I have no clue about modding stellaris, but if you say there is a way to do this i might just delve into it and try some ideas with a mod myself. I will needs loads of help though xD
Doomstacked Doomstack Doom-Thread: ReDoox
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I have no clue about modding stellaris, but if you say there is a way to do this i might just delve into it and try some ideas with a mod myself. I will needs loads of help though xD
Lot going on here. But nerfing doomstacking isn't just about making combat more interesting...it's about making the game more playable.
On a huge map, even with habitable worlds turned down to .25% of normal, by the time the game gets to the endgame, playability takes a big hit trying to run everything, and fleets still easily break the 100k mark, and there are usually several of them. During the battles themselves, that causes a lot of issues. The idea is to improve the performance of the game, not just for its own sake, but also to make it more accessible to those with systems that meet the requirements, but can't fully exploit the game's options.
With the flanking notion, it doesn't actually help (although I do still like it), not because "it's still doomstacking" but because it's still the same number of ships and such that have to be processed.
Also, I'm pretty sure the "math" is wrong. As for starters, even tiny increases would pretty radically change the outcomes of battles. Most of the bonuses that currently apply in those situations as it is are fairly small, and they often make the difference, all else being equal.
Really, no solution in fleet combat for any of its current issues, is going to help at all until they properly balance the different weapons and ship classes, which hasn't really been done.
On a huge map, even with habitable worlds turned down to .25% of normal, by the time the game gets to the endgame, playability takes a big hit trying to run everything, and fleets still easily break the 100k mark, and there are usually several of them. During the battles themselves, that causes a lot of issues. The idea is to improve the performance of the game, not just for its own sake, but also to make it more accessible to those with systems that meet the requirements, but can't fully exploit the game's options.
With the flanking notion, it doesn't actually help (although I do still like it), not because "it's still doomstacking" but because it's still the same number of ships and such that have to be processed.
Also, I'm pretty sure the "math" is wrong. As for starters, even tiny increases would pretty radically change the outcomes of battles. Most of the bonuses that currently apply in those situations as it is are fairly small, and they often make the difference, all else being equal.
Really, no solution in fleet combat for any of its current issues, is going to help at all until they properly balance the different weapons and ship classes, which hasn't really been done.
There is a lot of info out there for modding. And you can always ask questions in the mod sub-forum here. Which I lost access to somehow from PDS account randomly un-linking from Steam account just recently -_-
But here are some links to get you started:
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Modding
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Event_modding
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Conditions
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Scopes
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Modifiers
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Effects
Also some of that stuff is not completely up to date, as PDS occasionally makes changes to scopes/modifiers/condition/effects in how they are spelled/work. So it is always a good idea to test and when something is not working when it should going through patch notes can help to see if something was changed:
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Patches
You can also test a lot of your changes using the in-game console:
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Console_commands
Particularly of note for testing is the 'observe' command (without quotes) which will let the galaxy run by itself with all AI empires. Also 'mature_galaxy' (without quotes) can help you get to late game content faster depending on what you need to test, etc, etc.
Another tip I will throw out there is, try not to re-invent the wheel, often the best way of making something in Stellaris is start off by reverse engineering something in the base game, like an event for example. Find a vanilla event that is close to what you want to do and copy/paste it and use that as a base rather than trying to make something from scratch. This helps with unforseen issues that someone else also likely ran into and fixed in the base game for said similar event.
You can do the same with other mods on Steam by players too, although less recommended due to varying levels of competence in the game's scripting apparatus. You can find a mod that does something close to what you want, see how they did it and then make adjustments. But be careful of being too derivative if you are going to post it on Steam as your own.
Really, what makes Stellaris the best 4x space game ever made is how easy it is to mod it. Almost anything that you do not like, you can change it. If there is a new feature you want in the game there stands a decent chance you can make it out of thin air.
I recently implemented a system where each planet resists differently after being taken in a peace deal. Some give up relatively easy, others resist fiercely for a long time.
