying wargoals/capitals (ticking warscore?) and less on unrelated systems (see EU4) to increase the importance of holding specific systems.
  
  
• "looting" the enemy economy with every enemy system in which you have a fleet (effectiveness dependent on fleet size, see EU4 fleet blockade)

 

[sterrius]

Exactly. I think the hard cap on fleet size in endless space seemed very arbitrary although it kind of worked. It would not work in stellaris simply because of the scale of the game that constantly grows while you play it. Think in the end the best way forward is probably an approach from multiple sides:

• For example on the one hand discourage doomstacks directly by using some kind of soft cap that gives a downside to amassing your fleets in one system (e.g. Weighted supply range to limit doomstacks).

• At the same time space battles itself need to be reworked somehow so that a smaller fleet can still destroy some ships in the larger fleet and not be flat wiped out if they are less than half the size. For example ships could be forced to keep a larger distance between each other always and most weapon ranges could be reduced. I do not know if the first point could even be implemented in the given engine but it would certainly give smaller fleets a big boost because parts of a doomstack could not even fire at the enemy.
  
  
• Sectors reacting positively to fleets being present in the sector and negatively to no fleets being present (undefended). There needs to be some economic downside if you move all your ships out of your empire.
  
  
• Buffing stationary defenses significantly. For example early game a spaceport is a significant threat but very soon it becomes irrelevant. I feel like spaceport levels should severely buff the combat strength of a spaceport. At the same time military space installations should be buffed alongside. I would not mind seeing a lategame space fortrest @ 20k+ strenght. Of course they should take longer to build and be more costly but if all types of bases are stronger you can always take a defense platform lategame if it still gives a few k in fleet power. And for the love of god remove the limitation on stacking space installations (remember that episode of DS9 with a large federation fleet attacking defensive satellites?).
  
  
• Adding new means of system defenses: minefields, very long range weapons (even a doomstack looses ships then)
  
  
• Giving more control over occupied planets, i.e. being able to transfer/purge pops, loot buildings while in control.
  
  
• Making warscore react more strongly on actually occupying wargoals/capitals (ticking warscore?) and less on unrelated systems (see EU4) to increase the importance of holding specific systems.
  
  
• "looting" the enemy economy with every enemy system in which you have a fleet (effectiveness dependent on fleet size, see EU4 fleet blockade)

- About cap is what im trying to tell. We need some way of limiting the power at the start and unlocking it with our actions. (Tech, supply system, etc) . This will go a long way of limiting doomstacks early/midgame but they should not stop us from going crazy by endgame where the real threats like the unbidden come out and demand from us those crazy fleets.

Here is more or less my vision. Im thinking here in 4 phases. Early game (corvetters, maybe a few DD´s). Midgame (mass DD`s, few cruisers). Mid to late (Battleships are very rare if you have them). Lategame (battleships are normal).

A) Early game -> should have very few doomstacks. You have very few key systems and ways of producing ships. DD is the best you have IF you have them. So it should be much more about taking new colonys and destroying outposts than taking the enemy capital. ITs possible but should not be easy or even possible unless you get him offguard.

Lets say you can reach around 2k fleet power. Enough to defeat defenses + Stations alone but not Fleet + Station + Defenses. For that you need to lure the enemy or have a superior production to win by atrittion not allowing his defenses to heal/rebuild.


B) Mid game -> where we unlock cruisers and DD`s are normal. Doomstacks should start to matter and appear, but not everywhere. Border colonys and neutral space are still problematic to bear the full power of a full sized fleet or to stack them. Around your core and more developed worlds you can start to stack fleets and have very huge defense systems to stop this kind of strategy.

Taking empire capitals and core worlds is now not only possible but kind normal. But taking the "core worlds" of a empire demand some investment in a supply chain to allow the enemy to pierce heavy defense systems or the enemy doomstack. (or worse, both).

By the end of this phase you can reach around 10k fleet power. Defenses can match that firepower but they take resources, lot of time and upkeep. You can start to overpower them with 20k or even 30k but you need to "prepare the field" first by allowing yourself to send your fleet there. (You can´t Snipe a coreworld. You need mount a supply chain).


C) Mid to late game -> you have battleships and now not only your fleet size increase but you can start to walk around without much problem almost everywhere. Going to the other side of the galaxy is still a problem. But you can safely reach everywhere in your borders and project power up to a point with little effort.

here war starts to get bloody. To defend from that turtle empires really need to invest in a mix of Planetary + Station defenses if they really hope to stop a stack of big fleets. (Plus sending their own fleet). Wide empires while they have resources they will not have time to make those kind of defenses everywhere and will have lots of gaps to exploit and make a dent or even survive long empire incursions.

Reaching 50k is possible now. Maybe even more. But not everywhere yet. Fallen empire are still a threat as they can bear their power everywhere. Leviathans are a threat to wide empires as they can target new conquered worlds and defenses.

Defenses can reach 50k. But outside of your "Shipyard system" its not recommended. IT will cost a lot and it will take too much time, take planet slots and cost too much upkeep to defend more than a couple of systems with this.

