Doomstacked Doomstack Doom-Thread: ReDoox

[Henry IX]

How about some form of attrition when sieging planets that is proportional (or even exponential) to the size of the fleet. That way at least there is trade-off between damage taken and time taken. If this is combined with increased capacity to recover from defeats (lower cost ships), increased effectiveness of raids (ship to station cost ratios) and better land combat mechanics (so I cant just land 30X clone troopers and crush any defense) then it should make warfare far more tactical.

Descisions then include - should I seige this planet and take damage or just look to attack economic resources? Should I split my fleet and risk having the small seige fleet attacked while it is vulnerable or should I suck up the damage and keep my fleet together? Should I ignore raids and go for quick conquests of planet or should I split my fleet to chase raiders? Should I concentrate my fleet and attempt to force a decisive battle or split my fleet and raid? Should I settle for a small victory, taking a single planet or even just humiliating the empire and keep my fleet undamaged or should I go for a total victory, taking 6 planets, but risk my fleet being worn down and destroyed peicemeal, leaving me vulnerable?

In an ideal world each of these descisions would be playable and situation dependent (no one size fits all approach - I would HATE to see deemstacks replaced with micro-hell rainding as the only playable option).

So my suit of changes would be:

Cheaper ships (so a fleet does not represent 20 years income)
Damage from sieging planets related to fleet size
Improved ground combat formulas to reduce the benefits of massive ground attack swarm (combat widths could fix this) - storming a large, shielded planet should be nearly impossible
Lower fleet caps in late game so fleets are more manageable
Adjusted combat values for ships to take the above into account

If done correctly this sould be sufficient to weaken doomstacks as a tactical option.

As an additional bonus this makes fleet cap, build time and ship speed (faster small ships for raiding, capital ships for space battles and seiges) far more improtant. As it is, the only thing you need to know is dps, hull and mineral cost to calculate optimal build which will always give a single optimised solution to what to build.

 

[methegrate]

A bunch of ideas to throw against the wall!

Maybe a controversial one: Make mining stations more rare and reintroduce war score. Stations that count toward winning the war would make raiding a viable mechanic, especially against wide empires. Meanwhile if they're more rare (for example with fewer but more valuable resource nodes) they would be more defensible, so it would be tougher to just troll people with a million corvette fleets.

Tactically critical infrastructure: Supply outposts is one idea, lose them and all fleets lose strength. Orbital stations that provide most of your fleet cap in a few concentrated systems. Maybe installations or buildings that provide range within which your fleet can operate. Basically, the idea being targets other than the fleet which impact an empire's ability to fight. An enemy can put all his ships in one place to get the power of the doomstack, but it can't keep fighting forever if I'm picking off these other targets. (Wormhole gates are a perfect example of this. They're a fantastic alternative target.)

Ground - space defenses: I'd lean against having them spammable, but they'd add attrition to bombarding forces and non-combatant firepower to defenders.

Strategically critical infrastructure: Even if defenses were viable, no planet is worth defending because every planet is more or less the same. As long as I don't lose enough to lose the war it never matters. Key pieces of infrastructure would change that. Critical shipyards necessary to produce most of the fleet, data centers for AI empires, hatcheries for the bugs, essential sensor arrays, planets worth triple warscore because of their cultural importance, etc. Things that make individual systems important within the empire would completely change the strategic map.

Structures that increase value over time: Borrowed from Civ. Right now raiding is irrelevant because after the war I just rebuild those stations. If stations, trade routes, etc. took 50 years to gain value it would be a real loss when they get blown up. This can include trade posts in systems that have a lot of economic value (see trade routes below).

Occupation penalties: Right now it doesn't matter which planets change hands during the war. Holding a planet should incur real penalties for the occupied empire, for example: Resource drains from their income to the invader's; the option to slowly wipe out the populace or slowly ship them back to your empire as slaves; morale impact on the opposing empire. Losing planets should hurt in both the long run (whether or not you win the war, it should be a problem that they occupied BlahBlah IIX for a year) and the short run (taking pieces of someone's empire should make it harder to keep fighting).

Broadcast warp interdictors: Right now warp interdictors only work in a system. They should be able to cover multiple systems, depending on tech level, allowing you to restrict access to some areas or even build a frontier (depending on expense). And they should work on all three form of FTL. It's okay that this might drop wormhole or hyperdrive ships in an inconvenient system, that's the tradeoff for their lightning fast modes of transportation.