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The point about more important mining stations is good. In my opinion, Stellaris should have more distinctive systems and less important planets. Or to be exact, planets that are not able to produce everything. Right now planets are just superior for mining and energy production, even though those two should be easier in space, especially with robots. Imagine giant solar panel networks next to suns, immense mining networks built to asteroid fields and so on. Planets in other hand would specialize in energy, science and pops.
If most of our minerals came from stations, real wars of economy would be possible. You could actually cripple your enemy's mineral production if he did not protect his mining stations. Right now it would be very annoying to defend, however, as there are hundreds of 1-3 mineral stations. If there was instead something like "Space Mining Networks" which costs a lot but produce a lot, too, resource warfare could be very interesting. You could fortify your production and concentrate on offensive doomstack to take enemy planets quickly, or you could use smaller fleets to both defend your space and destroy your enemy's economy.
The idea of physical resource storage fits well into this. It would work a bit like HoI2:s supply deposits, which you could capture. Every planet could have resources produced there and in nearby systems deposited physically into "planet stockpile", which could be captured. Of course if you do not have large stockpiles of resources, it wouldn't matter all that much, but if you had, for example, giant energy stockpile to power your doomstack, losing few planet's worth of energy credits could be devastating.
This ties into planet occupation as whole, and the problem of assault armies. Right now they don't really matter except for warscore, as doomstacks are everything. What if it became viable to split your fleet into multiple invasion fleets to counter enemy doomstack, and concentrate quick planetary invasions and destruction of infrastructure? The doomstack guy would have few options: use doomstack to destroy smaller invasion fleets one after another or split up and try to fight all of them before they invade his planets.
If most of our minerals came from stations, real wars of economy would be possible. You could actually cripple your enemy's mineral production if he did not protect his mining stations. Right now it would be very annoying to defend, however, as there are hundreds of 1-3 mineral stations. If there was instead something like "Space Mining Networks" which costs a lot but produce a lot, too, resource warfare could be very interesting. You could fortify your production and concentrate on offensive doomstack to take enemy planets quickly, or you could use smaller fleets to both defend your space and destroy your enemy's economy.
The idea of physical resource storage fits well into this. It would work a bit like HoI2:s supply deposits, which you could capture. Every planet could have resources produced there and in nearby systems deposited physically into "planet stockpile", which could be captured. Of course if you do not have large stockpiles of resources, it wouldn't matter all that much, but if you had, for example, giant energy stockpile to power your doomstack, losing few planet's worth of energy credits could be devastating.
This ties into planet occupation as whole, and the problem of assault armies. Right now they don't really matter except for warscore, as doomstacks are everything. What if it became viable to split your fleet into multiple invasion fleets to counter enemy doomstack, and concentrate quick planetary invasions and destruction of infrastructure? The doomstack guy would have few options: use doomstack to destroy smaller invasion fleets one after another or split up and try to fight all of them before they invade his planets.
@spriggan02
I have toyed with that idea too, and I think it has merit, though I haven't come up with a truly workable solution yet. @Airowird is right, you would have to scale up both income and fleet maintenance to balance it out, which would make occupying planets even less important.
The best idea I have come up with is not only scaling up output and cost, but time to reach the maximum level of output as well. A mining station could start with the same output and build cost as right now, or scaled up to make up for increased ship maintenance, but be upgradable which increases the output significantly. The mineral cost for that doesn't need to be all that high, I would rather tie it to time instead, losing one should take time to replace. If it takes 5-10 years to replace and upgrade the lost mining stations, then they are targets you will want to protect. You could of course take a doomstack and smash them one by one, but multiple smaller fleets would do it a lot faster.
The idea has its downsides though, long recovery times make vulnerable to successive declarations of war. Tall empires would have a lot fewer mining operations and thus would suffer much more from losing just one than a wide empire would.
I think one of the problems is that you have to stockpile and pay upfront for everything you build, but that's for another topic.
@Belaaron
The math is not wrong, yes a tiny increase has a dramatic effect on a battle. If one side has 10% more ships, they kill 10% more ships in the same time.