Around 100k should be the theorical maximum for this part of the game. There is no unbidden or AI yet to demand more firepower than that.

D) very late game -> 100K to infinity is the normal here. Defense systems by themselves can´t defeat those monsters. it gets so expensive to defeat this with a stationary defense system that is simply not worth it or the empire is not able to pay the upkeep. (or the entire planet becomes a fortress with no farms, energy etc. Only guns in all 15-25 slots plus stations on orbit becoming a living Death Star). (But would be fun to see some very large empires having this kind of chokepoint . And much more fun to breach this ^^ ).

Unbidden and lategame crisis will come here. There is almost no limit to what you can bear and how many power you can project. Only some moderate limit if its on the other side of the galaxy and only if there is nothing there. (Lets say 1000 galaxy, you are on one side, everyone is dead or unwilling to allow your travel to the other side and you want to "snipe" a fallen empire planet there, you can´t send you 1M fleet so far. You have to work with lets say around 500k, by the half of the galaxy you can bear something like 800k. ANd you have no limit in your border or very close to it.

it will look almost like the game is now. Only difference is that defenses bite and most empires and federations are very huge with lots of targets. So going doomstack will work but not really desirable as you have too many places to look.



About the other points.

-> Totally agree with point 2 that smaller fleets should make a dent on bigger fleets before dying or fleeing. Increasing the time the fight takes is kind of mandatory for this to happen.


-> Agree, but remember with the game right now you can reach to 14 systems with little effort. (3 + 2 burocracy + 2 colonization tradition + 5 ascendancy project + 2 midgame research). Plus some more lategame. So in a medium sized galaxy this is more than enough and you will only have a very small sector that will demand a very small fleet.

But i like the idea of planets demanding stationary fleets (or defense systems) to keep themselves happy. At worst you combat the doomstacks with upkeep.


-> Spaceports for me need more defense slots. To add more weapons, shields, armor, etc. So you can choose making that spaceport a Dockyard, A farm/Research center or a battlestation.

Defense stations + Planetary defenses should be able to always match anything you can bring, unless its very lategame or the planet is small and you don´t want to turn the planet into a deathstar. You can balance this with....

- Time (Defense taking really long time to build, months/years so if you destroy 1 station by the time you come back he will not have everything up again).
- Upkeep (if you have a 50k defense, it will cost the same or more than a 50k fleet, this alone make sure you will only put a super defense if you really need it).
- Resources. (If you spend 500k minerals to make a 50k fleet a defense like that should also cost around 50k minerals).

Let small empires turtle themselves and make a wide empire bleed for every system they try to make. Its always fun to breach "Troys" or a " Battle of thermopylae " .

 

[Drowe]

the mechanics you say are extremely hard to pull of and fix the problem because it depends a lot on the map settings and the fact you need lots of important as essential targets to make the spread necessary. Unless you make every system matter its not going to work as you have most of the time too few planets to make them worth and would need to make a siege last too long to be really fun.

Not really, the first thing that comes to mind are interplanetary trade routes. This will most likely come at some point with a major expansion anyway. The same applies to supply lines for fleets. While you can in theory use your fleet in one big stack, those two things alone require you to place ships in systems that don't have direct value. Unless you are within one jump of a planet, those systems in between need to be defended. (Here a rework of the FTL system might be necessary, maybe have hyperdrive be the standard that later diverges to warp and wormholes)

The second thing is orbital mines. Currently they are pretty worthless, past the first decade or two. Losing one hurts you less than losing a single corvette, and that includes losing the production of that station for several years. A possible way to make them matter more could be simply reducing the number of them you have but make them a lot more valuable through time-consuming upgrades. If each of them takes 10 years and significant mineral investment to replace, then you would have to defend them.

If leaving planets undefended has serious consequences, such as several years of reduced output and empire wide happiness penalties among others, you can't just take one big fleet and not defend your planets. Especially since the supply lines mean I can hamstring your fleet with a much smaller one and then kill it because it runs out of ammunition.

You don't need to limit doomstacks with a cap if you make the inherent weakness of doomstacks a real issue and make their inherent advantage less important. A doomstack can't be in two places at once, making it important to have ships in multiple systems has as direct consequence that doomstacks become less useful. Their strength is that they win fights with weaker fleets with minimal losses and very quickly. There are multiple ways to make that strength less important, my favourite so far is to make it easier for smaller fleets to avoid such engagements, especially if it's combined with supply lines.

Sure it will start to matter when you have 10+ planets but it will be a very poor solution for most of the earl/mid game where the empires are small and have few key systems.

Early and mid game are very lose concepts. Define them and I will answer, but from where I stand, mid game starts about the time when expansion by grabbing uncolonized planets outside your borders is no longer possible. Before that, in the current state of the game, you can't field big fleets anyway and warfare is still interesting.

Also no matter how much survival you put to small fleets, they will not be able to change much if the amount of targets is too little. It will be just like HOi4 where you have some uses for smaller fleets but a doomstack is still the best way of doing things where it really matters and dealing killing blows.

