Doomstacked Doomstack Doom-Thread: ReDoox

[Elordis]

Combat has to be redone to allow the existence of planetary defense that fires at fleets nearby without the fleet being able to fire back. If things get stuck in combat you largely lose control of them and it would be extremely annoying to get snared into slowboat combat with a planet that you aren't allowed to fire back at. Stations basically function as planet defense already anyways and should just be expanded so you can specialize them for combat instead of just big shipyards with misc bonuses and an increasingly irrelevant combat strength as the game progresses.

The inability to meaningfully defend space or control an attacker's movement is a critical problem that has to be resolved. I haven't played with the changes from today's patch yet but hopefully stations are less worthless at straight up combat? It does sound like they increased the build radius though so kinetic artillery rosettes may no longer be viable.

You can make planets only engage fleets that are bombarding it, or combating nearby fleet.
As for control of attacker movements - in recent video PDX stated that they want to rework warp and wormholes, leaving hyperlanes as a primary FTL method.

 

[Nuclearmonkee]

If you allow reinforcing without suffering the penalty, then it is no longer system based, but battle based. It also would also make micromanaging it easier, bring a doomstack and send in additional ships as your own ships die. Which isn't needed because of the inability for such a mechanic to discourage doomstacks, I mentioned above.

Please note, I don't think the mechanic itself is a bad one. It just has no impact on doomstacks.

Well if you make fleet combats actually last a little while so that committing a huge fleet blob to a fight is an actual meaningful commitment of forces, remove the extreme advantage offered by throwing an enormous pile of ships into a single fight, and provide methods by which to attrition a mega stack flying around in hostile space, then in my eyes the optimal play as an inferior force would be to try to destroy the infrastructure (namely, space ports and such) which represent a relatively significant investment of minerals and time but are far softer than their fleet itself. Instead of having to try and beat their fleet in a straight up slugging match, I'd like to be able to bleed it via attrition mechanics and a deep defense. If I can tie up their doomstack with my fleet (which loses eventually of course) and wreck some undefended space ports and stations with smaller fleets in the process then that's pretty good. Now the doomstack has to ewarp out of a fight it would win and take damage in the process since the battle takes a while to win, or it has to fall back further to repair or fight at a reduced capacity after it wins. Bleeding an enemy and hurting them so that attacking you has significant cost or opens them up to coalitions of smaller nations jumping in to hit them while they're weak would be good. If the other guy fields his main fleet and swats my secondary fleet(s) away with his own so I can't kill his infrastructure, then at least the war will cost him a greater number of ships than it would under the current system.

Essentially I'd like to be able to hold the space ottomans at defensive lines and make them pay for every inch they advance and not instantly fall over dead because I have no way to inflict damage against their doomstack or even slow them as they blow up every orbital structure I own. The main part of the doomstack issue that poses a problem in my eyes is the fact that once you get to a sufficient size, no one can harm your doomstack unless they are also very large. Sure that tiny 3 system empire can't stop the space Ottomans, but they should at least be able to get a punch or two in and make them bleed a bit it. Right now the smaller force is simply annihilated, with a significantly smaller one often not even managing a single kill. Even if coalitioned along a broad front, you can take your doomstack and obliterate one fleet/spaceport after another sequentially until no one remains before you. Each one takes mere seconds to destroy and usually inflicts a small amount of damage.

The idea of putting all of your fleet into a ball to easily move it around and kill things isn't as problematic to me as is the idea that a single enormous doomstack is pretty close to invulnerable to smaller fleets which contributes to unstoppable snowballing.

You can make planets only engage fleets that are bombarding it, or combating nearby fleet.
As for control of attacker movements - in recent video PDX stated that they want to rework warp and wormholes, leaving hyperlanes as a primary FTL method.

I am very much looking forward to this rework. I think PDX is on the right track already with this stuff and will either alleviate or fix up the situation to make it more balanced while providing more interesting strategic choices.

That said, I have hard time imagining any kind of target that would equal enemy fleet: you do acheave all wargoals by sending in fleet, so that automatically makes fleet the most valuable war target. Now, if you could kill mining stations with assault armies or something - that would be a step in right direction.

Being able to board and loot economic stations would be good, and they don't even have weapons maybe we are already going that way? It would be great if I had the option to ransack it and grab some minerals/research or to be able to send guys down to a planet to steal some resources, wreck some buildings, and piss off the locals.