A has 110 ships and B 100 ships
A kills 11 and B kills 10
A has 100 ships and B 89
A kills 10 and B kills 9
A has 91 ships and B has 79
A kills 9 ships and B kills 8
A has 82 ships and B has 70
A kills 8 ships and B kills 7
A has 75 ships and B has 62
A kills 7 ships and B kills 6
A has 69 ships and B has 55
A kills 6 ships and B kills 6
A has 63 ships and B 49
A kills 6 ships and B 5
A has 57 ships and B 43
A kills 5 ships and B kills 4
A has 53 ships and B has 38
A kills 5 ships and B kills 4
A has 49 ships and B has 33
A kills 4 ships and B kills 4
A has 45 and B has 29
A kills 4 ships and B kills 3
A has 42 ships and B has 25
A kills 4 ships and B kills 3
A has 39 ships and B has 21
A kills 3 and B kills 2
A has 37 ships and B has 18
A kills 3 ships and B kills 2
A has 35 ships and B has 15
A kills 3 ships and B kills 2
A has 33 ships and B has 12
A kills 3 ships and B kills 1
A has 32 ships and B has 9
A kills 3 ships and B kills 1
A has 31 ships and B has 6
A kills 3 ships and B kills 1
A has 30 and B has 3 ships
A kills 3 ships and B kills 1
Result: A 81 ships lost, B 100 ships lost
And I rounded in favour of B, if I hadn't A would only have lost 70 ships.
You could call my rounding the tech advantage of B. Better tech only has a big enough impact to counter higher numbers if it increases the power of a fleet quadratically, so one level higher tech, 4 times the fleetpower, this is not the case and if you build a massive fleet of crappy tier 1 ships and send it against a tier 5 fleet with equal mineral cost, the T5 fleet just gets slaughtered despite the tech advantage. It's not just that, firing rate, damage boni, etc...if they together have a lower impact than the increase in numbers has, they aren't enough to turn the tide. It's pretty easy to try that for yourself, when the pirates spawn, try fighting them once with equal numbers and once with just 1 ship more, the difference is big.
I have toyed with that idea too, and I think it has merit, though I haven't come up with a truly workable solution yet. @Airowird is right, you would have to scale up both income and fleet maintenance to balance it out, which would make occupying planets even less important.
The best idea I have come up with is not only scaling up output and cost, but time to reach the maximum level of output as well. A mining station could start with the same output and build cost as right now, or scaled up to make up for increased ship maintenance, but be upgradable which increases the output significantly. The mineral cost for that doesn't need to be all that high, I would rather tie it to time instead, losing one should take time to replace. If it takes 5-10 years to replace and upgrade the lost mining stations, then they are targets you will want to protect. You could of course take a doomstack and smash them one by one, but multiple smaller fleets would do it a lot faster.
The idea has its downsides though, long recovery times make vulnerable to successive declarations of war. Tall empires would have a lot fewer mining operations and thus would suffer much more from losing just one than a wide empire would.
I think one of the problems is that you have to stockpile and pay upfront for everything you build, but that's for another topic.
@Belaaron
The math is not wrong, yes a tiny increase has a dramatic effect on a battle. If one side has 10% more ships, they kill 10% more ships in the same time.
A has 110 ships and B 100 ships
A kills 11 and B kills 10
A has 100 ships and B 89
A kills 10 and B kills 9
A has 91 ships and B has 79
A kills 9 ships and B kills 8
A has 82 ships and B has 70
A kills 8 ships and B kills 7
A has 75 ships and B has 62
A kills 7 ships and B kills 6
A has 69 ships and B has 55
A kills 6 ships and B kills 6
A has 63 ships and B 49
A kills 6 ships and B 5
A has 57 ships and B 43
A kills 5 ships and B kills 4
A has 53 ships and B has 38
A kills 5 ships and B kills 4
A has 49 ships and B has 33
A kills 4 ships and B kills 4
A has 45 and B has 29
A kills 4 ships and B kills 3
A has 42 ships and B has 25
A kills 4 ships and B kills 3
A has 39 ships and B has 21
A kills 3 and B kills 2
A has 37 ships and B has 18
A kills 3 ships and B kills 2
A has 35 ships and B has 15
A kills 3 ships and B kills 2
A has 33 ships and B has 12
A kills 3 ships and B kills 1
A has 32 ships and B has 9
A kills 3 ships and B kills 1
A has 31 ships and B has 6
A kills 3 ships and B kills 1
A has 30 and B has 3 ships
A kills 3 ships and B kills 1
Result: A 81 ships lost, B 100 ships lost
And I rounded in favour of B, if I hadn't A would only have lost 70 ships.