That depends very much on how many tasks your fleet has to handle. Let's see, your core systems all want a defensive fleet there, or you get a happiness penalty. You need to protect trade routes, or you'll get pirates harassing your shipping. Anywhere you have a large mining operations going, needs to be protected from pirates and raiders. Your sectors will also want their own fleets to protect them. And that's just during peace times. At war you need to beef up your fleets protecting trade routes from being raided by more than just opportunistic pirates, you need to protect your supply lines for your main battle fleet from raids, you need to go on the offensive and try to raid your enemy's trade and supply, you need to capture his planets and at some point fight his battle fleet. There are more than enough possible jobs your fleet may need to do, so many, that during war it most likely can't do all of them.

We need a tempo. some "road" that we can follow to bigger battles instead of allowing them at the first year of the game. Its much better when you feel rewarded you can finally put a huge fleet to defeat a hard enemy than having the hability from day 1.

We already have a mechanic for that, fleet cap and the cost of building a fleet in the first place. Capping fleet sizes, no matter how you do it, simply is not suited to solving doomstacks, unless that cap is also limiting how many ships you can have in total. Just an example, you need 20k fleetpower to defeat a Leviathan, but your fleet cap only let's you have 10k sized fleets. You seem to think that means I can't defeat the Leviathan no matter what, but that isn't true. If the game allows it I can use 4 10k fleets simultaneously, letting me bring my full 40k to the fight, if it doesn't I bring in one fleet after another, timing it in such a way that immediately after the first fleet is wiped out my second fleet engages rinse and repeat until I have won. It's more expensive, but it can be done. In that case I have still used a doomstack to win, just split up in several smaller fleets. The reason why people form doomstacks needs to be addressed, simply using prohibitive mechanics does not work.

 

[sterrius]

Not really, the first thing that comes to mind are interplanetary trade routes. This will most likely come at some point with a major expansion anyway. The same applies to supply lines for fleets. While you can in theory use your fleet in one big stack, those two things alone require you to place ships in systems that don't have direct value. Unless you are within one jump of a planet, those systems in between need to be defended. (Here a rework of the FTL system might be necessary, maybe have hyperdrive be the standard that later diverges to warp and wormholes)

The second thing is orbital mines. Currently they are pretty worthless, past the first decade or two. Losing one hurts you less than losing a single corvette, and that includes losing the production of that station for several years. A possible way to make them matter more could be simply reducing the number of them you have but make them a lot more valuable through time-consuming upgrades. If each of them takes 10 years and significant mineral investment to replace, then you would have to defend them.

If leaving planets undefended has serious consequences, such as several years of reduced output and empire wide happiness penalties among others, you can't just take one big fleet and not defend your planets. Especially since the supply lines mean I can hamstring your fleet with a much smaller one and then kill it because it runs out of ammunition.

You don't need to limit doomstacks with a cap if you make the inherent weakness of doomstacks a real issue and make their inherent advantage less important. A doomstack can't be in two places at once, making it important to have ships in multiple systems has as direct consequence that doomstacks become less useful. Their strength is that they win fights with weaker fleets with minimal losses and very quickly. There are multiple ways to make that strength less important, my favourite so far is to make it easier for smaller fleets to avoid such engagements, especially if it's combined with supply lines.


Early and mid game are very lose concepts. Define them and I will answer, but from where I stand, mid game starts about the time when expansion by grabbing uncolonized planets outside your borders is no longer possible. Before that, in the current state of the game, you can't field big fleets anyway and warfare is still interesting.

That depends very much on how many tasks your fleet has to handle. Let's see, your core systems all want a defensive fleet there, or you get a happiness penalty. You need to protect trade routes, or you'll get pirates harassing your shipping. Anywhere you have a large mining operations going, needs to be protected from pirates and raiders. Your sectors will also want their own fleets to protect them. And that's just during peace times. At war you need to beef up your fleets protecting trade routes from being raided by more than just opportunistic pirates, you need to protect your supply lines for your main battle fleet from raids, you need to go on the offensive and try to raid your enemy's trade and supply, you need to capture his planets and at some point fight his battle fleet. There are more than enough possible jobs your fleet may need to do, so many, that during war it most likely can't do all of them.


We already have a mechanic for that, fleet cap and the cost of building a fleet in the first place. Capping fleet sizes, no matter how you do it, simply is not suited to solving doomstacks, unless that cap is also limiting how many ships you can have in total. Just an example, you need 20k fleetpower to defeat a Leviathan, but your fleet cap only let's you have 10k sized fleets. You seem to think that means I can't defeat the Leviathan no matter what, but that isn't true. If the game allows it I can use 4 10k fleets simultaneously, letting me bring my full 40k to the fight, if it doesn't I bring in one fleet after another, timing it in such a way that immediately after the first fleet is wiped out my second fleet engages rinse and repeat until I have won. It's more expensive, but it can be done. In that case I have still used a doomstack to win, just split up in several smaller fleets. The reason why people form doomstacks needs to be addressed, simply using prohibitive mechanics does not work.

-> Now we are talking about changing one of the selling points of stellaris. Multiple FTL choices from the start. This is much more harder to pull off.

