Forget about Doomstacks. They arent the real problem.

[Tibi088]

So whats the problem with doomstacking? Its completly realistic and a logical solution to the circumstances. Its the most effective way to win a war. In my oinion doomstacking is realistick and Stellaris cant be reproached for it. I think most of you know it and thats the reason you are coming up with gamey solution to this "problem" instead of trying to find solutions to the real problem - apologies to those who are an exception to my previous statement.

So whats the real problem? Its that this is no fun for players because they dont want a war to be decided in one single battle - not because that single battle is fought with doomstacks. So instead of asking how to solve doomstacking the question should be how to avoid wars to be decided in one battle.

Why is one battle desisive? Because you dont have the time to rebuild the fleet before the end of the war - and you have no safe bases were you could actually try to rebuild because fortresses and planetary/station defenses are worth nothing and dont even slow the enemy.

The easiest solution would be an instant/near instant ship build - if you could say churn out ten battlehip/planet in a month you might build a second fleet that stands a chance in time. There, a solution. But though this might solve the problem it would be completly unrealistic so should be out of question.

Other options would be to limit and slow enemy advance in your territory. This makes partly sense because of supply range and such but still feels like a bit of an artifical limit.

If its distance based the fleets shouldnt be able to leave their supply range which they could expand by taking control of enemy planets - which should be much slower. Not more complex - that wouldnt hurt either but it was already stated that Paradox doesnt want to go into that direction. If its time based after the end of operational time the fleet should automatically go back towards nearest supply point. Not some kind of atrition because players would simply ignore it.

Lastly there is something that is very underrepresented but could be a very interesting gamechanger: devastating minefields. If a mine can take out a Batlleship and lets say Fortresses have them than you would think about a bit before attacking them. A mine should be able to take out a Batlleship. So if Fortresses can have serious (forget the laughable stuff whats I think is available now) minefields around them they should be able to hold out for a while if you dont want to loose a big part of your fleet. So simply going in with your main fleet and taking out a fortress should cause serious losses. Maybe you could lay minefields also around planets or such. The more the enemy spends in a minefields the more shance of it that he takes hits. I havent really thought out the details but it would seriously influence the game.

Anyway I know that i didnt really come up with a solution only with some suggestions that i think would go in the right direction but at least I believe I pointed to the real problem. I think we should focuse on solving this and forget about getting rid of doomstacks.

 

[Xeorm]

Nothing inherently wrong with doomstacks, you're right, but there is a problem with the lack of strategic depth the system offers. Doomstack A smashes into Doomstack B, and the better doomstack comes out, usually with enough strength to crush everything else.

What you really seem to be positing is other ways to deal with doomstacks. Cheap mines are, i think, a great answer. A way to have attrition of sorts for someone entering your territory. But rebuilding a fleet quickly is the wrong way.

 

[YaanuCZ]

1) deep space shipyards, hidden in nebulas or utilizing uncolonizablebplanets, building such infrastructure on a toxic, radioactive, volcanic planet or moons
2) better planetary and system defense
3) moar realistic system scale (like the Better Scale System mod) which will increase travel time inside a system and give a more time to build ships
4) one does no simply warp into capital system just like that, reworking space travel

 

[Tibi088]

Nothing inherently wrong with doomstacks, you're right, but there is a problem with the lack of strategic depth the system offers. Doomstack A smashes into Doomstack B, and the better doomstack comes out, usually with enough strength to crush everything else.

What you really seem to be positing is other ways to deal with doomstacks. Cheap mines are, i think, a great answer. A way to have attrition of sorts for someone entering your territory. But rebuilding a fleet quickly is the wrong way.

No im not. I think there wil always be doomstacks and im okay with that. Im not okay with one battle deciding the entire war. Not because thats not reasonable, but because its not fun enough. I think it wuld be way more constructive to try to come up with ideas to avoid this than to create artifical limitations on fleet size or some other artifical or gamey idea that would lead to you and the AI not having Doomstacks. Result would be the same: Players would find a way to go around the artifical limit and we would be back at doomstacks.