Trade routes, not star lanes: This may not be popular, but imho starlanes are a bad shortcut for building strategic options into a war. Players should build their own strategic map based on how they build their empire, where they put their defenses and which targets are more valuable. Instead, make all civilian ships able to use star lanes. This way, when a trade system is introduced certain systems will become economically critical, ultimately leading to emergent strategic value.

Expense: Some things you should be able to spam other things should be too expensive to ever have more than a few of. Maybe warp interdictors, for example, would be broken if you could put them everywhere, so instead at great expense I can build a line of them against a contested border. (And then they strike an open borders deal to sneak around it, or just go full Germans/Maginot Line: bad luck, great game.) More effective system defenses are very necessary, but it would only make doomstacks worse if I could turn every system into a full blown fortress. There needs to be greater balancing of expense so that some things can be totally overpowered because they're rare, while others can be useful and pumped out.

Supply and fleet cap treaties: Treaties that give me supply and fleet cap, frustrating their efforts to raid my infrastructure, rewarding me for having friends and giving them a real diplomatic problem. (This one's kind of fiddly, I know. It just seemed like a fun way to make diplomatic empires tougher.)

Fleet-cap consuming battle stations: There should be a lot of boosts to static defenses. One of those could be defenses so powerful that they consume fleet cap, making it more viable to play defensively.

Capital ship battle groups: Have the fleet receive significant definition both of degree (%-based bonuses/decreases) and kind (abilities, things the ships can and can't do) based on which battleship and cruiser modules are present in the fleet. For example, carrier groups behave one way and are good at some things, bad at others (maybe at taking out big ships from a distance). Artillery groups behave another way (maybe they're good at taking out defenses). This could either be a selectable posture or automatically set based on which modules are most common in the fleet. It would encourage diversification and would make stronger static defenses more viable by adding a possible counter.

Range limitations for warships: Is it just me, or does space just not feel that big during a war? Especially by midgame, when drives are boosted a bit, it feels weird that warp and wormhole empires can hop halfway across the enemy empire in a single jump. While we don't want to tear our hair out waiting for civilian ships to crawl across the galaxy, limiting the range of warships somehow would return that sense of "holy cr@p!! How did they get all the way to Earth!"

In an ideal world each of these descisions would be playable and situation dependent (no one size fits all approach - I would HATE to see deemstacks replaced with micro-hell rainding as the only playable option).

Also I completely agree with this... One of the toughest parts of fixing this issue does have to be balancing it so that the changes don't just make a new dominant strategy.

 

[Asuzu]

Maybe station and planetary systems need to be more useful, very greatly boosting a small number of ships (a garrison, if you will.) I noticed that some defense stations had the ability to boost defenders, but I don't recall it ever being used effectively in my experience. Right now, playing defensively appears to be 100% suicidal, which just isn't right as a universal. Defenders should have very distinct kinds of advantages that would make all but the strongest attackers take pause.

Yeah, having planetary defenses that actually work and can hold their own until one of your fleets arrive would be a good start.
Current defense stations are a joke, not even worth building.
Even if you build like, complete flower of 9 defense stations around the system's sun (1 on star to pull in and tank, 8 around to shoot) they don't do anything.

Right now, cruising your doomstack is all there is to war, and that definitely not fun not strategic.

 

[PK_AZ]

So my suit of changes would be:

Cheaper ships (so a fleet does not represent 20 years income)
Damage from sieging planets related to fleet size

These changes are opposite.
Long story short, competent aggressor will always have better doomstack, that defender. If he wouldn't have better doomstack, he would not declare war. Thats why that 1% of siege attrition in EU4 is so important - because defending player can deal damage to enemy manpower without taking any. With enough luck stronger enemy will just bleed his country without one battle.

But in Stellaris theres no manpower. There are only minerals. If you make planetary siege attrition in any form (to hit enemy mineral storage), and then you make ship cheaper (so enemy doesn't need minerals so badly), it sounds counter-productive.

Damage from sieging planets related to fleet size

Why related to fleet size? Wouldnt it just create irritating micro?
Personally I would suggest implementing one more defensive assets: planetary guns. You could have no more than size of planets of them, and every one of them needs one army/garrison to work. Planetary guns will shot once per every 3-7 days, trying to hit and destroy enemy ship, prioritizing the ones with less HP.