You could call my rounding the tech advantage of B. Better tech only has a big enough impact to counter higher numbers if it increases the power of a fleet quadratically, so one level higher tech, 4 times the fleetpower, this is not the case and if you build a massive fleet of crappy tier 1 ships and send it against a tier 5 fleet with equal mineral cost, the T5 fleet just gets slaughtered despite the tech advantage. It's not just that, firing rate, damage boni, etc...if they together have a lower impact than the increase in numbers has, they aren't enough to turn the tide. It's pretty easy to try that for yourself, when the pirates spawn, try fighting them once with equal numbers and once with just 1 ship more, the difference is big.
A quick mock-up for events that give bonuses/malus' to victory/failure to planetary invasion:
So, that is minerals/energy gain for victors, loss for losers, and win or lose the fight, 6% chance to kill a pop, 6% chance to ruin a build and another 6% chance to create a tile blocker, just like orbital bombardment.
Subsequent on_actions stuff:
This should work, more or less, theoretically. Haven't the time to test it.
Code:
namespace = invasionSM #
country_event = { #Gain a planet to occupation during a war, gain resources
id = invasionSM.1
title = invasionSM.1.name
desc = invasionSM.1.desc
picture = GFX_evt_interior_battle
show_sound = event_ground_battle
is_triggered_only = yes
immediate = {
random_list = {
15 = {
add_energy = 800
}
15 = {
add_energy = 600
}
15 = {
add_energy = 400
}
15 = {
add_energy = 200
}
}
random_list = {
15 = {
add_minerals = 1200
}
15 = {
add_minerals = 900
}
15 = {
add_minerals = 600
}
15 = {
add_minerals = 300
}
}
}
}
country_event = { #Lose a planet to occupation during a war, lose resources
id = invasionSM.2
title = invasionSM.2.name
desc = invasionSM.2.desc
picture = GFX_evt_interior_battle
show_sound = event_ground_battle_03
is_triggered_only = yes
trigger = {
is_ai = no
}
immediate = {
random_list = {
15 = {
add_energy = -800
}
15 = {
add_energy = -600
}
15 = {
add_energy = -400
}
15 = {
add_energy = -200
}
}
random_list = {
15 = {
add_minerals = -1200
}
15 = {
add_minerals = -900
}
15 = {
add_minerals = -600
}
15 = {
add_minerals = -300
}
}
}
}
planet_event = { #Destroys stuff on the planet when invasion won, uses different on_action, FROMFROM = planet controller # From = Planet Owner # Root = Planet
id = invasionSM.3
hide_window = yes
is_triggered_only = yes
immediate = {
# Kill a pop
random_list = {
6 = {
if = {
limit = {
count_pops = {
count > 1
limit = {
is_sentient = yes
owner = { NOT = { is_country_type = "primitive" } }
}
}
}
FROMFROM = {
country_event = { id = action.23 }
}
random_pop = {
limit = {
is_sentient = yes
owner = { NOT = { is_country_type = "primitive" } }
}
kill_pop = yes
}
else = {
if = {
limit = {
count_pops = {
count = all
limit = {
OR = {
is_sentient = no
owner = { is_country_type = "primitive" }
}
}
}
}
random_pop = {
kill_pop = yes
}
}
}
}
}
94 = {
}
}
random_list = { #Create a tile blocker
6 = {
if = {
limit = {
planet = {
OR = {
count_pops = {
count > 1
limit = {
is_sentient = yes
owner = { NOT = { is_country_type = "primitive" } }
}
}
count_pops = {
count = all
limit = {
OR = {
is_sentient = no
owner = { is_country_type = "primitive" }
}
}
}
}
}
}
random_tile = {
limit = {
has_blocker = no
has_building = no
}
set_blocker = "tb_city_ruins"
}
else = {
random_tile = {
limit = {
has_blocker = no
has_building = no
OR = {
NOT = { exists = pop }
pop = {
OR = {
is_sentient = no
owner = { is_country_type = "primitive" }
}
}
}
}
set_blocker = "tb_city_ruins"
}
}
}
}
94 = {
}
}