Another example: see EUIV. It basically too uses doomstacks when in battle. Both the AI and the player will send as many armies to the single province an improtant battle is fought in as long as it can and the loss doesnt become evident. Thats not really different in the end from Doomstacks in stellaris. Whats different is that the result of that one single battle wont decide the entire war. Even if you lost you can build a new army, your defeated armies replenish after pulling back to safe territory. You can hire mercaneries maybe even condottieries. All while the winner can start to siege down you fort/s which takes a lot of time so you can rebuild.
Result: None complains of doommstacks or the concentrations of armies to 1 battle in EUIV. Because there 1 battle doesnt equal the whole war. The same mechanics wont work in stellaris becauses its a very different era but it shows us the goal.

 

[GC13]

I say no to mines, but I'll continue to be a broken record and say that yes, a supply system is what we need. Even if your doomstack can penetrate enemy space, they know that unless you've tightened the screws on them to the point that they have supply bases in their territory (which they would have been fighting against), they'll be easy pickings for the enemy fleet. Turn wars into genuine campaigns where you realize that you can't win rather than a single battle that decides the winner followed by a lot of getting enough war score for the AI to realize it has lost.

If planets are excellent supply bases (as the natural choice for manufacturing the things in the first place) then you'd even have the classic strategic concern of certain planets being crucial to the war effort (since their seizure opens up a lot of territory to attack). Still, you should of course be able to use construction ships to build supply depots to attack isolated enemy worlds if you can push into their territory far enough.

 

[TheBromgrev]

I say no to mines, but I'll continue to be a broken record and say that yes, a supply system is what we need. Even if your doomstack can penetrate enemy space, they know that unless you've tightened the screws on them to the point that they have supply bases in their territory (which they would have been fighting against), they'll be easy pickings for the enemy fleet. Turn wars into genuine campaigns where you realize that you can't win rather than a single battle that decides the winner followed by a lot of getting enough war score for the AI to realize it has lost.

This reminds me of Legend of Galactic Heroes, where the alliance fleet invades the empire. However, the empire adopted a scorched earth strategy and the alliance invasion fails due to lack of local supplies and using their own supplies to help the local people rebuild.

Even if it's simple and based on distance from friendly territory as in Vicky2 and EU4, a supply system would be a big benefit for the game.

 

[BaronIronmaggot]

Perhaps the solution could be to make moving fleets cost (a lot of)time. So, that moving all of your army to attack one of your enemies, would open your rear up to invasion, since moving your army to the opposite side of your warmongering (and big) empire, would take quite a lot of time. And, possibly, one should be able to invest resources into some kind of "Logistics" modifier to speed up army movement.

This would open up the need for expansionist empires to divide the doomstack up into several armies to guard different borders. A small empire won't have to divide their army up, since most of their stars are pretty close by.

 

[ColZimin]

Another example: see EUIV. It basically too uses doomstacks when in battle. Both the AI and the player will send as many armies to the single province an improtant battle is fought in as long as it can and the loss doesnt become evident. Thats not really different in the end from Doomstacks in stellaris. Whats different is that the result of that one single battle wont decide the entire war. Even if you lost you can build a new army, your defeated armies replenish after pulling back to safe territory. You can hire mercaneries maybe even condottieries. All while the winner can start to siege down you fort/s which takes a lot of time so you can rebuild.
Result: None complains of doommstacks or the concentrations of armies to 1 battle in EUIV. Because there 1 battle doesnt equal the whole war. The same mechanics wont work in stellaris becauses its a very different era but it shows us the goal.

First off, you're not wrong. Particularly in that one battle does not typically win the war in EUIV.

But, I'd argue that combat and "doomstacks" in EUIV have a lot of small limitations that add up, and some of that would help to level the playing field in Stellaris.

First, there's supply limit. If you take too much unit weight into a province that can't support it, they suffer attrition, which can be a critical impediment. The closest Stellaris comes to this is defense station minefields, which deal a very small amount of damage while the station is alive, and from midgame on very few stations survive more than a day or two - because of doomstacking.