 

[Malefic215]

Has anyone thought about putting AOE weapons only on defense stations? I feel that would make them much more useful as a costly target to attack with your fleet. Being able to take down a good chunk of the enemies smaller ships before going down and buying some time for the fleet to arrive.

Depending on the strength of the weapon I think this would be OP if you could just build a ton of these around each of your planets. Maybe a limit on how many or which type of defenses can be in a single system?

Or go the opposite, make defenses extremely tough but not particularly strong. Give them a funny shield that takes less damage the more ships fire at it. (Call it Star Trek magic dispersion shield or something). Maybe Defenses should tie up enemy fleets in systems for a time instead of used to destroy them (Give the fortress an FTL inhibitor so enemy fleets can't get past the system and force them to engage or retreat). While their fleet is tied up wittling down your fortresses health, you can reinforce or attack something of theirs.

 

[Nuclearmonkee]

Has anyone thought about putting AOE weapons only on defense stations? I feel that would make them much more useful as a costly target to attack with your fleet. Being able to take down a good chunk of the enemies smaller ships before going down and buying some time for the fleet to arrive.

Depending on the strength of the weapon I think this would be OP if you could just build a ton of these around each of your planets. Maybe a limit on how many or which type of defenses can be in a single system?

Or go the opposite, make defenses extremely tough but not particularly strong. Give them a funny shield that takes less damage the more ships fire at it. (Call it Star Trek magic dispersion shield or something). Maybe Defenses should tie up enemy fleets in systems for a time instead of used to destroy them (Give the fortress an FTL inhibitor so enemy fleets can't get past the system and force them to engage or retreat). While their fleet is tied up wittling down your fortresses health, you can reinforce or attack something of theirs.

Well small ships already have the lifespan of mayflies in larger engagements so a percentage based thing would probably be most effective for creating attrition that people would care about.

Stations already have the big minimum distance radius thing going so it would probably be fine, but yeah ideas like this would be great for making stations act as more effective roadblocks that tie up fleets and generate attrition damage.

 

[Drowe]

If you want absurd example: you send one corvette to harass my infrastructure, I send two one corvette fleets to catch and destroy it. Result would, basically, be the same as hardcapping fleets while still allowing several to enter same system: you'll still get doomstacks, just have to micromanage more. When that is adressed somehow, providing diversity of military targets should be the goal.

Read the quote below, it should be automated.

Also such harassing and defensive actions should be automated so that you can focus on managing battle fleets.

Basically you have automated raiding fleets, that damage mining operations reducing their output but don't outright destroy them unless you let it go on for too long. You also have automated patrol fleets that hunt those raiders for you. This keeps part of your fleet occupied without requiring you to micromanage that. For that to work, mining stations would need to produce much more, which could be balanced out by higher maintenance cost for ships.

The only difficult part to implement would be the automation part, but that's still way easier than the AI that's already in the game. Other than that it's mostly a balancing question.

I think you can't rely just on military targets alone. As long as the military is the only valuable asset in war, doomstacks will continue to be the only effective way to fight a war. To stop that from being the case there needs to be another way you can decrease your enemy's ability to fight that doesn't rely on you fighting a doomstack. And it needs to be something a doomstack can't do and can't counter. But at the same time there need to be targets that are tough to crack, you shouldn't be able to demand territory without capturing planets, which should be hard and require a doomstack. But forcing a white peace should be in the cards.

 

[Dissonance]

Let's take it back to basics. The military spreads out because they can't get surrounded and have their supply lines cut off or else they lose fighting effectiveness.

I think the paradigm of empires over supply increasing maintenance costs should be replaced with a penalty to military power. To simulate ships that are running low on fuel and ammo or are otherwise under supplied. Change it so all naval supply comes from stations.

Then it really doesn't matter if you do have a 40k death ball because 5 fleets of 5k are going to wreck your supply lines so fast that your death ball will become largely ineffective to the point it can be engaged directly.

The only natural counter to this would be to split your death ball and maintain superior numbers on a fleet to fleet basis. This will also make military stations much more effective since they don't have to deal with death balls evaporating them.

 

[General HaNor]

Let's take it back to basics. The military spreads out because they can't get surrounded and have their supply lines cut off or else they lose fighting effectiveness.

