Fixing Big Ball of Death Suggestion: Admiral Combat Width

[I_AM_King_Midas]

Distant Worlds Universe helped fix this by allowing ships to have trade offs with speed. So lighter ships could provide major hit and run tactics and then warp away. They could attach at different parts of your empire and once u got there leave. You could counter this with fields that helped block ftl but then u still were moving everything in your empire to deal with these small fee ships in one system while u were being hit and taken out all over.

In stellaris you could run in and shoot up space ports, mining stations etc. Do this in several systems across their empire and it will cripple them and their economy.

Hopefully this would make them go into debt and cause large problems.

 

[FelixG]

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.

AOEs are already going to be a thing on Battleships and Defense stations.

Wiz talked about things like minefield areas and similar when showing off defense stations, and mentioned that Battleship hulls will be able to mount similar things.

 

[Yenzen]

Well, Victoria II doesn't have this problem.

Because you've got 400-800 brigades and there's attrition and really long important fronts...

We're going to have to think outside the CK2/EU4/Victoria II box if we want to find a way to avoid huge balls of death. Right now the only reason to split your fleet, as Wiz is doing, is because you know you'll face a two-front alliance.

it also brings about the problem that for a Military government, why would you ever have more than one or two admirals?

Overall I think one solution might be that each victory damages the losing fleet less than you'd expect, because a fleet loses and auto-retreats when morale/organization falls apart, so a war at least becomes a series of confrontations where you can try to resupply and reinforce after an early disaster (EU4-like). This is space, going "fuck it, fuck the Space Emperor's order to make a stand, we're getting out of here" shouldn't be too hard.

 

[Amightypie]

deathballs are an early -mid game issue as you are fighting small wars on one front the devs have tried an anti-doomstack mechanic but all that happens are smaller stacks working and moving together and not solving the problem - Space eliminates the combat width issue because its space and there is also no attrition because of your advanced civilisation- having one doomstack will fall apart however as soon as a war on 2 fronts starts because you cannot fight everything with one fleet

 

[praftd]

it also brings about the problem that for a Military government, why would you ever have more than one or two admirals?

Because 3 fleets with 3 admirals is stronger than 1 fleet with 1 admiral.

 

[Yenzen]

Because 3 fleets with 3 admirals is stronger than 1 fleet with 1 admiral.

No, that's like saying a 30k stack in EU4 with a good general will lose against three separate 10k stacks each with a good general?

Or do you mean hypothetically?

 

[praftd]

No, that's like saying a 30k stack in EU4 with a good general will lose against three separate 10k stacks each with a good general?

Or do you mean hypothetically?

All fleets can attack at the same time. There are no battle widths enforced. It's more akin to CK2 where 2 seperate 15k stacks would merge into a 30k stack in battle. All seperate fleets can attack simultaneously.

The difference is you get bonuses from all 3 generals to their respective fleets.

It's like the difference in CK2 of having 1 general in the center flank, or 1 for all 3 flanks.

 

[Yenzen]

All fleets can attack at the same time. There are no battle widths enforced. It's more akin to CK2 where 2 seperate 15k stacks would merge into a 30k stack in battle. All seperate fleets can attack simultaneously.

The difference is you get bonuses from all 3 generals to their respective fleets.

It's like the difference in CK2 of having 1 general in the center flank, or 1 for all 3 flanks.

If it works anything like EU4, only the top dog matters.

If not, the combined fleet would be as good as those three admirals on average, while the other fleet would be outfitted with the best admiral.

You can't just hire 20 +5% admirals and fly 20 fleets into an enemy stack and have +100% modifier. Where did you get that idea?

 

[praftd]

You can't just hire 20 +5% admirals and fly 20 fleets into an enemy stack and have +100% modifier. Where did you get that idea?

That is not what I said at all...

If I have 1 fleet of 10 ships with and admiral that gives +5% damage. Those ships get the extra damage.

If I have another fleet of 10 that has another admiral that gives +5% attack and evasion. Those ships get those bonuses.

If both attack the same fleet, both of these fleets get their repective bonuses to their repective fleets. Just like most 4x game has always done. Fleets are seperate and distinct.

If a player wants to waste their hired heros for generals, why not let them? If they did that, they'd be out of governors and scientists.

 

[Yenzen]

That is not what I said at all...

If I have 1 fleet of 10 ships with and admiral that gives +5% damage. Those ships get the extra damage.

If I have athoer fleet of 10 that has another admiral that gives +5% attack and evasion. Those ships get those bonuses.

If both attack the same fleet, both of these fleets get their repective bonuses to their repective fleets. Just like any 4x game has always done.

Do you have any sources of this at all?