Cheaper ships (so a fleet does not represent 20 years income)

Thats just me, but... why? There is some magic in fleet being equivalent of 20 years of income. That way fleet is important asset. Something that can decide if you should be considered superpower. If anything, I would rather prefer to make fleets harder to destroy, for example with morale mechanics.

Improved ground combat formulas to reduce the benefits of massive ground attack swarm (combat widths could fix this) - storming a large, shielded planet should be nearly impossible

Yup. Combat width for land battles for the win.

 

[Avil]

Thats just me, but... why? There is some magic in fleet being equivalent of 20 years of income. That way fleet is important asset. Something that can decide if you should be considered superpower. If anything, I would rather prefer to make fleets harder to destroy, for example with morale mechanics.

Because if you lose your doomstack in that one doomstack vs doomstack clash you're punching bag until the end of the game. Truce timer is 10 years, and there's also neighbors that would want a piece of you after lost war is done.

 

[danest]

Perhaps degrees of stealth and sensor technology in competition.

The only reason I'm going to avoid doomstacking would be if I'm afraid to leave my planets unguarded, but I'm usually not. I'll see an enemy coming. To use Colonization 2 as an example again, when my doomstack was 15 turns away in south, an enemy from the other direction was on top of three of my towns in one turn. I'd not left a garrison behind, and my capitol city and two other towns burned down... in about 5 seconds. I took a risk, putting all my forces in one place, far away, and paid the price.
That's just never happened in Stellaris. No one just pops up next to my unguarded planet and nukes it. At least not that I've ever seen. Make this surprise attack possible, and I'll garrison it, split my forces to keep more than one fleet near each important border to respond instantly to emergencies. I could still doomstack if I wanted to or was really desperate, but the risk that a fleet could pop out next to my unguarded planet and nuke it in 5 seconds flat would discourage this completely.

 

[PK_AZ]

That's just never happened in Stellaris. No one just pops up next to my unguarded planet and nukes it. At least not that I've ever seen. Make this surprise attack possible, and I'll garrison it, split my forces to keep more than one fleet near each important border to respond instantly to emergencies. I could still doomstack if I wanted to or was really desperate, but the risk that a fleet could pop out next to my unguarded planet and nuke it in 5 seconds flat would discourage this completely.

Is that really good idea? I mean, it seems general consensus is that planets are too easy to conquer, not too hard.

 

[methegrate]

That's just never happened in Stellaris. No one just pops up next to my unguarded planet and nukes it. At least not that I've ever seen. Make this surprise attack possible, and I'll garrison it, split my forces to keep more than one fleet near each important border to respond instantly to emergencies. I could still doomstack if I wanted to or was really desperate, but the risk that a fleet could pop out next to my unguarded planet and nuke it in 5 seconds flat would discourage this completely.

I'm worried that this would just feel like trolling. All of a sudden random fleets can just pop up and nuke your planets... that wouldn't really feel like fighting a war, just having someone appear out of nowhere.

Especially given the doomstack issue. I don't think this would actually do anything about doomstacks, they would still be the dominant way to win any battle. So any garrisons you'd leave behind would just get flattened by a fleet appearing out of nowhere, and any time you wanted to launch an attack you'd just bring a doomstack to take out their garrison. Not sure how this changes the existing dynamic that much.

 

[danest]

It wouldn't happen quite so easily, if players used split fleets for defense instead of how is now with one giant fleet for offense and thereby negligible defense. An enemy theoretically could doomstack these split-up garrison fleets, but at terrible risk of losing most of its own empire to a surprise counter attack. The "invisibility" of an enemy makes war much more interesting in my mind, it was an important part of scouting and intelligence before spy satellites and the like. Varying degrees of stealth could bring that back.
It would be an interesting choice, trying to gauge how many ships to send to attack a world and how many to leave to defense or in reserve. Maybe we need more spying/intrigue options for this to work.

 

[danest]

In this way of doing things, it's a choice. If you doomstack, you'll have a great chance to win the offense, but you risk losing your whole empire. That would dissuade me.
If you keep garrisons, you're protected against split-fleet attacks, but be vulnerable to a doomstack.
If the enemy doomstacks you, you or another empire might be able to incinerate half their empire before they can blink.

