Fixing Big Ball of Death Suggestion: Admiral Combat Width

[Zoston]

There's been some discussion about this before, but we've seen the Blorg battle now so we understand the combat system better. I started thinking about it because of this thread and the posts there: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/4f173o/maximum_fleet_size_or_averting_stack_of_doom/

From what we've seen so far, there's a real death ball issue going on. This is already the case in CK2 or EU4 where you try to just deathball the enemy, but those games have an attrition mechanic demanding you think about it a bit more, which doesn't exist in Stellaris. But I think, based on some of the reddit posts, you can solve the problem like this:

You add Space Combat Width, tied to your admirals. The idea is that admirals will be crossing the enemy's T and stuff like that. Based on your tech and the admirals skill, each fleet will have a "max combat size". This represents the admiral's ability to outmanoeuvre and engage the enemy properly. You can still put as many ships in the fleet as you want, but only the max combat size of ships will be engaging enemy ships at the same time.

The difference it makes is that while you can deathball, they will be a lot less effective. Without combat width, 1 fleet of 100 ships will easily crush 10 fleets of 10 ships. It is stupid not to have a deathfleet. But with a 10 ship Max Combat Size, 1 fleet of 100 ships will do roughly as well against 10 fleets of 10 ships as it will against another one fleet of 100 ships. It becomes more reasonable to have multiple fleets to pursue multiple objectives, than one big fleet which can never protect everything at once.

In addition, it'll allow some differentiation in that you can go for small combat width with heavy capital ships or large combat width with many frigates and smaller ships.

Thoughts, alternate suggestions? Or do you think deathball battles aren't that big of a problem?

 

[Artannon]

The Devs tried that -- you wound up with the exact same thing, with the fleets moving, separate, but still in the same system.

The idea to fix this is to not make deathballing "less effective" with arbitrary penalties, but to add enough strategic depth in other areas where you can't *afford* to have a death fleet.

For instance:
- inter-system travel is slow
- stations are vulnerable
- defense platforms are a force multiplier for smaller fleets
- bombarding takes time

 

[Tiaexz]

I don't think it is as much of an issue as it is made out as being. There were two very low key early game battles which were one "big" fleet (relative, as it was actually quite small) but the Just league war already has Martin splitting his fleets up. There are ways to counter such doom stacks too and big draw backs, but these have not been demonstrated sufficiently because there are not human players and both wars were lopsided.

 

[CurseUppl]

Combat width makes no sense in space, since space is volumetric.

I don't understand why people hate death balls. Civ 5 was ruined because the devs castrated the game with 1UPT, and even admitted it was a mistake after, especially since the AI couldn't handle it.

I want my large fleets without arbitrary restrictions. Death balling doesn't have to be bad. Death balling is also more AI friendly, since the AI doesn't handle carpets of doom as well as stacks of death.

http://www.pcgamer.com/jon-shafer-c...-civ-v-explains-how-at-the-gates-will-differ/

Article for why Civ 5 is shit.

@Artannon nails it on the head with a very sober and thoughtful reply.

 

[Daetrin]

This has come up several times - doomstacks aren't a huge problem for a couple reasons.

1. Defensive stations and defense-in-depth. Stations act as a tremendous force multiplier so your doomball can be stalled or even shattered by a smaller force at a defensive system, while other smaller fleets go cripple your mineral/energy income. Systems need to be bombarded for armies to have a chance at taking them, meaning your fleet is stuck in orbit while that happens.
2. Time and fronts. It takes a while to shift fleets around, especially as you blob larger, and it's entirely possible to have multiple fronts to worry about if you have a war vs an alliance - and that's not counting wormhole species bypassing your maginot line, or warp species avoiding your hyperline choke point, or a hyperlane species outrunning your warp fleet, or, or, or.
3. Finnickyness. It's muuuuuch nicer to only have as many fleets as you need rather than having to get six or seven fleets to go to the same place for your major assault and two or three fleets for your defensive screen.
4. Retreat is actually a thing. But it can be stopped. Stations and capital ships can jam emergency FTL...doomstacks are an all-eggs-one-basket issue, and probably hardly ever worth the risk after early game.

 

[Voidlord]

Combat Width in space doesnt make sense, Space is VAST and 3D...

 

[13Foxtrot]

I think what is being referred to as combat width in space is slightly different. It would be linked more to the command and control abilities of the Admiral's staff and tech level of empire. I don't necessarily agree with limiting the fleet, what command and control limits do is have a law of diminishing returns on ships over a control limit. Only a certain amount of ships can be effective and then you start losing their full value in combat....

 

[Tim_Ward]

Wiz is already talking about splitting his fleet in the face of a two front war.

Concentratation of force is strategy 101, which you deviate from only if circumstances dictate.

This is not a problem that needs "fixing", especially not with arbitrary penalties or mechanics.

 

[Sun Rendered]

The issues i see with doom stacks are that they can not be everywhere at once, and an enemy might decide to attack multiple systems at once [ see fallen empire war ] in this case having a doom stack would be a draw back because you can only defend one area at a time and while victory is probably assured against similarly powerful empires that split their fleets. Because they split their fleets to attack in multiple locations they can cause significant amounts of damage to your industrial infrastructure before the doom stack can clean up every splinter fleet.