random_list = { #Ruin a building
6 = {
random_tile = {
limit = {
has_building = yes
is_ruined = no
}
set_ruined = yes
}
}
94 = {
}
}
}
}
country_event = { #Destroys stuff on the planet during an invasion attempt and the defenders win, uses different on_action, # FromFrom = planet # From = country, attack leader # Root = country, planet owner
id = invasionSM.4
hide_window = yes
is_triggered_only = yes
immediate = {
# Kill a pop
FromFrom = {
random_list = {
6 = {
if = {
limit = {
count_pops = {
count > 1
limit = {
is_sentient = yes
owner = { NOT = { is_country_type = "primitive" } }
}
}
}
FROM = {
country_event = { id = action.23 }
}
random_pop = {
limit = {
is_sentient = yes
owner = { NOT = { is_country_type = "primitive" } }
}
kill_pop = yes
}
else = {
if = {
limit = {
count_pops = {
count = all
limit = {
OR = {
is_sentient = no
owner = { is_country_type = "primitive" }
}
}
}
}
random_pop = {
kill_pop = yes
}
}
}
}
}
94 = {
}
}
random_list = { #Create a tile blocker
6 = {
if = {
limit = {
planet = {
OR = {
count_pops = {
count > 1
limit = {
is_sentient = yes
owner = { NOT = { is_country_type = "primitive" } }
}
}
count_pops = {
count = all
limit = {
OR = {
is_sentient = no
owner = { is_country_type = "primitive" }
}
}
}
}
}
}
random_tile = {
limit = {
has_blocker = no
has_building = no
}
set_blocker = "tb_city_ruins"
}
else = {
random_tile = {
limit = {
has_blocker = no
has_building = no
OR = {
NOT = { exists = pop }
pop = {
OR = {
is_sentient = no
owner = { is_country_type = "primitive" }
}
}
}
}
set_blocker = "tb_city_ruins"
}
}
}
}
94 = {
}
}
random_list = { #Ruin a building
6 = {
random_tile = {
limit = {
has_building = yes
is_ruined = no
}
set_ruined = yes
}
}
94 = {
}
}
}
}
}Subsequent on_actions stuff:
Code:
# Triggers country_event for the attacker upon victory
# This = country, leader attacker
# From = country, planet owner
# FromFrom = planet
on_planet_attackers_win = {
events = {
invasionSM.1 #Gain resources
}
}
# Triggers country_event for the defender upon defeat
# This = country, planet owner
# From = country, attack leader
# FromFrom = planet
on_planet_defenders_lose = {
events = {
invasionSM.2 #Lose resources
}
}
# A planets controller becomes a country not the same as the owner.
# Root = Planet
# From = Planet Owner
# FromFrom = Planet Controller (the one occupying)
on_planet_occupied = {
events = {
invasionSM.3 #Lose pops, buildings, create tile blockers etc
}
}
# Triggers country_event for the defender upon victory
# Root = country, planet owner
# From = country, attack leader
# FromFrom = planet
on_planet_defenders_win = {
events = {
invasionSM.4 #Lose pops, buildings, create tile blockers etc
}
}This should work, more or less, theoretically. Haven't the time to test it.
I have been reading and thinking about doomstacks a lot. I think the real problem is lack of tactical choices.
I mean let's all be honest and real. Stellaris is an RTS. Whoever controls more resources and more production facilities in an RTS will always have an advantage. I know some people are hooked on this idea of 'tall' but it's impossible to balance 'tall' vrs 'wide' without a lot of nonsense nerfs to wide. The point of an RTS is the competition for resources and being able to maintain relative power. So in a large Galaxy you're competing with 20 others in mostly a free for all. That will always be hard to balance since almost any free for all punishes those who war needlesly as others sit back and build up. The same thing happens in stellaris. If you lose your fleet fighting person A, even if you wipe their fleet as well, then now person B and C see you as very weak and can walk all over you.