Looking at those options, a gambler would go with doomstacks. But I wouldn't. no way. I'd play with split fleets, garrisons, and if they doomstacked me they'd be tied up briefly by a small defending garrison, they'd lose most of their completely helpless empire as I counter-attacked every completely helpless planet in their empire. Doomstacks would become an insanely risky strategy since you are literally throwing away your ability to defend.

 

[methegrate]

In this way of doing things, it's a choice. If you doomstack, you'll have a great chance to win the offense, but you risk losing your whole empire. That would dissuade me.
If you keep garrisons, you're protected against split-fleet attacks, but be vulnerable to a doomstack.
If the enemy doomstacks you, you or another empire might be able to incinerate half their empire before they can blink.

Looking at those options, a gambler would go with doomstacks. But I wouldn't. no way. I'd play with split fleets, garrisons, and if they doomstacked me they'd be tied up briefly by a small defending garrison, they'd lose most of their completely helpless empire as I counter-attacked every completely helpless planet in their empire. Doomstacks would become an insanely risky strategy since you are literally throwing away your ability to defend.

I don't see any practical change. As-is you still doomstack at the risk of someone else launching an attack across another border and striking undefended planets. Maybe you would get in a surprise attack on one planet, although to be honest I never keep that close of an eye on my borders to notice if there are ships there, and even that would be preceded by a pop-up telling you that they've declared war.

How would stealth let you "incinerate half their empire before they can blink" as opposed to right now? You'd still move at the same pace, take planets at the same pace, fight battles at the same place. You'd still need to declare war. Right now an enemy could launch a surprise attack across another border, the only thing "invisibility" would add is I wouldn't be sure where their fleet was headed first. However no matter where they'd go, it would still remain true that the only way to effectively combat that fleet would be another doomstack.

Given the way combat plays out, a garrison vs. a doomstack is functionally an undefended planet. There's really no practical difference.

 

[PK_AZ]

The "invisibility" of an enemy makes war much more interesting in my mind, it was an important part of scouting

Scouting is cool in either tactical games or turn-based games. In grand strategy it will lead to irritating micromanagement.

Looking at those options, a gambler would go with doomstacks. But I wouldn't. no way. I'd play with split fleets, garrisons, and if they doomstacked me they'd be tied up briefly by a small defending garrison,

Doomstack will not be tied by small defending garrison, at least if you understand fleet as garrison, not land forces.
And while planetary strongholds cooperating with some kind of logistics system might tie up much bigger fleets, it seems to be exactly opposite to your idea.

 

[Henry IX]

But in Stellaris theres no manpower. There are only minerals. If you make planetary siege attrition in any form (to hit enemy mineral storage), and then you make ship cheaper (so enemy doesn't need minerals so badly), it sounds counter-productive.

There is also fleetcap and build time. Neither of these matter currently because the cost of fleets is so vast compared to anything else. I have never felt restrained by the rate I can build ships, only by the rate I can pay for them. The idea of cheaper ships is to make build time and fleet cap far more critical considerations. You are however correct that cheaper ships partially counters siege damage, but they ultimately serve different purposes.

Cheap ships makes other stratagies more viable (raiding and taking less than the maximum in every war) where as seige damage is a specifically anti-doomstack meta.

Why related to fleet size? Wouldnt it just create irritating micro?
Personally I would suggest implementing one more defensive assets: planetary guns. You could have no more than size of planets of them, and every one of them needs one army/garrison to work. Planetary guns will shot once per every 3-7 days, trying to hit and destroy enemy ship, prioritizing the ones with less HP.

To punish doomstacks. If they just damage fleets at a set rate then a doomstack, which takes a proportianately smaller amount of damage, is still the best option. If you gave each gun a small chance (say 1% with bonuses for large ships) to hit each ship with each shot and caused large amounts of damage each hit, then a big fleet will take significant damage (virtual certain hit with each gun, each shot) but a small fleet will only be rarely hit. I don't see how it would take large amounts of micro, at least if there was an easy way to split fleets.

Thats just me, but... why? There is some magic in fleet being equivalent of 20 years of income. That way fleet is important asset. Something that can decide if you should be considered superpower. If anything, I would rather prefer to make fleets harder to destroy, for example with morale mechanics.