Also while trade routes is something everyone desires (I even talked during development of the game of planets becoming trade hubs for systems linking that trade to the capital or core worlds creating a 'flux" of resources that could be stopped in war as systems that lose their planet hubs stay too far away to send their resources to another coreworld or sector capital). Still this is not robust enough on the early/mid game to fix the problem by themselves. Where you have only 3 planets most of the time, or even less.

Remember we need a system that work both for small and super large maps.

Also different FTL systems makes things even worse. Yes, we can go very direct and ditch 2 of the FTL´s at the start and make them midgame, but them you create other kind of problems as those systems become a thing.

So any solution must take into consideration the 3 ftl systems and work for all sizes of maps and empires. From tall to wide.


-> Second> Orbital mines -> I made some suggestion to include them in the supply system. Losing them would affect your potential to project force too far from the planets. But on large maps no matter how much you nerf their quantity, even if you place only one per system you will still have dozens of them and losing one will not hurt much with empires having 2-4 planets giving 40+ minerals each. Plus double that from stations.

I totally agree with you that mining stations need to have more functions and be better defended but i don´t see them becoming that much essential with planets being the main producers of energy and minerals right now and with so many systems. (With minimum of 400 starts to 1000).


Third -> Doomstacks are important not because they can defeat fleets. But because they can defeat fleets and the means to produce them.
If you lose your starports you can spread the doomstack and win easily by atrittion.

Reason defenses need to be able to keep up with offense until mid to late game where finally fleets can do the job themselves. Early game both AI and Players are too vulnerable to Random factors and map setups being very vulnerable to fast demonstration of power.
Also early game things are too small to really give many strategic valuable targets outside of the capital world and its Dockyard. (or maybe the second dockyard of your second colony).

Early and mid game are very lose concepts. Define them and I will answer, but from where I stand, mid game starts about the time when expansion by grabbing uncolonized planets outside your borders is no longer possible. Before that, in the current state of the game, you can't field big fleets anyway and warfare is still interesting.

The warfare game really starts when Destroyers are unlocked. Yes, early game where stations can defend a planet and corvettes is all you have the war is interesting.

But after DD`s are unlocked everything goes crazy as you the first station is not powerful enough to tackle even a couple of DD`s. And Stardocks are not strong enough for them.

Also by that time you still have very few ship producing dockyards. The one in your homeworld and maybe +1. Leaving you with very few targets.

This for me is still early game. You are still creating a potential to become a empire.
When you cas mass produce DD´s its when midgame starts. Now you have quite a flux of resources and at least 3+ dockyards. Now you have more than 1 target but defenses are complete useless by then. So no way of stopping a enemy outside of having a super fleet.

That depends very much on how many tasks your fleet has to handle. Let's see, your core systems all want a defensive fleet there, or you get a happiness penalty. You need to protect trade routes, or you'll get pirates harassing your shipping. Anywhere you have a large mining operations going, needs to be protected from pirates and raiders. Your sectors will also want their own fleets to protect them. And that's just during peace times. At war you need to beef up your fleets protecting trade routes from being raided by more than just opportunistic pirates, you need to protect your supply lines for your main battle fleet from raids, you need to go on the offensive and try to raid your enemy's trade and supply, you need to capture his planets and at some point fight his battle fleet. There are more than enough possible jobs your fleet may need to do, so many, that during war it most likely can't do all of them.

All you said are not enough. THey can becoming annoying but never going to really shut down a empire. You can bring their resource production to 0 but as long he get a stockpile of energy he can keep going for years with his doomstack until he finishes the opponent. Later, after doing enough dmg he can go back and fix things again and restart production, much faster than the opponent that need to do that plus remake the fleet.

Also if defense is fixed they are going to also give anti-unrest values as they are enough to give a force projection.

We already have a mechanic for that, fleet cap and the cost of building a fleet in the first place. Capping fleet sizes, no matter how you do it, simply is not suited to solving doomstacks, unless that cap is also limiting how many ships you can have in total. Just an example, you need 20k fleetpower to defeat a Leviathan, but your fleet cap only let's you have 10k sized fleets. You seem to think that means I can't defeat the Leviathan no matter what, but that isn't true. If the game allows it I can use 4 10k fleets simultaneously, letting me bring my full 40k to the fight, if it doesn't I bring in one fleet after another, timing it in such a way that immediately after the first fleet is wiped out my second fleet engages rinse and repeat until I have won. It's more expensive, but it can be done. In that case I have still used a doomstack to win, just split up in several smaller fleets. The reason why people form doomstacks needs to be addressed, simply using prohibitive mechanics does not work.

Fleet cap is a very bad mechanic for that ans is really not its function.
It increases crazy fast because POPs, Spacestations and technology increase that. Also it don´t stop you from putting everything in one big basket.

Its function is only to stop you from doomstacking even more out of control as the energy consumption of ships is too small to do that by themselves. (And not making the game lag with empires having thousands of ships).

Also as the same as you, that are using a trade system that does not exist.
Im using a supply system that also does not exist.

You can´t stack two 10k fleets to defeat a leviathan in your example because the supply will place a penalty that will make this not desirable enough. You can with a supply system, time and resources make a supply line that will allow you to send a 20k fleet. Thats the idea. Placing something that will require effort from the attacker.