But stellaris makes it worse. You have no control of your units like you do in an rts. You can't setup a kill zone of artillery and bait others into. Once a battle starts your fleets just deathball. You can only retreat. You're all in or all out.
The other issue is there is no AoE for ships. Nothing to discourage stacking. Which doesn't matter because if you had 100 single sized fleets showing up at the same time then the end result is the same as a single 100 ship sized fleet. In both situations the 50 ship sized fleet loses and still would only kill the same amount which is not proportional to it's size.
Lastly you can't poke and harass a competitor in stellaris. There is no way to knock them off resources without declaring full war. You need to be able to skirmish freely like a cold war style so that you can poke supply lines and mining stations forcing them to split fleets and build defensive structures. Otherwise the only thing you can o is mad rush expand with outposts and colonies to grab as much territory as possible so you can get as much income as possible. Yea the game punishes playing wide with research nerfs but when you can build a battleship every month due to income then it's not hard to start getting tech from battles or even mass spamming research centers on your planets.
Basically, I'd like to see stellaris switch to more RTS with less restrictions like an RTS instead of being the current real time turn based game where whoever has the biggest doomstack and goes first wins.
I mean let's all be honest and real. Stellaris is an RTS. Whoever controls more resources and more production facilities in an RTS will always have an advantage. I know some people are hooked on this idea of 'tall' but it's impossible to balance 'tall' vrs 'wide' without a lot of nonsense nerfs to wide. The point of an RTS is the competition for resources and being able to maintain relative power. So in a large Galaxy you're competing with 20 others in mostly a free for all. That will always be hard to balance since almost any free for all punishes those who war needlesly as others sit back and build up. The same thing happens in stellaris. If you lose your fleet fighting person A, even if you wipe their fleet as well, then now person B and C see you as very weak and can walk all over you.
But stellaris makes it worse. You have no control of your units like you do in an rts. You can't setup a kill zone of artillery and bait others into. Once a battle starts your fleets just deathball. You can only retreat. You're all in or all out.
The other issue is there is no AoE for ships. Nothing to discourage stacking. Which doesn't matter because if you had 100 single sized fleets showing up at the same time then the end result is the same as a single 100 ship sized fleet. In both situations the 50 ship sized fleet loses and still would only kill the same amount which is not proportional to it's size.
Lastly you can't poke and harass a competitor in stellaris. There is no way to knock them off resources without declaring full war. You need to be able to skirmish freely like a cold war style so that you can poke supply lines and mining stations forcing them to split fleets and build defensive structures. Otherwise the only thing you can o is mad rush expand with outposts and colonies to grab as much territory as possible so you can get as much income as possible. Yea the game punishes playing wide with research nerfs but when you can build a battleship every month due to income then it's not hard to start getting tech from battles or even mass spamming research centers on your planets.
Basically, I'd like to see stellaris switch to more RTS with less restrictions like an RTS instead of being the current real time turn based game where whoever has the biggest doomstack and goes first wins.
I don't agree with that. (And AOE is discussed pretty thoroughly above.)
Legendsmith's #1 is right on, and to that extent I completely agree with you. I'd like to see different ships behave differently. I'd like my carriers to park on the other side of the system while they swarm fighter, and my torpedo corvettes to make fast runs.
But I don't think we need RTS-level controls. That would make things kind of a mess. You'd have to ignore your whole empire for like a month of game time, and what happens to multiple simultaneous battles?
As pointed out above, what we need isn't a better way for players to win the doomstack battle. We need ways for players to not doomstack but still win the war.
I really like @spriggan02's point about mining stations. They should be much more important than they are. It should be really, immediately painful if the enemy starts tearing through your star systems. On the level of "if this goes on too long, how will we fight this war?" Right now rebuilding stations is just a post-war chore.