I think the paradigm of empires over supply increasing maintenance costs should be replaced with a penalty to military power. To simulate ships that are running low on fuel and ammo or are otherwise under supplied. Change it so all naval supply comes from stations.

Then it really doesn't matter if you do have a 40k death ball because 5 fleets of 5k are going to wreck your supply lines so fast that your death ball will become largely ineffective to the point it can be engaged directly.

The only natural counter to this would be to split your death ball and maintain superior numbers on a fleet to fleet basis. This will also make military stations much more effective since they don't have to deal with death balls evaporating them.

Problem here is spaceships
which generally speaking are giant submarines in space. typically holding all the supplies they need for very long deployments.

I simplier solution along the same lines would be a stacking penalty. the larger the stack the less effective the stack comes. something along the lines of increased maintenance cost, reduced fire rate, reduced sublight speed, reduced combat speed.

This would simulate the realistic logistics and tactical nightmare of managing so many ships in any give fleet at once.

 

[Drowe]

@Nuclearmonkee
Making battles last longer won't do what you imagine it will. Making battles last longer will reduce the losses, the winning side suffers, the longer a battle lasts the larger the impact of a small difference of power on the end result. This means I can use my doomstack and just split up a few smaller fleets to engage the fleets you send to kill my spaceports, in the same way you split your fleet, that leaves me with one fleet killing your defense fleet while the rest ties up your smaller attack fleets. This leads back to doomstacks, since it negates the advantage of splitting up your fleet. Also your fleet still matters much more than spaceports or mines do, making them bad targets. Since the longer battles last, the smaller the advantage of a doomstack needs to be for the same result, you will gain more from adding one more ship to your main fleet than to attacking spaceports. Since both sides know that, stacking all your ships in one big fleet remains advantageous. If you are already at war with an equivalent enemy, being declared on by another empire or multiple empires already means your in trouble, provided they take advantage of it and don't act stupid. The AI isn't very smart so it is unable to exploit that against players, but it wouldn't be any more capable with your suggestion than without.

Your proverbial space Ottomans can be hurt if you play it smart, but not in a way that really matters. Nerfing doomstacks doesn't work to that end because it doesn't make other targets more important. As long as you don't have soft targets that have an effect on your ability to fight a war, nothing you do will result in less doomstacks. You can make mining stations more important or implement a supply system, etc. but unless defending them is less important than preserving your fleet, nothing will change.

I simplier solution along the same lines would be a stacking penalty. the larger the stack the less effective the stack comes. something along the lines of increased maintenance cost, reduced fire rate, reduced sublight speed, reduced combat speed.

Doesn't work because it doesn't make players want to spread out their fleets, they still want to make doomstacks so they will work around those penalties by micromanaging their fleets, provided the stacking penalty actually reduces combat effectiveness if you add another ship and doesn't just have diminishing returns. Because in that case, you can safely ignore the stacking penalty, because more ships will still win decisively.

 

[General HaNor]

Doesn't work because it doesn't make players want to spread out their fleets, they still want to make doomstacks so they will work around those penalties by micromanaging their fleets, provided the stacking penalty actually reduces combat effectiveness if you add another ship and doesn't just have diminishing returns. Because in that case, you can safely ignore the stacking penalty, because more ships will still win decisively.

Making the stacking penalty prohibitive and costly, and make it scale to near exponential. It must reduce combat effectiveness by increasing orders of magnitude.
If it hurts sufficiently, they'll stop doing it
If your 50k stack fights as effectively as a 30k stack of similiar design, you might just want to say screw it, and do 2 25k
Of course they'll break out their spreadsheets, and figure out at what point 1 more ship stops increasing combat effectiveness, but if the spreadsheet exists, it's just 1 patch away from being rendered obsolete.

Spitballing here, but the balance should probably be slightly under what it takes to carpet bomb a planet into submission in 30 days

But also, to your point, there needs to be targets in a war as least as important as the fleet itself. you need a way to hurt the enemy that isn't killing ships

 

[Drowe]

Making the stacking penalty prohibitive and costly, and make it scale to near exponential. It must reduce combat effectiveness by increasing orders of magnitude.
If it hurts sufficiently, they'll stop doing it
If your 50k stack fights as effectively as a 30k stack of similiar design, you might just want to say screw it, and do 2 25k
Of course they'll break out their spreadsheets, and figure out at what point 1 more ship stops increasing combat effectiveness, but if the spreadsheet exists, it's just 1 patch away from being rendered obsolete.