Beacuse if your fleet is worth 20 years of income then if you lose it you cannot recover. That means that preserving your fleet is the single most important thing you can do. That means that every war is decided by a singe or a very small numbers of battles. Seeing as every Stellaris game is dictated by a small number of wars (2 early wins should set you up for an unstoppable snowball) that then means that the game is determined by a tiny number of battles. That makes whatever strategy is best for winning fleet actions (doomstack currently) the only viable stratagy. Fix doonstacks by some other method and you run into the same problem in another form (hey look, raider fleets of corvettes is now the best way to win battles, just use that tactic) because the optimum fleet action stratagy is the only playable strategy if you cannot afford to lose ships.

 

[Slarkon]

If you have a massive doomstack = slower the rate of fire (in a massive armada not all ships will have line of sight all the time)
if you have a small or medium fleet vs a larger doomstack = higher accuracy (more ships to shoot so you have less chance to miss)

This would go a long way to forcing players to split up their fleets

 

[danest]

What if planets are more likely to "panic" if they are left unguarded? Leaving influential rich planets unguarded might also lead to political factions potentially in some empires... a "make us safe again" faction.
What if unguarded planets are more likely to attract the pirate faction's attention? It still leaves the option of leaving them unguarded, but doesn't force it.
Without a consequence for doomstacking, there will never be a choice. Without a consequence for splitting your fleet, it also would never be a choice. Both need to have pros and cons.

 

[Badhotdog]

I have an idea how to make doomstacks less attractive.
The idea is threefold:
Fist change the overload of the fleetcap penalty from economic to fleet effency.
Instead of an higher upkeep there should be a penalty to the strengh of the fleet.
So the raiding of the starports will effect a hige fleet directly and forces the enemy to split up and protect the bases.
Fluffwise this is explained through the matter that the supply can not be provided enough through less starports than nessesary, so the ships are undersupplied.
The actuall economy is not really effected on that. It seems to me the more logical way to penalise an overgrown fleet.
(Maybe you could do a decree which delays this effect through a higher ship upkeep in general)

Secondly: the admirals should have a max fleetcap they can support.
Explained by the staggering compexety coordinating a huge fleet, an admiral can be overwelmed by this task.

Thirdly: bigger fleets should get a penalty on jumpig.
Explained by the massive amount of ships to get a coordinated jump going delays the jump, whereas smaller groups can get the jump going on faster.

First i thought about caping this with fleet strengh, but that could be difficult because the strengh variates so quickly. Instead i would do it by the fleets points(the points which determine how big your fleet is). That is more stable.

And i thought about the ranks of an admiral effect his max fleetcap. A lvl one admiral can only support ,lets say, 100points of a fleet, a lvl 5 has a fleet support of 500. Everything above can not be signed to his fleet(like it happens when you got different jumpdrives).

Would like yout thoughts about this.

 

[zizard]

Just copy total war already.

 

[TaxCorp]

Any devs care to let the good folk who keep spending their time and energy on this if and when they intend to at least try to fix this? They don't even have to much thinking, plently of people have done the hard work and discussed this to death.
They have had over a year since release and multiple DLCs, and absolutely nothing has been done to even try to address the issue.
Does anyone here believe they will eventually do something?

 

[zizard]

Any devs care to let the good folk who keep spending their time and energy on this if and when they intend to at least try to fix this? They don't even have to much thinking, plently of people have done the hard work and discussed this to death.
They have had over a year since release and multiple DLCs, and absolutely nothing has been done to even try to address the issue.
Does anyone here believe they will eventually do something?

Probably all they will do is add a DLC planet killer in the same patch with some meaningless balance tweaks.

 

[PK_AZ]

Any devs care to let the good folk who keep spending their time and energy on this if and when they intend to at least try to fix this? They don't even have to much thinking, plently of people have done the hard work and discussed this to death.
They have had over a year since release and multiple DLCs, and absolutely nothing has been done to even try to address the issue.
Does anyone here believe they will eventually do something?

You do realize warfare-oriented patch is already in early experiment phase?

Without a consequence for doomstacking, there will never be a choice. Without a consequence for splitting your fleet, it also would never be a choice. Both need to have pros and cons.

Well, I REALLY don't like your choise of words. I will just link this one again.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...om-thread-redoox.991261/page-46#post-22815629