 

[FelixG]

That is not what I said at all...

If I have 1 fleet of 10 ships with and admiral that gives +5% damage. Those ships get the extra damage.

If I have another fleet of 10 that has another admiral that gives +5% attack and evasion. Those ships get those bonuses.

If both attack the same fleet, both of these fleets get their repective bonuses to their repective fleets. Just like most 4x game has always done. Fleets are seperate and distinct.

If a player wants to waste their hired heros for generals, why not let them? If they did that, they'd be out of governors and scientists.

In that case it would be stupid to have two different stacks, because you could have 20 ships under the superior admiral that gives +5 to attack and evasion, rather than leaving half your fleet without the bonus to evasion.

The only advantage would be using one fleet to tie down enemy defenders while the other fleet kills stations and bombs worlds to help you win war score.

 

[praftd]

In that case it would be stupid to have two different stacks, because you could have 20 ships under the superior admiral that gives +5 to attack and evasion, rather than leaving half your fleet without the bonus

Possibly. It depends on the bonus and what you are trying to do with the fleet and it's fleet composition.

Obviously an admiral that benefits certain fleet configurations is better suited to that specific fleet.

The only advantage would be using one fleet to tie down enemy defenders while the other fleet kills stations and bombs worlds to help you win war score.

Which is a pretty big advantage, no? This is exactly the kind of thing people have been asking for to counter stacks of doom.

 

[clockworkBabbag]

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.

You probably should link the actual post made by Shafer instead of a limited article - the pcgamer link claims to do so, but the link doesn't actually go where it's supposed to. For reference: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JonShafer/20130218/186843/Revisiting_the_Design_of_Civ_5.php

It's probably important to note what exactly was said, instead of just picking and choosing the things that support your opinion. The things Shafer says were an issue were not the limits on units per tile itself - in fact, he claims that "On the whole, I would say that the combat mechanics are indeed better in Civ 5 than in any other entry in the series." The problems were that the AI wasn't capable of handling the management as well as it should have been able to (not necessarily a problem for Stellaris) and that the map wasn't big enough to allow for tactical movement.

There's also, you know, a serious difference between 1UPT and some kind of limit on effective fleet size per combat. Failures of 1UPT in Civ 5 are not directly comparable to arguments against deathstacks as whole.

The reason people tend not to be fond of deathstacks is because they're boring, tactically. Just get a bigger one and win (assuming all things being equal, such as composition and tech). If there aren't feasible ways to do asymmetric warfare, then it becomes a necessity for every player/AI to build up as big a military as possible or else perish - which decreases the feasible number of ways to play the game.

With regards to Stellaris, I don't think the fact that space is big is actually a good argument against putting in combat width or something. Game mechanics come first, all the time - if combat width analogues make a better game, then they should be in there. Tying combat width to the actual combat happening rather than specific fleets (much like in EU4) would probably avoid issues of "cheating" this mechanic by moving separate fleets together. Making the mechanic less of a hard cap on width and more some kind of penalty on combat efficiency/accuracy/whatever if there are more ships involved in a combat than what the best admiral can handle seems reasonable to me.

 

[Zoston]

I just want to add. In neither EU, CK or Vicky has it ever paid off to separate your army just because you're fighting a two-front war. In principle, it is always better to just focus all your armies in one front, win decisively there, then move to the other front, win decisively there, and only when there is no meaningful resistance do you split up to carpet siege. When you're attacked from multiple directions, you just let them siege and capture one front and hope you can win on one front quick enough to still have something left on the onther one, Germany's WW1 strategy basically. It's just too dangerous to risk losing battles, which can snowball into losing the war really quickly, to make splitting your army worth it unless you already have overwhelming numbers on both fronts.

The primary motivations to have more than one army is because of attrition. And even then you're always taking a Napoleonesque strategy where you move your armies around to avoid attrition then quickly join them together to fight the decisive battle. It's pretty deathbally, but attrition forces you to use some strategy. From what I've seen so far, I don't see any mechanic in Stellaris that would make me ever separate my fleet until I'm de facto carpet-sieging the opponent.

 

[praftd]

The reason people tend not to be fond of deathstacks is because they're boring, tactically. Just get a bigger one and win (assuming all things being equal, such as composition and tech). If there aren't feasible ways to do asymmetric warfare, then it becomes a necessity for every player/AI to build up as big a military as possible or else perish - which decreases the feasible number of ways to play the game.

With regards to Stellaris, I don't think the fact that space is big is actually a good argument against putting in combat width or something. Game mechanics come first, all the time - if combat width analogues make a better game, then they should be in there. Tying combat width to the actual combat happening rather than specific fleets (much like in EU4) would probably avoid issues of "cheating" this mechanic by moving separate fleets together. Making the mechanic less of a hard cap on width and more some kind of penalty on combat efficiency/accuracy/whatever if there are more ships involved in a combat than what the best admiral can handle seems reasonable to me.