Against doom stacks hit and run sounds like an extremely effective strategy if conducted using multiple fleets attacking targets seperated by several jumps each

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

Combat width = logistics ability/admiral ability, both of which can make sense in space.

However, going by the streams, I'm not sure it's really a big issue.

 

[corny.1234]

As many are saying width in space doesn't make sense. Maybe the dev could integrate a ship limit, tied to the admiral's level, technologies and battle computers, representig the fleet coordination. If you exceed this cap, you will have a (not so high) negative effect on evasion or accuracy.
Just a suggestion, anyway I'm fine with the fleet as it is right now.

 

[praftd]

Combat width = logistics ability/admiral ability, both of which can make sense in space.

Which still doesn't make much sense. Ships have combat computers for a reason. All the nitty-gritty combat logisitcs qould be handled by the combat computer.

This isn't the 1800s, anymore. There is no reason why a fleet's size would be limited because there is only one admiral.


Also, do people not realize admirals in real life manage huge amounts of military hardware and soldiers, and it works fine?Chain of command exists for a reason. It exists specifically to solve the logistics problem.

 

[The_Red_Star]

To give you an idea of how big space is; super huge ships in science fiction are generally 10-25 kilometers long; the size of a very large city. Sounds huge right?

If you were seeing Earth from about halfway to the moon, that 25km long doom cathedral would barely be visible from your frame of reference. Even a fleet of them spaced a hundred kilometers apart each would be very easy to miss. And when you have relativistic combat, it makes little sense for opposing fleets to be any closer than many thousands of kilometers apart from each other; meaning that from an outside view a space battle would look like some nearly invisible dots shooting nearly invisible lines and dots at other nearly invisible lines and dots; often whole light hours or at least light seconds apart from each other.

 

[Daetrin]

As many are saying width in space doesn't make sense. Maybe the dev could integrate a ship limit, tied to the admiral's level, technologies and battle computers, representig the fleet coordination. If you exceed this cap, you will have a (not so high) negative effect on evasion or accuracy.
Just a suggestion, anyway I'm fine with the fleet as it is right now.

Aye, but as I believe has been said before the devs tried it and found it wasn't particularly fun. Just adds tedious micro to avoid issues.

 

[The_Red_Star]

As many are saying width in space doesn't make sense. Maybe the dev could integrate a ship limit, tied to the admiral's level, technologies and battle computers, representig the fleet coordination. If you exceed this cap, you will have a (not so high) negative effect on evasion or accuracy.
Just a suggestion, anyway I'm fine with the fleet as it is right now.

God no, that was annoying in Gal Civ and it'd be annoying here.

 

[praftd]

To give you an idea of how big space is; super huge ships in science fiction are generally 10-25 kilometers long; the size of a very large city. Sounds huge right?

If you were seeing Earth from about halfway to the moon, that 25km long doom cathedral would barely be visible from your frame of reference. Even a fleet of them spaced a hundred kilometers apart each would be very easy to miss. And when you have relativistic combat, it makes little sense for opposing fleets to be any closer than many thousands of kilometers apart from each other; meaning that from an outside view a space battle would look like some nearly invisible dots shooting nearly invisible lines and dots at other nearly invisible lines and dots; often whole light hours or at least light seconds apart from each other.

Exactly. This is the reason why ships use combat computers. Very little combat would be handled by people. It'd be inefficient.

 

[schultz]

This is going to be a tough problem to address.
Aside from various combat penalties for grouping too many ships together...

How about slowing down insterstellar travel a bit? This would apply with greater severity to warp travel.
This might be incentive for a player to split forces up, to cover multiple fronts, if it's going to take longer amounts of time to redeploy fleets.

Possibly limiting the number of ships which can pass through a hyperlane or wormhole simultaneously?

Just some ideas off the top of my head.

 

[The_Red_Star]

Exactly. This is the reason why ships use combat computers. Very little combat would be handled by people. It'd be inefficient.

It'd be next to impossible for a human to feasibly do the math needed to make relativistic combat work. By the time you've finished all the number crunching you've probably been blown out of the stars by a 0.9 c missile to the face.

 

[Colwolf77]

This is just an idea but what about area of effect weapons : Minefields, fragmentation projectiles, energy blast weapons etc.

Make it so having a huge death ball fleet isn't a wise tactical decision. Obviously they would never deal as much damage as single target weapons but in fleets made up of large amounts of destroyers and cruisers they would be deadly. This might go some way to stop death balls dominating the game.

 

[The_Red_Star]

This is just an idea but what about area of effect weapons : Minefields, fragmentation projectiles, energy blast weapons etc.

Make it so having a huge death ball fleet isn't a wise tactical decision. Obviously they would never deal as much damage as single target weapons but in fleets made up of large amounts of destroyers and cruisers they would be deadly. This might go some way to stop death balls dominating the game.

Those AoEs would have to be friggin' enormous to deal with ships that have any concept of spacing. Like; quite possibly bigger than whole planets AoEs.