Spitballing here, but the balance should probably be slightly under what it takes to carpet bomb a planet into submission in 30 days

But also, to your point, there needs to be targets in a war as least as important as the fleet itself. you need a way to hurt the enemy that isn't killing ships

Math says otherwise. Any battle simulation with two forces, without tactical elements uses one of two models. Either they fight in turns or simultaneously. Stellaris uses the latter model, which simplified to its core mechanics means, the two forces shoot at each other at the same time, a number of ships get destroyed and the rest shoots again until only one side remains. As ships on both sides get destroyed, the ability to kill enemies decreases, so in each successive iteration fewer units die. If you don't limit how many units can fight effectively, then it is obvious that the larger force kills more enemies faster and therefore loses fewer ships. What isn't quite as obvious is, that if you do have such a limit, your force remains at maximum effectiveness longer, meaning each lost unit doesn't decrease your combat effectiveness or at least decreases it less than it would without that limit. Splitting up your fleet will therefore make you inflict less damage than keeping it together does, especially if you are losing. That means the losing side would have to form a doomstack, to maximize the damage, which allows the winning side to do the same. Such a mechanic can therefore not work unless adding another unit to your force decreases the overall power of your fleet. In which case as the larger force loses units, it gets stronger, which is an undesirable result in my opinion.

 

[skydiver1]

I think the focus on increasing the cost and benefits of planet invasion partially misses the point. Planets, like fleets, represent a limited number of of targets. The "weight" of the targets is not the issue but rather the entire concept of target-focused conflict. It restricts strategic choice to deciding on a target and attacking/defending it at the right time with the right force. Such a target-focused war dependent on fast reaction does not fit well with a strategic game.
What needs to happen is a frontline-focused war where progress is gradual and dependent on continuous decisions on part of the player, as opposed to momentary decisions. Meaning you can easily increase and reduce the forces allocated to a front and no single well-timed decision can win or lose it.

1. The hyperlane network is a natural frontline many space games use to allow players to entrench in nodes and force a slow war. Stellaris already has that to some degree in hyperlane-only games.
2. A system could be an abstracted frontline by introducing system control - a measure of how much each side controls warp entry points, has superior recon, minor hidden defences and mines, ect. However we need mechanics for figh
One such mechanic could be giving corvettes a usage as police/raiding forces. Basically they can enter a system largely undetected and covertly start establishing system control unless they're confronted by enemy corvettes serving as a police force. (the combat however is a slow-burn shadow war, as opposed to a quick showdown) The presence of fleets can also have an effect but not as much as these smaller and faster corvettes working in the system fringes. Essentially this system control would abstract how much each side can disrupt enemy supply and trade.
The effect, aside from economic disruption, would be that system control gives major advantages in fleet combat (due to better recon, supply, ect.) and ground invasions. This system can also be used to introduce pirates, privateers, ect. to encourage using police forces in peacetime.
3. A planet could be a frontline if invasions happen in several stages, with both sides having time and possibilities for reinforcing and evacuating forces and allowing for temporary stalemates if the defenders can't push the invaders out of their beachhead but the invaders also can't assault the defender's fortified positions.

 

[spriggan02]

I have been thinking about the topic for a bit now and have come to change my mind a bit. I think disincentivising (or capping) the building of large fleets is the wrong way after all. Instead i'm more agreeing with the argument saying: there should be more incentives for having multiple fleets with different tasks.
(Yes, that means a bit more micromanaging, but maybe "fun" micromanaging as opposed to the boring micromanaging that is what warfe in stellaris is now: one big battle of doomstacks and the mop-up afterwards, you all know it.)

Yes this means, players could still combine their fleets and have a doomstack rolling through enemy forces.
However: If you (for example) changed cost and return of mining stations so they would be more expensive to build but also gain higher returns in comparison to planet based ressource extraction (maybe some sort of upgrade mechanic for mining stations, just like the different tiers for buildings on planets would be nice, to have it scale with different stages of the game) you would make them more interesting as targets for smaller fleets and therefore make smaller fleets a viable alternative to just trying to defeat the enemy fleet and then bombarding planets. This could be combined with several other options discussed, like an additional bonus/penalty for invading/losing planets aside from warscore (there was the suggestion of having planet based ressource storage that can be raided).

