Doomstacks and Diplomacy - Thoughts

[LtShadowKiller]

This kind of post has already been made but I thought of a suggestion I would like to throw out there and see if anyone could add to it or fix problems it has. Also what thoughts do you all have on the doomstack battles and how you would fix it. Before I get into my idea let me state the numbers are not accurate I just made them small for easy examples.

My suggestion, and fix, to doomstacks would be that each star system has a limit of how many ships may enter it. This number is different for every race. To explain this I would like to talk about an example I thought of. A star system of 2 planets, the star producing 3 energy and a barren planet producing 2 minerals and a colonized planet producing 3 minerals and 2 energy. So the base star would give you 10 ships per system, but these 10 ships are for every empire, so if there were 3 empires the star could have actually 30 (10 from each empire). So lets say player A has colonized this system, but does not have mining stations around the star or other planet. Since he is working and producing 3 minerals and 2 energy his total number or ships in the system increases to 15, if he starts to mine the star and other planet it would then increase to 20. The problem is when war happens what happens if you can't get enough ships to defeat his total number of ships. Well my solution would be a special type of ship, something like a fuel ship or just a special device you put on bigger ships, that would add like +5 ships in system but you could only have a small number of the ships per fleet or a limit to how much per star system like +5 up to a total of +20. Also some buildings you build on planets could increase this size. Plus some stations could do things like -5 ship capacity in star system for enemies and/or +5 ship capacity to allies and star system owner. The other thing is in a war where Player A and B are allies against C. In the same star system Player A (the owner) could have 20 ships (because of planet and mining stations), while B (ally) and C (enemy) could only have 10 without any fuel ships.

One other thing I would like to suggest is treaties with other empires for station rights to build military stations in there star systems (this may already be in game, but I thought it might only be wormhole stations). And mining treaties allowing the other star system to mine planets in your territories with one change to mining stars and planets to where if you have this treaty or a system owned by more then 1 race everyone could mine the same planet and would be split evenly among all players. For example if 3 players where all mining a +3 energy gas giant then each player would only receive +1 energy from the planets. The last and final treaty I would have is colonizing rights, where the other empire would be able to colonize worlds in your territories. I can't name the number of games where my friends would have real good planets that they could not colonize in there territories but I could. Most of these treaties I would say I would only give to allies or friends, maybe the station rights for enemy of my enemy but not my ally or friend.

Thanks for reading and hope you all improve or offer your own suggestions, or give me any kind of feedback on these ideas.

 

[The_Human_Oddity]

The star systems already feel small enough, I would rather restrictions to the number of ships are not added.

 

[nyah]

Arbitrary limits like this make no sense.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

I feel that a better suggestion would be to greatly increase the threat level of an empire that has a doomstack (if we're using diplomacy as a basis to reduce them)

In other words, when a fleet in your empire reaches a certain threshold (say 10k) the diplomatic threat level of your empire increases, and increases exponentially the more ships you add to the fleet. That way your not placing restrictions on fleets, but there are diplomatic consequences to having such a fleet.

Of course, this could be exploitable by a player by keeping fleets close together and then merging them before / after war deccing but I don't think it's such a bad exploit, as once you do merge a doomstack you may threaten other civs who you aren't at war with.

 

[Almond_Brown]

Arbitrary limits like this make no sense.

Well in all fairness to the OP, they make perfect sense when you do not have to try and CODE them into the current games structure...

 

[General Retreat]

The problem with system ship limits it that it becomes difficult to justify the mechanics with rational explanations, which can then break immersion.

This kind of system works well enough in games like EU4 because the period armies occupying provinces can reasonably be expected to have been scavenging off the land (and invading armies have historically been like a plague of locusts for stealing food and supplies from locals).

In Stellaris, the idea that your battleships are plundering antimatter reserves from local energy stations is just a bit bizarre. Realistically if there was going to be any restriction on a post modern military force, it wouldn't be local forage but logistic support from the home territories to the front line.

Capping system capacities would appear to be a gamey and arbitrary limit. A logistics chain that ties fleets back to a staging ground would be more justifiable, honestly. Opens up room for asymmetrical warfare and privateering as well.

 

[General Apocalypse]

With the 1.5 upgrade bringing in galactic food the next focus can obviously be ship formations , ship styles and new tactics.