One idea, what if losing stations cost you a loss of resources as well? Right now a decent empire can deficit-finance just about any war to conclusion, this might help with that.
If you were to mod in a system that made big changes to economy and planetary value like the resource storage idea I suggested awhile ago, how easy would it be to mod the AI to understand the new system and use it effectively? I was under the impression it would require so much to be changed it was too much for a mod.
@Legendsmith, I made a suggestion concerning distributing damage over a fleet rather than combat focused on single ships in an elimination style- basically longer battles, with the defender not being utterly wiped out upon a defeat. Instead of the fleet being destroyed, it is instead battered and bruised, living to fight another day. This is also somewhat more realistic, as in most sci-fi fleet combat degenerates into multiple individual skirmishes (the fleet action above Coruscant in episode III comes to mind). It received a bit of discussion, so I'd appreciate it being included in the overview.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...om-thread-redoox.991261/page-41#post-22777329 - link to the post
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...om-thread-redoox.991261/page-41#post-22777329 - link to the post
From a gameplay perspective it might make a workable mechanic, but not based on realism.
You can't really use sci-fi like Star Wars or Star Trek as examples, because they simply sacrifice realism for something more interesting to look at. Realistically a space battle wouldn't be all that interesting to look at, there would be hundreds of kilometers between individual ships within a fleet, and tens of thousands kilometers between the fleets, and that's short range. It would be extremely dumb of a fleet commander to not have his ships focus their fire in order to destroy them as fast as possible. Individual ships going at each other is a terrible way to fight if you want to win, and it only really works if your opponent does the same, which he wouldn't.
Doesn't mean it would be bad as a mechanic, just not justified with realism.
Although I, up until now, know not much about modding, I read up on the possibilities because I might just go and try to mod this. As far as I understand it there is at least the possibility to create an "event" that deducts ressources from your pool in the instance a planetary invasion succeeds.
Same goes for changing the distribution and values of ressources found on stellar bodies, there seems to be already a mod touching this matter.
As for the AI: I guess making it understand the possibility of upgradeable mining-stations will be a tough one. The Planetary invasion/planetary ressource storage thing: maybe not so much. After all, you have all kinds of events that take random amounts of minerals and energy from your pool and the AI can handle that (more or less). That of course, should only work as long as you keep the general ressource pool.
My first idea would be to set maximum storage for energy and minerals to some minuscule amount (maybe 500 or so) and have empires start with a mineral storage and an energy equivalent (wasn't there some building like this in one of the previous versions of the game anyway?) each having a set storage capacity of let's say 500. Then create an event that destroys the building upon invasion, gives the invading player some amount of ressources and deducts the same amount from the owner of the planet.
I will create a thread in the modding section to discuss this further. Also that's where all the people are who actually know what they're doing modding-wise so we might get some assistance. Plus we don't clutter this thread. Sorry about that
How about static defense station garrisons.
Defense stations add to a secondary fleet supply with a hard cap. Garrisoned ships are not controlled but will defend the station (adding to the defensive value of static defenses), and you can release the garrison to your control provided you have enough fleet cap to support the fleet.
This would allow you to have multiple fleets, but only managing one at a time. Also creates the illusion that doom stacking isn't happening, since you can attack secondary fleets at defense stations.
Defense stations add to a secondary fleet supply with a hard cap. Garrisoned ships are not controlled but will defend the station (adding to the defensive value of static defenses), and you can release the garrison to your control provided you have enough fleet cap to support the fleet.
This would allow you to have multiple fleets, but only managing one at a time. Also creates the illusion that doom stacking isn't happening, since you can attack secondary fleets at defense stations.
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That's similar to being able to mothball fleets, but a little more interesting. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to do though, because it would increase the number of ships in the game by a large margin, which could be bad for game performance. It would definitively mitigate the problem of one battle deciding the war, but due to being hard capped, they would do little to protect against doomstacks, although they would increase the effectiveness and survivability of defensive stations somewhat. It wouldn't solve doomstacks, quite the opposite in fact, but it would solve some of the problems doomstacks cause. So I think it's worth thinking some more about.