All this would als need to be integrated into the AI's behaviour of course. There's no point in incentivising to avoid doomstacking if the AI does it anyway or is unable to react to the changes.

Long story short: by giving players other ways to win a war than to just throw all their ships at the enemy fleet at once and have the outcome of a war decided by that one battle, you would add some strategic depth to conflict. There is still the option of using a doomstack if you feel it's necessary but there are other ways to fight (and win) a war.
Draining the enemies ressources during a conflict, should from my point of view play a larger role. These suggestions would play into that.

Ideas for this suggestion:

- higher building costs but also returns from mining stations
- upgradable mining stations to keep them important in mid-/lategame
- additional impact of invading / losing colonies during a war aside from warscore (for example by having ressource storage on planets that can be raided)
- (Maybe: smaller build-costs but higher upkeep costs for fleet-ships)
-> Attacking the enemy resource-storage and production is more important for warfare than "just" annihilating his fleet.

Additional options playing into this idea:
- buff to defense stations to, at least, give them some strategic value protecting valuable mining systems.
- maybe: ftl-speed buff / debuff depending on fleet size (not sure on that one)

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Basically you have automated raiding fleets, that damage mining operations reducing their output but don't outright destroy them unless you let it go on for too long. You also have automated patrol fleets that hunt those raiders for you. This keeps part of your fleet occupied without requiring you to micromanage that.

Yeah, somehow overlooked that part. Sorry. Still, to me it sounds dangerously close to the most boring version of espionage: always have active agents, and have more active agents than your enemy. Not sure how I feel about going that way.

Math says otherwise. Any battle simulation with two forces, without tactical elements uses one of two models.

That is one of the problems with warfare in Stellaris: with EWAR out of the equation, fights are reduced to the clash of doomnstacks. If it would resemble reality, first contact would be made by scouts. Then smaller fleet would, most likely, commit most of its forces faster than the larger one, leaving small window of opportunity for the smaller fleet to fight on equal footing and disengage before it gets too bad.

 

[Drowe]

@skydiver1
As nice as that idea sounds, it is too late to change the game in such a fundamental way.

@HugsAndSnuggles
Stellaris plays fast and loose with realism, but in this case, their brand of realism is actually more realistic than what you think is realistic. There is no point in scouting if you already know everything about the enemy force from light-years away. A fleet can't hide in space, besides the energy their shields give off, they radiate a lot of heat, we could hardly fail to notice a spaceship with just the technology we have right now, let alone in 200 years. Only cloaking technology would change that.

Would your system be more interesting? Definitely. It would require a much better AI though. I think handling such a system well enough to make a difference would require an AI that is much smarter than the scope of the game permits.

Besides that, it wouldn't fundamentally change the nature of war and battle in Stellaris. Battles are still decided by bigger fleets, and war is decided by won battles. The only thing that changes is that you can improve your odds through micromanagement, which ultimately means that being smarter than the AI has an even bigger impact on your actual strength as opposed to what the AI judges your strength to be.

 

[SteelPaladin1997]

@skydiver1
As nice as that idea sounds, it is too late to change the game in such a fundamental way.

It's really not. In fact, that kind of seems to be Paradox's MO. They're already talking about ripping out and reworking FTL as a whole, which is a pretty core part of gameplay.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Stellaris plays fast and loose with realism, but in this case, their brand of realism is actually more realistic than what you think is realistic.

Only for universe where Paradox gave everyone magic sensors that know all. Yet, even those sensors somehow fail to detect odd pirate vessel - you have to send in science ship to research that anomaly - not consistent at all, but that is what we have.

Would your system be more interesting? Definitely. It would require a much better AI though. I think handling such a system well enough to make a difference would require an AI that is much smarter than the scope of the game permits.

No, would simply require scraping current system and adapting HOI4 way of conducting naval battles. No need for AI or manual control - same old autoresolve.

Besides that, it wouldn't fundamentally change the nature of war and battle in Stellaris. Battles are still decided by bigger fleets, and war is decided by won battles. The only thing that changes is that you can improve your odds through micromanagement, which ultimately means that being smarter than the AI has an even bigger impact on your actual strength as opposed to what the AI judges your strength to be.

What it would change, is make outcome of fights more even, less dependant on number of ships you bring. This, in turn, eliminates main advantage of doomstacking: immunity to even battles.