About sending multiple smaller fleets to die until they win by atrittion. It is a viable strategy and by far is much more costly to the attacker. There is no problem with that as the atacker will lose 2 or even 3 fleets to win using that, maybe even more if we balance things better. In fact some early-mid game defenses need to be strong to only be breached by this kind of strategy or luring the opponent out of the sector. Otherwise its too easy to do crippling blowns and finish a opponent beyond his capacity to recover or put up a fight as he will have no place to retreat. (Like the capital in a fight with corvetters only).

 

[WCreed]

Make it hazardous to bring doomstacks to planets through the introduction of planet to space weapon systems that can be built in a tile instead of a production building, sacrificing a tile of productivity for defensive measures. Improve surface defenses so they're barely affected by orbital bombardment. To balance it out, introduce bombardment weapons that can be found in all three weapon pathways and tech to increase overall surface defense bonus from pop, defense buildings, etc. It'd be similar to what was seen in the pre-World War One naval race in technology - attempting to out-advance your enemy in defensive and offensive tech. The bombardment weapons themselves would require special modules where they'd be the only weapon on that section so the ship would make a sacrifice of overall offensive capability in space in favor of siege power.

This would introduce an attrition effect without requiring large resource dedication towards wave attacks through planetary attacks as well as discourage full-scale wars against developed planets early-mid game. Additionally, it'd encourage separate fleets with picket ships protecting the siege fleet.

A supply line system between planets and fleets would also be interesting, especially if it'd permit mobile factory ships that are able to repair and produce missiles/torpedoes for the fleet to enable your fleet to stay on the frontier protecting it from an attacking force as well as put in a need to have escort ships (A system that's similar to Distant Worlds where smaller hull sizes could automatically patrol to prevent a hopeful merchant raider would ease the headache of controlling a large number of fleets). If supply lines were implemented and fleets could be supported by a lightly armed cruiser to battleship sized resupply/refinery ship, it could create a new dynamic where laser weapons have a finite laser bank of energy stored, kinetic weapons have finite ammunition, and missiles also have limited ammunition which all would increase as technology moves upwards in their respected paths. It'd force players to be able to rotate fleets and retreat on supply issues. Inter-planetary supplies include food, EC, minerals, and strategic resources transported to each other.

To discourage doomstacks lategame, introduce a command penalty from commanding a fleet with too many ships in it that's tied to admiral rank. Fleets without admirals gain a negative effect of overall leadership due to cohesion after a certain size or hull size (Such as a wolf pack of DDs or Corvettes acting as commerce raiders, or a small cruiser-led patrol would be a golden standard for how many ships can be in a admiral-less fleet). After a certain number of ships, you'd require an admiral to retain full fleet cohesion, which would increase as the admiral gained rank. This would force players and AI to have multiple fleets, which could be argued could be put into the same system anyways as a singular doomstack under multiple fleets if you're to game the system anyways, but if supply lines were implemented as previous suggestions stated or the method I stated it'd be much more hazardous to gamble every ship you have and instead just rotate fleets around for a prolonged battle or have multiple battles along a front.

While I do agree with an early post in this discussion that a large number of fleets can be frustrating to manage, commerce protection and raiding could be automated under a fleet admiral similar to how a sector works by assigning them a certain number of ships to upkeep that are automatically build (Which can be held off by the player in case minerals need to be focused elsewhere) and given a focus through either systems or an empire (Such as focusing on defending your entire empire versus defending a certain region). It would be interesting, however, to see a system like that integrated into Sectors so that sectors could produce a Sector Defense Force to maintain their own and only contribute 50% of their fleet size contribution to the main empire so they can maintain a smaller fleet, who'd work defensive functions using your own ship designs. In order for something like that to work though, it would be good to be able to specify the roles of your ships to the AI counterparts so they don't just build a fleet of point defense ships when they also need offensive vessels.

 

[Drowe]

The warfare game really starts when Destroyers are unlocked. Yes, early game where stations can defend a planet and corvettes is all you have the war is interesting.

But after DD`s are unlocked everything goes crazy as you the first station is not powerful enough to tackle even a couple of DD`s. And Stardocks are not strong enough for them.

Also by that time you still have very few ship producing dockyards. The one in your homeworld and maybe +1. Leaving you with very few targets.

This can be solved by making defense stations and spaceports scale up better, that should happen anyway and there have been various suggestions for that. The main problem of defenses is that they you can't build them close enough together, which allows them to be picked off one by one. That's why they can't stop a fleet past early game, if the radius of the area where you can't build was smaller and only applied to stations of the same type, then their impact would be much more noticeable. Alternatively you could give defensive structures the ability to fire at any target within a system, or at least give them a far greater range than ships have. But that is more of a balancing issue rather than a problem with warfare itself.

This for me is still early game. You are still creating a potential to become a empire.
When you cas mass produce DD´s its when midgame starts. Now you have quite a flux of resources and at least 3+ dockyards. Now you have more than 1 target but defenses are complete useless by then. So no way of stopping a enemy outside of having a super fleet.

