General Summation of Stellaris's Warfare Problems

[-Marauder-]

Doomstacks are ultimately a consequence of the way Stellaris warfare works, and not its cause.

1. Once the battle starts you have zero influence on it. Stellaris and other Paradox games are in essence auto battlers. The only way to really ensure victory is to bring the bigger boots to what is a shin kicking contest.
2. Ships are too valuable. Ships are expensive, cost a long time to reproduce, and losing them hurts. Sacrificing smaller fleets, splitting your fleets, getting "creative", etc often leads to one outcome. Getting defeated in detail. All of this ties directly into 1. and makes that issue worse.

 

[Oscot]

Issue Three: Chokepoints. In addition to making doomstacks worse, they really just make playing any given empire a strategy of 'expand to chokepoint and backfill'.

- First, get rid of the chokepoint system altogether. I can't understand why they built this in the first place, since it is virtually custom-designed to force players into using doomstacks.

I don't understand you guys complaining about chokepoints. Does everyone except me play on hyperlanes 0.5 all the time or something? Doomstacks occur because chokepoints aren't strategically important ENOUGH, not because they're too strategically important.

Chokepoints reduce doomstacks because they privilege stations. If there's only one route the enemy can come at you through, then you can defend it with a starbase and half of your fleet, freeing the other half of your fleet up to do other stuff. Ergo, your fleet is split: doomstacking has been defeated. But if (as usually happens in Stellaris) there's two, three routes into your empire, you don't have enough starbase capacity to defend all 3 of them, and fleets move so slowly that even if you had 3 starbase capacity spare, half of your fleet can't provide cover for all the attack vectors.

The solution would be to give stations zones of control like in EUIV, such that you're physically not allowed to travel through adjacent systems without assaulting the starbase. This would (A) massively boost the situations in which defensive stations have strategic effectiveness, and (B) make your defensive line partially determined by hyperlane geography but also partially determined by your thinking what's the best location.

 

[grommile]

If there's only one route the enemy can come at you through, then you can defend it with a starbase and half of your fleet

then your enemy has to doomstack because they need to commit enough assets to kill your base and half your fleet at the same time.

 

[~Robbie]

Every *single* attempt to "fix" warfare post-1.9 has resulted in no meaningful changes to strategy and served only to slow war down.

Was war strategically deep in 1.9? Nope. It was all about producing enough ships to smash your enemy's doomstack. And you know what? I was mostly okay with that.

Post 1.9? It's the same thing, just with way more tedium and at a much slower pace. Ships travel slower. You have to slog through hyperspace lanes. Starbases serve as nothing more than temporary obstacles that waste more time.

Combat in this game does not take strategy. The difference between 1.9 and now is that back then, it at least cut to the chase. Having battles was exciting because you were darting around the map at a fast pace, and the enemy was doing the same. Now, like everything else in the game, warfare is little more than just waiting around for something to happen.

Four: I have never understood how strong starbases are supposed to reduce doomstacking. Pray enlighten me, because the notion seems contrary to all reason.

This, exactly this. Fortifying choke points does not *reduce* doomstacking, it INCREASES THE NEED FOR IT as you ram through those fortified points. I said this before 2.0 was ever a thing and everybody said I was being ridiculous.

Now, after three years of the game still revolving around doomstacks, it doesn't seem so crazy.

 

[MichaelJanuary]

This, exactly this. Fortifying choke points does not *reduce* doomstacking, it INCREASES THE NEED FOR IT as you ram through those fortified points. I said this before 2.0 was ever a thing and everybody said I was being ridiculous.

Now, after three years of the game still revolving around doomstacks, it doesn't seem so crazy.

In small increments yes, you need ever larger fleets to beat the chokepoint, if the game is designed to be about single decisive battles (Stellaris' failing).