I am going to opine that this no longer applies as of 1.6.
This is my current galaxy; I'm the reds in the northwest plus an (undeveloped) colonial exarchate in the south. I'd say I'm at about 10% of an 800 star galaxy by area, and my actual planet count = 65. I have no habitats, this is pure vanilla no mods.
I have a lv.3 mineral silo on every planet. My mineral cap is 165k and my 2 sectors each have roughly the same amount.
Thus, if I save my pennies, the total mineral wealth I have to draw on (providing I have 200 influence to raid the sectors - this being 1.6's critical change) is 165+165*0.75*2 = 412k minerals.
My best battleship atm costs 1500 minerals and has 1.1k fleet strength.
412k/1500 = 274 battleships, * 1.1k = 302k fleet strength
It takes me 230 days to produce a battleship in an non-shipyard spaceport. 302 battleships / 65 ports = less than 5 per port = 230*5 = 1150 days = about 3 years.
3 years is on the timescale of a single war. I can generate a 302k-strong fleet in 3 years. Assuming maybe a fifth of my spaceports get shot over the course of those 3 years by enemies, let's knock that down to a 240k fleet.
That's not inconsequential. In fact, that's the same size as the fleet I am actually fielding at the time of this screenshot.
TL;DR: now you can raid sectors' treasuries, empires do have deep, slow-to-regen pools of resources (EUIV manpower anyone) which you can raid in big conflicts to successfully rebuild on the timescale of a single war.
Yes you can do that, and no it doesn't make a difference. If someone can take out your first doomstack, the second one will not improve your situation much. As a matter of fact, since the winner has suffered fewer losses he can get up to full strength faster than you can. Additionally he can intercept quite a few of your new ships and destroy them without losing anything himself. He can destroy your spaceports and make your rebuilding effort take longer, and if you fail to cancel your build queue on spaceports that are about to be destroyed, the resources tied up there are lost. And he can hunt down your stack before it's fully formed.
True in theory but not in practice, because the reason I found all the above out is that I did get plunged into a huge war the moment 1.6.1 hit (did someone recalibrate AI aggression?), the enemy had a 300k doomstack compared to my 240k doomstack, I got rekt down to 90k in the first fight before I emergency retreated, hid my rekt fleet away in a corner, put 5 battleships on every spaceport, over the next 3 years I didn't engage at all except to snipe-reconquer undefended planets that he'd taken, and in the end substantially less than 1/5 of my spaceports got blammed and I wheeled back into the fray with a 310k stack and blew him up.
This wouldn't work in multiplayer because human players aren't as stupid as Stellaris AI, but who cares about multiplayer amirite
Yes, but that was something you could do pre 1.6 too, it was just more difficult and took a lot longer. I mean really, judging a mechanic based on whether it works against the AI is hardly saying anything. You can abuse the weakness of the AI in many ways, that's just another one of those.
Sorry, I should've clarified- by realism I was referring to sci-fi as portrayed by media IRL, rather than hard sci-fi in novels such as Evan Currie's Into the Black. If Stellaris were realistic in any sense of the word, with the player forced to endure month-long descents into stellar gravity wells, spending ungodly amounts of minerals to hoist even more minerals into the atmosphere to even begin construction of a vessel, said vessel taking years to construct as opposed to mere months... Well, needless to say, the game would not be enjoyable. My concept is only meant to be realistic viewed through the lens of soft science fiction.
As for focusing fire in hard science fiction, generally weapons damage in said genre are a 1-hit or 2-hit kill, as there's no conceivable way to defend against weapons of the caliber used in space. If multiple ships are firing at a single enemy ship, it's either because they are increasing chance to hit (due to light-speed delay in weapons targeting and the speeds the vessels are moving at), or they're simply using the wrong weapons (Hah, mass drivers with a muzzle velocity in the thousands of meters per second? You're just asking to miss, honey). As Stellaris doesn't use that combat system at all, we can't even fairly compare hard sci-fi combat to Stellaris combat. Therefore I stand by my Star Wars Coruscant battle as an example of what Stellaris' combat should move towards.