At that point disruption of trade routes and supply lines would start to matter if they were in the game though. This means, if your enemy brings his whole fleet, you can use small squadrons of corvettes to disrupt his economy and cause lasting damage to it and you can weaken his fleet by cutting it off from supply, allowing you to defeat it despite having less ships available to engage it.

All you said are not enough. THey can becoming annoying but never going to really shut down a empire. You can bring their resource production to 0 but as long he get a stockpile of energy he can keep going for years with his doomstack until he finishes the opponent. Later, after doing enough dmg he can go back and fix things again and restart production, much faster than the opponent that need to do that plus remake the fleet.

I wouldn't be so sure about that, it depends how it was implemented. If pirates raiding your trade routes and mining operations actually stole part of your stockpile and got stronger the longer they were allowed to do that, then this would be far more than a minor nuisance. If you could raid your enemy's shipping and steal his resources, then you get stronger the longer your enemy allows you to do that and he gets weaker. And his doomstack can't do anything about it if smaller fleets are faster than larger fleets. With a supply line mechanic you could even weaken a doomstack enough to destroy it with a smaller force. The main issue for why defending or attacking your enemy's economy is not worth the effort at the moment, is that it is easy to fix the damage. That should not be the case though. If a planet suffers under prolonged bombardment, pops should die, buildings should be destroyed and the penalty to happiness should be severe.

-> Second> Orbital mines -> I made some suggestion to include them in the supply system. Losing them would affect your potential to project force too far from the planets. But on large maps no matter how much you nerf their quantity, even if you place only one per system you will still have dozens of them and losing one will not hurt much with empires having 2-4 planets giving 40+ minerals each. Plus double that from stations.

Currently orbital mines are way too cheap and have way too little output, to actually matter. But there were only 10% as many and they cost and produced 10 times as much and took 10 times as long to build, then they wouldn't be so worthless, and that's just tweaking the values without changing the system. If instead mining operations could be scaled up through investment of time and resources, then they would actually become an important part of your economy. It doesn't have to be as much as a dedicated planet can produce, but if a balanced planet of average size produced about as much as a fully upgraded orbital mining operation and was also affected by repeatable research then their relevance would be much greater. Another factor is that upgrading a mining operation needs to take a lot of time and resources. The resources are a secondary concern there, they will pay for themselves eventually, but time is a relevant factor. If it takes 10 years to fix the damage, then no matter how big your stockpile is, it will take time to recover.

Third -> Doomstacks are important not because they can defeat fleets. But because they can defeat fleets and the means to produce them.
If you lose your starports you can spread the doomstack and win easily by atrittion.

If you lose all your starports and still have a fleet, then you did a bad job of defending yourself and you should lose. I don't see a problem there. If you lose your entire fleet, then the war is over, and that's how it should be. The goal is not to change that, it is to make it less common to lose your entire fleet in the first place. Having to defend your territory is a good way to achieve that. A defender can always bring a larger part of his fleet to a fight than the attacker, unless the attacker brings his whole fleet and makes himself vulnerable to an attack by a smaller force. A small force needs to have a way to make an impact on the war itself, and that is not achieved by making them better at fighting a larger force, but by being able to outrun a larger fleet and destroy soft but valuable targets or interrupt the supply for the doomstack, thus allowing a smaller fleet to take it out.

-> Now we are talking about changing one of the selling points of stellaris. Multiple FTL choices from the start. This is much more harder to pull off.

@Wiz talked about the difficulty to balance three different FTL Methods before, so it's possible this will change in the future.

Also while trade routes is something everyone desires (I even talked during development of the game of planets becoming trade hubs for systems linking that trade to the capital or core worlds creating a 'flux" of resources that could be stopped in war as systems that lose their planet hubs stay too far away to send their resources to another coreworld or sector capital). Still this is not robust enough on the early/mid game to fix the problem by themselves. Where you have only 3 planets most of the time, or even less.

As I see it, warfare on a small scale works pretty well, it's when the empires grow that doomstacks become an issue. The larger your territory is, the more such a mechanic would have an impact. If you only have three planets, then you also have a pretty low fleet cap, in that case fielding a fleet that reaches an arbitrarily defined cap is much harder anyway, so your solution wouldn't work either unless you set that limit punishingly low so players are forced to behave a certain way through rules instead of their own choice.

Also different FTL systems makes things even worse. Yes, we can go very direct and ditch 2 of the FTL´s at the start and make them midgame, but them you create other kind of problems as those systems become a thing.

It would shake up the galaxy once they become available, giving those who research them early a big edge for a while. Those kind of things are a good thing. Suddenly having the ability to bypass choke points will change how wars are fought mid game compared to early game, having defensive stations will no longer be able to protect your economy from raids, you suddenly need to fortify your planets and so on.