And making arbitrary rules forcing people to split stacks is equally boring and far more tedious.

Forcing players to split fleets achieves nothing. I have yet to see a 4x game do it in a meaningful way, ever.

All it does is force players to attack with multiple doomstacks instead of one.

All fleet widths do is force units to "wait in line", which not only makes mo sense, but to doesn't fit the combat mechanics of the game.All you are doing is artificially gimping a superior force because of your strange notion that weaker armies should win, and stronger ones should be punished.

This isn't HOI, gleet widths do not work because much of the core gameplay os different.

 

[Summin Cool]

There is no need to enfore a nerf to a doom stack.

All you need to consider is force projection ie, how far can a force move and engage within a set time. In this case, how much space can a fleet effectively defend. Its more ideal as chokepoints that require doom stacks to break through can form, especially against hyperdrive users

I feel like SOTS did this well, but added in the force width via technology limits (its a 2004 game people) anyway but in this game I think with how large empires can get it should be very difficult to defend a large empire with a single doom stack.

 

[clockworkBabbag]

And making arbitrary rules forcing people to split stacks is equally boring and far more tedious.

Forcing players to split fleets achieves nothing. I have yet to see a game do it in a meaningful way, ever.

All it does is force players to attack with multiple doomstacks instead of one.

All fleet widths do is force units to "wait in line", which not only makes mo sense, but to doesn't fit the combat mechanics of the game.All you are doing is artificially gimping a superior force because of your strange notion that weaker armies should win, and stronger ones should be punished.

Did you actually read what I wrote?

Because it doesn't look like this argument is a reply to limits on effective number of ships on a per-combat basis, not per individual fleet - and in addition, limits that are not a hard cap on combat width. If it's a soft cap with diminishing returns, this does not at all force fleets to wait in line. The idea is not to make giant fleets ineffective (it'd be really swell if you didn't put words in my mouth), but to at least give some incentive for splitting up fleets more. In every Paradox game so far the winning strategy in wars is to use overwhelming power for as many battles in a war as you can and then mop up when there's no resistance left, but unlike those previous games Stellaris has absolutely no limit - not even soft ones like attrition - on how much force you can easily concentrate in one place.

And we have no idea how effective you can manage a war by trying to avoid a giant doomstack. Again, based on previous Paradox games, you probably won't see as big a benefit as one giant army except in single player, just because the AI isn't ever going to be as capable as a human in general. I'm just not seeing any situation where trying to use split-up fleets to avoid fighting a doomstack is going to help with actually winning a war - if you have to keep running away from a doomstack that's chasing your individual split up fleets down before you can occupy a planet, you will never accomplish any real gains in the war. And if that doomstack ever catches one of those fleets you've lost far more easily at far less expense to the doomstack. This is behavior we see all the time in CK2 and EU4, and again: Stellaris lacks even the most basic and/or relaxed incentives against this.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

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.

That is a very good suggestion imho. Considering game design in general, area of effect weapons are the classic counter to blobbing, for example a chain lightning spell in a fantasy game (like Age of Wonder 3). Ofcourse many games just have set stack limits, which works as well, but there you sometimes get the issue of late game scaling (presumably this would scale with research in Stellaris)

So, yeah, minefields etc ar a good idea.

I also think fuel and munitions supplies etc are also a potential idea, with a spacebase being able to create these, and replenish them, but at a set rate, so refuelling a larger fleet takes more time, so you have a counter to balance the utility of large fleets.

This can all be summarised by the use of logistics, which is a real life major consideration.

I don't know if that extra layer of management (not micro perse) would be welcome in Stellaris, but it presents a fairly simple to understand set of rules to somewhat counter a blob.

 

[The Danish King]

Didn't Wiz spread his "doomstack" into two fleets, 'cause he said there was a very long way from the north to the south? It seems having only 1 doomstack of doom is a sure way to get your enourmous empire to crumble under small raids on different sectors of your empire.

 

[Tim_Ward]

Just imagine if the Blorg were facing another hostile empire out in the spiral arm.

There's your incentive to split a fleet up right there.

Other tactics may also strongly discourage doomstacks, like fast moving groups of raiders swatting all the mining stations.

In other circumstances, a doom stack may be exactly the best thing to do and in those cases you should go ahead and do a doomstack, it's not inherently "less tactical" it's actually pretty optimal tactically. Kinda daft to think of it as a 'problem' top be fixed with gamey machanics.