Second, there's battle width. Even if the enemy barrels down on you with 120K versus your 15K, if the battle width is 10, you're fighting with roughly equal forces for a while. True, they can replenish their forces for much longer, but other factors can lead to you wearing down their morale, or simply delaying their invasion for long enough for you to peace out by other means. In Stellaris, as soon as the fleets get in range, the entire force is engaged. All ships fire and all ships will take damage as soon as higher-priority targets are out. That means that a smaller force can rarely even delay a larger one for a significant time. They can actually disrupt FTL activation times, though I haven't managed to exploit that strategically myself.
I do agree though - it'll be hard to implement something like battle width that makes sense in outer space engagements.

Third, there's retreat and resupply. As you say, in EUIV, once the battle is over, surviving losers can retreat, and they can't be attacked while in retreat. In Stellaris, it's loser loses all. Unless they manage to emergency jump, the weaker fleet is completely obliterated, and the losing empire's entire investment is lost, while the winner can theoretically save every single ship at 0.1% hull and not even pay for repairs with regenerative plating. There are way more inhibiting than enabling factors for emergency FTL though, and the wait time of up to a freaking month means that emergency FTL is, like defense platform HP in mid-game, a fart in the wind in the course of most wars.

There are more differences, but the gist is this: EUIV has a much more complex and - dare I say it - mature combat system, and it's not quite as clearly doomstack-friendly as you describe it, IMHO. No, it doesn't make all the sense to ban doomstacks in Stellaris, but the big-get-bigger system that's in place is clearly leaving a lot of players unsatisfied, and that is absolutely something that should concern Paradox.

I would assume they'll try solutions similar to what they've done in their Clausewitz games first. Something like shattered retreat is probably just over the event horizon.

 

[Slarkon]

Idea

rather than one fix what about loads of little ones

what about giving the option to construct fleets but leave them in dry dock unmanned in orbit of planets - consuming no fleet cap. You can simply "commission" the vessels into your fleet at any time (like after losing that doomstack battle)

Also better defences - 15K+ stations should me bid range with high end ones close to 40 or 50K

mines doing more damage? i not for or against but why not just increase the size of the field (friendly ships move at max speed in your own systems cause you know where the mines but enemy fleets take a movement penalty and take DPS for being in a hostile system for x ammount of time - until the field is depleted)

slower travel times would mean that when you have a mid-large sized empire it should take considrable time to move fleet from one of your borders to another. you should different fleets assigned to different borders and it should be a time consuming process to make a doom stack

its been suggested but super weapons? if any "super power" put every sub, plane tank, personal and infantary in the one small area it would be nuked right?
but make it have serious negative effects - maybe give the option to make a star go nova? destroying your planet, ships and the enemies as well - true scorched earth?

 

[ColZimin]

15K+ stations should me bid range with high end ones close to 40 or 50K

Completely agree!

what about giving the option to construct fleets but leave them in dry dock unmanned in orbit of planets - consuming no fleet cap. You can simply "commission" the vessels into your fleet at any time (like after losing that doomstack battle)

That's an interesting thought, a kind of mothballing ... Though if all empires can do the same, then the ones with huge doomstack can have massive amounts of reinforcements on standby, so it needs some tweaking to deal with the problem.

slower travel times

Not sure I like that, making the game intentionally slower would annoy quite a few players.

you should different fleets assigned to different borders and it should be a time consuming process to make a doom stack

But I pretty much agree with this. Maintaining multiple fronts should be what a grand strategy game is about - doomstacking isn't very interesting as a strategy.

 

[scaper12123]

The reason doomstacks ARE an issue is exactly because they remove any strategic depth from the game, and makes everything boil down to who has the strongest fleet. That's not fun, dang it. Hurling thousands of ships at the enemy isn't fun either. I agree that a more strategic setup to the construction and maintenance of the navy would not be amiss, but we cannot ignore the fact that doomstacks are a major issue.

Yes, they're a realistic way to fight a war. That's important and I personally believe that, to an extent, the doomstack needs to be preserved. But ONLY insofar that the doomstack works as a strategic piece of the puzzle rather than your entire basket of eggs. But think of it this way: what's easier for a nation's navy to manage? One supermassive fleet with thousands of ships all under your command at once fighting a supermassive armada with no way to tell what's happening in the utter chaos because there's just too much to keep track of, or a master fleet of maybe a quarter or a third of the navy, commanded from some sort of master flagship, with the remainder of the fleet split off into smaller units that would perform tactical strikes or the like?