 

[Rasma]

I think one way to fix doomstacks would be to do something similar to Hoi 4 with commanders, make them able to only command only so many ships, as in number not capacity, that should scale with level and tech, and penalties that increase exponentially the more you go over the cap.
This will encourage the use of larger ships instead of swarms of smaller ships.
Then to prevent massing every ship in one system, there needs to be a reason to split your forces, attrition would be weird to use, but you could give speed/shield/repair/maintenence penalties for going over the limit and raise/extend the distance with upgraded ports, tech, ect.
The other thing would be to actually make damaging planets easier so losing a planet or letting it get bombed for years is actually harmful in the long term. Or even something as simple as having penalties for multiple fleets in one fight. So having the tech /leader skill to have large fleets would remain advantageous in the face of an opponent with much more smaller afleets.

 

[Drowe]

I think one way to fix doomstacks would be to do something similar to Hoi 4 with commanders, make them able to only command only so many ships, as in number not capacity, that should scale with level and tech, and penalties that increase exponentially the more you go over the cap.
This will encourage the use of larger ships instead of swarms of smaller ships.
Then to prevent massing every ship in one system, there needs to be a reason to split your forces, attrition would be weird to use, but you could give speed/shield/repair/maintenence penalties for going over the limit and raise/extend the distance with upgraded ports, tech, ect.
The other thing would be to actually make damaging planets easier so losing a planet or letting it get bombed for years is actually harmful in the long term. Or even something as simple as having penalties for multiple fleets in one fight. So having the tech /leader skill to have large fleets would remain advantageous in the face of an opponent with much more smaller afleets.

That's treating the symptom, not the disease. Fleets are still the only asset worth protecting, so you will make sure to make them as safe as possible. You will try to make your fleets as big as possible and as little spread out as possible, so you can reinforce your other fleets as fast as possible. Even if having multiple fleets gave a penalty, it can't be so harsh that adding another ship makes your fleet worse.

 

[Diezy]

Admirals need a rework, they encourage doomstacking quite a lot by being assigned directly to fleets.

Perhaps admirals assigned to certain "Empire" roles similar to Governors, where they'd be in charge of a certain Ship Type or Defense Stations. Or perhaps assigned to buff combat stats in the (all the) Core Systems or a sector too. Putting them in charge of a certain theater of operations, rather than a fleet. That could be as well a General's job!

That way, it won't cost more influence or opportunity to buff up multiple small groups to match a large one in performance!

 

[Drowe]

Admirals need a rework, they encourage doomstacking quite a lot by being assigned directly to fleets.

Perhaps admirals assigned to certain "Empire" roles similar to Governors, where they'd be in charge of a certain Ship Type or Defense Stations. Or perhaps assigned to buff combat stats in the (all the) Core Systems or a sector too. Putting them in charge of a certain theater of operations, rather than a fleet. That could be as well a General's job!

That way, it won't cost more influence or opportunity to buff up multiple small groups to match a large one in performance!

Interesting approach and does make sense. I would prefer it if leaders worked differently, too. But I don't think that's going to happen. It wouldn't have a huge effect on doomstacks, but every small thing helps.

 

[Legendsmith]

Summary of Reasons the Doom-Stack is King™
p39 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 & Changes (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 For Military Ships
  • Might be a good idea. Details here by @EntropyAvatar.
    1. Takes longer for a doomstack to chase down small fleets
    2. Takes longer for a doomstack to reach core worlds
    3. 1 and 2 mean that there is more time to build more ships before the war is decided
    4. Makes it easier for a player to simultaneously control multiple independent fleets
    5. Gives more time for an outmatched fleet to run away (and for a player to notice that an outmatches fleet is in danger)
  • 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 & Other Static defences.
  • 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 & other static defence 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, but static defences do need some kind of buff.
• 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.
  • "Flanking has already been talked to death, that only increases micromanagement but does nothing to solve doomstacks." - Drowe
• 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.
    • Harsher Bombardment penalties.
    • 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.
  • Extremely arbitrary and can't chase enemies, only attractive to pacifists.
• 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
• Hard Cap on Fleet size with tech to raise it.
  • Doesn't solve doomstacks because the problem is more than just the size of fleets.
  • The doomstacks will just be made out of a number of fleets flying together, rather than one fleet.
  • The only reason to research the tech will be to utilize a really good admiral on as many ships as possible.
• Maximum fleets/ships per system
  • Doesn't solve doomstacks because the problem is more than just the size of fleets.
  • People will just send fleets in one after another as ships are lost in battle. It'll be doomstack-by-degrees. Slightly better but not a solution, plus frustrating gameplay.
• Give Fleets Something to Do During Peacetime (That also might need doing during wartime), such as protecting 'trading routes.' Suggested by @Drowe here.
• Fleets living off the "land"/Fuel & Fuel Harvesting Suggested by @sterrius here. A concept where fleets have fuel. Fuel is automatically harvested by a fleet from celestial bodies in a system, prolonging a fleet's own stockpile. Fleets inside an empire's borders are always fuelled.

New things from Last Summary: Added maximum fleets per system, fleet size cap suggestions. (Suggested repeatedly by various people.) Added 'giving fleets something do do during peacetime. Added Fuel harvesting/living off the land.

Summary end.
I really should be posting this every page, as I saw that in the past 2 pages start repeating previously discussed points, and these pages had no summary (due to me thinking there wasn't enough to add). So clearly I should just be posting it regardless or discussion progresses even more slowly.