 

[Drowe]

Only for universe where Paradox gave everyone magic sensors that know all. Yet, even those sensors somehow fail to detect odd pirate ship - you have to send in sciense ship to research anomaly. Not consistent at all, but that is what we have.

Not really, reality doesn't allow for stealth in space. A ship, even one that is doing all it can to remain unnoticed, can not hide in space. Even just using passive sensors and a single satellite with todays technology, we would be able to detect any ship within our solar system within hours of its light reaching us. In Stellaris it's safe to assume that detecting a fleet, including ship sizes and numbers, within minutes is inevitable. And since battles can last for months, a few minutes or even hours is no different than instant detection.

No, would simply require scraping current system and adapting HOI4 way of conducting naval battles. No need for AI or manual control - same old autoresolve.

You can't do that, in HoI naval warfare is a side show, in Stellaris it's the focus of warfare. It would also mean scrapping all the work that already went into it for little real benefit. Because it would still all depend on numbers, but you would take away a major feature. If you did that, there is no point of having a system map anymore, since that is pretty much its only purpose, it serves as the battle field. It would also be unrealistic to make space warfare work like naval warfare, since spaceships can move in three dimensions, not only two as seafaring ships can.

What it would change, is make outcome of fights more even, less dependant on number of ships you bring. This, in turn, eliminates main advantage of doomstacking: immunity to even battles.

Battles won't become more even, because that's not how battles work. The way I calculate how a battle will play out is not derived from Stellaris, or any game for that matter, it's based on Lanchester's Laws, specifically Lanchester's Square Law. Which applies to real world combat as well as combat in computer games, and has been around since WW1. It is not a flaw in Stellaris' code or combat model, it works exactly as you would expect. One of the consequences of that law is, that a force twice as strong as the opponent inflicts much more than twice as many casualties, which leads to doomstacks if you don't need to spread your fleet out due to other factors. That's why I keep saying that you need to create reasons to split up your force and you need to create a way for a smaller force to avoid engaging a larger one.

 

[Nuclearmonkee]

@Nuclearmonkee
Your proverbial space Ottomans can be hurt if you play it smart, but not in a way that really matters. Nerfing doomstacks doesn't work to that end because it doesn't make other targets more important. As long as you don't have soft targets that have an effect on your ability to fight a war, nothing you do will result in less doomstacks. You can make mining stations more important or implement a supply system, etc. but unless defending them is less important than preserving your fleet, nothing will change.

I definitely agree with this but I think you don't rate the destruction of space ports sufficiently. It takes years to build/upgrade space ports and many hundreds of minerals. Losing an upgraded one is a major pain in the butt and if they drop under fleet cap and it will cost them yet more minerals and energy.

I would rather kill a few spaceports than a few extra ships any day if I'm in a war I know I can't win.

There definitely needs to be more ways to target an enemy's economic power and generate internal problems like unrest though.

 

[Drowe]

I definitely agree with this but I think you don't rate the destruction of space ports sufficiently. It takes years to build/upgrade space ports and many hundreds of minerals. Losing an upgraded one is a major pain in the butt and if they drop under fleet cap and it will cost them yet more minerals and energy.

I would rather kill a few spaceports than a few extra ships any day if I'm in a war I know I can't win.

There definitely needs to be more ways to target an enemy's economic power and generate internal problems like unrest though.

Spaceports are important, but not important enough to split up your fleet to hit them while your enemy still has his own fleet. A decent sized empire has more spaceports than it can use for producing ships. A fully upgraded spaceport costs about as much as a battleship, maybe two or three if you include modules. And it does take a while to construct. But the idea of tying up a doomstack with a small force to give the rest of your fleet time to kill some of them has a flaw. Once you realize your enemy is using that tactic, you can do the same to him. Build up an even smaller force to tie up the one attacking your spaceports until you have time to deal with it. This is much easier to do if you are not facing a large fleet, since you need to build fewer ships, which can be done in less time. If battles last long enough, you can even build ships faster than you lose them, in which case you can win by attrition. But only if the bigger force is small, the larger the forces are, the more ships are lost within the same timeframe, and the less likely you are able to use that strategy.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Not really, reality doesn't allow for stealth in space.

Reality also does not allow FTL travel. Several hundred years ago it did not even allow Earth to rotate around Sun.