 

[GC13]

Perhaps the solution could be to make moving fleets cost (a lot of)time. So, that moving all of your army to attack one of your enemies, would open your rear up to invasion, since moving your army to the opposite side of your warmongering (and big) empire, would take quite a lot of time.

The problem with this is that in Paradox games, attack seems to be no more difficult than defense. If I'm at war with someone and using all of my units to fight that war and someone else attacks me, I'll be mad sure, but I won't hasten to make peace so I can defend against the new threat: I'll finish my war, recover all of my lost territory, then proceed to make some strategic gains against the new threat. Go ahead and see how effective such a strategy would be in the real world: not only would it be militarily much harder to recover that territory than selecting your military and telling them to "just go for it", but see how politically popular that strategy would be.

 

[kreissig]

The problem with this is that in Paradox games, attack seems to be no more difficult than defense. If I'm at war with someone and using all of my units to fight that war and someone else attacks me, I'll be mad sure, but I won't hasten to make peace so I can defend against the new threat: I'll finish my war, recover all of my lost territory, then proceed to make some strategic gains against the new threat. Go ahead and see how effective such a strategy would be in the real world: not only would it be militarily much harder to recover that territory than selecting your military and telling them to "just go for it", but see how politically popular that strategy would be.

Agreed. In so far as we think about ships in Stellaris as we do ships in the worlds oceans, you point leads one - naturally - to the idea of supply. Yes, nuclear carriers can operate sans-fuel for years, but food, missiles, maintences repairs, and other essentials must be obtained through ports or re-supply ships. The supply idea is plausible, and I personally don't see it as "gamey". Some, I guess....do. Your point about population happiness noted as well.

However, there are so many good ideas about adding strategic depth on these various threads, that mods and/or updates are bound to make this game more fun. I'm sure ot that. Can you imagine what improvements we'll see in Stellaris II???

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Can you imagine what improvements we'll see in Stellaris II???

This is a just a pet peeve of mine, but Stellaris' lifespan has only just begun- it drives me nuts when people start speculating (or worse, demanding) a sequel to a game that's only just launched, or even is still in Early Access.

 

[kreissig]

This is a just a pet peeve of mine, but Stellaris' lifespan has only just begun- it drives me nuts when people start speculating (or worse, demanding) a sequel to a game that's only just launched, or even is still in Early Access.

Sorry that you misunderstood my comment. Stellaris is the first foray into space for Paradox, so it is a test bed in many ways. Add to that, they have tended to make not just one sequel to their games, rather...many. EUIV, HoIIV....ect...

It is no stretch to imagine that they will....A: Make many improvements based on community input. B: Continue the series with more nuanced content.

I demand nothing.

 

[IkkeTM]

"If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground.

All we need do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way." -Sun Tzu, the art of war.

The real problem is, that stellaris offers nothing in the way of something "odd and unaccountable". Aside from the fact that the AI goes into a mass retreat if even a single corvette warps into its home system.

 

[Kryndude]

I agree until the part you say that the real problem is wars ending with one decisive battle. The rest idk.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Sorry that you misunderstood my comment. Stellaris is the first foray into space for Paradox, so it is a test bed in many ways. Add to that, they have tended to make not just one sequel to their games, rather...many. EUIV, HoIIV....ect...

It is no stretch to imagine that they will....A: Make many improvements based on community input. B: Continue the series with more nuanced content.

I demand nothing.

I'm not doubting that a Stellaris II is possible- I'm inherently frustrated that people would try to discuss it and their expectations/anticipations of it before Stellaris has solidified.

 

[GC13]

I agree until the part you say that the real problem is wars ending with one decisive battle. The rest idk.

Them ending with a decisive battle is fine; the problem is that they start and end with the same battle.

 

[Wyrm]

There is no incentive for keeping a reserve force unless you are outnumbering your enemy by a large margin. This is a true shame. No military leader would put every single egg in one basket.