Interesting approach and does make sense. I would prefer it if leaders worked differently, too. But I don't think that's going to happen. It wouldn't have a huge effect on doomstacks, but every small thing helps.

I think military leaders should be have their own, seperate limit really. Generals are currently useless for obvious reasons. Admirals are good but it's prohibitive to have more than a few without some real building for it.

This thread is turning into (or has already become) an interesting assessment of almost every part of the game related to combat.

 

[Drowe]

@Legendsmith thanks for those summaries, they make it much easier to keep track of various ideas and give newcomers an idea of what has been discussed and why.

Moving under fire, aka "Not charging into battle just because you're in the enemy weapon range". This basically removes Issue #1 altogether.

I have an idea regarding that, what if we had another button to order a fleet out of combat? Once pressed the fleet will reverse course and try to get out of range, and combat will end once it has achieved that. The retreating fleet will still be able to fire all their weapons at the pursuing fleet except for those with a limited firing arc, essentially just spinal mount weapons and torpedoes (?). Should the fleet reach the edge of the system before it leaves combat, it will be able to do a combat jump, where they end up depends on the available systems within range, the AI will decide by priority list:

1. The most powerful allied fleet not engaged in battle
2. Allied spaceport with the highest level
3. Most powerful defensive structure
4. Any system controlled by yourself or allies
5. Neutral system closest to allied territory
6. Hostile system without a known fleet or defensive structure closest to allied territory
7. Any system closest to allied territory

The last two would probably mean you would go for an emergency FTL anyway.

A combat jump means you disregard saftey precautions, and jump with maximum sublight speed, which carries over after the jump, so you will be able to move immediately, but your FTL drives will require some time to cool down. This is a window of opportunity for the other fleet to catch up with you.

 

[Diezy]

Freedom of movement would be a huge deal indeed, it'd make harassment tactics more viable at least. It needs not be a micro-intensive thing, either, merely pointing out a direction in which the fleets should go, and whatever weapons are in range will fire and do what they can.

If the move command points away from the enemy, the fleet will just disengage and fire in reverse, ending combat once out of range. If at the edge of the gravity well, one could even order the fleet to FTL out normally.

If the move command is fully towards the enemy, it'd be a full-on swarming charging attack we see now, otherwise your ships would always do what they can to be at that spot you order them to move to, and hold position from there.

Game has auras and facing requirements, so choosing where the ships should be positioned would be a really big deal.


Warscore from battles would have to function differently too, not counting victory or defeat, but rather the casualties instead.

 

[Drowe]

Freedom of movement would be a huge deal indeed, it'd make harassment tactics more viable at least. It needs not be a micro-intensive thing, either, merely pointing out a direction in which the fleets should go, and whatever weapons are in range will fire and do what they can.

If the move command points away from the enemy, the fleet will just disengage and fire in reverse, ending combat once out of range. If at the edge of the gravity well, one could even order the fleet to FTL out normally.

If the move command is fully towards the enemy, it'd be a full-on swarming charging attack we see now, otherwise your ships would always do what they can to be at that spot you order them to move to, and hold position from there.

Game has auras and facing requirements, so choosing where the ships should be positioned would be a really big deal.


Warscore from battles would have to function differently too, not counting victory or defeat, but rather the casualties instead.

As much as I would like that, I don't think we're going to get that level of control. The reason is mostly that programming the AI to handle that would be a pretty major task. As far as I can tell, the AI does not really have a concept of targeting a movement order on empty space. Fleets ordered to a system may hang out in empty space and move around a bit because of an aggressive stance, but other than that, any movement order the AI gives has a fleet/ship/structure/colony as target. The sole exception are defense stations.

My suggestion was meant to make it relatively easy for the AI to handle, since it's just a binary choice between moving towards or away from the enemy, based on a very simple criteria, a battle it has a very low probability of winning. It's not quite as easy, since one side may use multiple fleets, but you get the gist.

 

[HAL.9000.1]

Freedom of movement would be a huge deal indeed, it'd make harassment tactics more viable at least. It needs not be a micro-intensive thing, either, merely pointing out a direction in which the fleets should go, and whatever weapons are in range will fire and do what they can.

If the move command points away from the enemy, the fleet will just disengage and fire in reverse, ending combat once out of range. If at the edge of the gravity well, one could even order the fleet to FTL out normally.

If the move command is fully towards the enemy, it'd be a full-on swarming charging attack we see now, otherwise your ships would always do what they can to be at that spot you order them to move to, and hold position from there.

Game has auras and facing requirements, so choosing where the ships should be positioned would be a really big deal.

I agree with this idea. So much so that, about a week ago, I added it to the suggestions forum. I think it would be fairly simple to add from a programming perspective, too. Sadly, it didn't seem to get much attention. In addition to your comments above, I would just add that, because fleets organize themselves in line abreast, a very large fleet has a very wide formation. So much so that a fleet attacking one flank might very well be out of range of ships on the other flank entirely. Thus the most efficient way to organize your doomstack might not be one huge fleet, but rather several smaller fleets, each with different positions and objectives in a battle.