However, in Sword of the Stars II (SOTS2) the reverse was true. Fortified positions were significantly stronger than any one fleet (especially if there was a defending fleet), and only one fleet could engage at a time. You would have to launch several "raids" on a system to degrade the defensive satellites, defending fighters, and defending stations, before being able to "assault" the system. Yes, fleets on raid orders behaved differently to fleets on assault orders. And if you overcommitted your forces to one strategic location, you were weak elsewhere. Thus it was a game of attrition to attack any fortified position (while defending elsewhere). Your raiding fleets would retreat after taking a percentage of damage or spending a fixed amount of time in system, and while they took damage it was repairable. Ofc, you could also lose ships.

The equivalent in Stellaris would be that you could only send one fleet through a lane at a time (with a cooldown), and the enemy defenses (if properly built up) would be significantly stronger than one fleet, so couldn't be defeated in a single battle. You would require the concerted efforts of several small fleets engaging and retreating one at a time to degrade the system.

Damn, I really need to play SOTS2 again.

 

[Zetesofos]

So, one of the things I've always thought about is that there is really no feedback from colonies when you start a war. I think one of the best ways to limit 'doomstacking' is to make it so that Colonies care VERY much about there being a sort of 'local patrol' fleet in orbit in the system.

Here's how it might work. While a fleet is in a system with a colony, that colony gets a bonus to stability based on the strength of the fleet (relative to the whole navy). The people there feel calm because they feel protected. (You'd also want to readjust down base stability a bit to incentivize fleet patrols as just treading water).

Then, when a War DOES break out, the 'fear' penalty increases, requiring more naval support to quell the populace.

Now, obviously you can't simultaneously guard your planets AND attack your enemy - but like any good war dynamic, that is is good trade off.

If you send your entire navy off in one doomstack, you're risking letting your colonies destabilize as they pops there feel extremely exposed, and liable to not want to pay taxes for a government that won't protect them.

Obviously, you can have edicts and campaigns to buy yourself time, but it should just be that...limited.

 

[PK_AZ]

The equivalent in Stellaris would be that you could only send one fleet through a lane at a time (with a cooldown), and the enemy defenses (if properly built up) would be significantly stronger than one fleet, so couldn't be defeated in a single battle. You would require the concerted efforts of several small fleets engaging and retreating one at a time to degrade the system.

Wouldn't that be just doomstack battle, with low Combat Width and some extra steps?

 

[MichaelJanuary]

Wouldn't that be just doomstack battle, with low Combat Width and some extra steps?

There is more to it than just the combat width. Fleets on 'raid' orders, would be more likely to retreat (even if damaged). The "low combat width" also encouraged you to spread your fleets across multiple systems, rather than having them sit idle in a queue at one system. The risk of losing an entire fleet (let alone your entire navy) in a single battle was fairly low. Single fleet engagements were rarely decisive (losses against an equal power fleet was limited). if you totally miscalculated, your fleet could be devastated, but it would just be one fleet. not your entire navy.

Wars in SOTS2 were generally a protracted series of small scale battles, rather than one single decisive engagement. So there was opportunity to change strategies if things went badly.

FInally, SOTS2 had asymmetrical FTL drives, so if you weren't restricted to hyperlanes you could just go around chokepoints (and extend your supply lines). Even if you had chosen the hyperlane species, the game allowed you to "slow travel" directly between stars (at the risk of the enemy moving a fleet into position to catch you).

 

[Iosue Yu]

At this point discouraging doomstacks only gives more irritations to the players. You've been discouraged but you simply don't have an alternative other than trying to not use doomstacks.

It is a difficult problem to solve. I get it.

Looking at the environment Stellaris gives, no geography to speak of, no uncertainty, all fleets are expected to fight in a pristine state or it's not fighting other than being butchered... everything is so black and white... I think in problems like this, more grey areas are needed. Strategies are sometimes the imperfect world that we live in, that we try to make do with what we have and hope luck goes our way. Right now, Stellaris doesn't even give you enough luck to use.

I guess if we continue to try thinking of a solution in such a perfectly black and white environment, we will never have a solution. The game needs to be designed in such ways that the battlefields are imperfect, and the ships also imperfect... and of course the soldiers.

Else, every bit of innovation will eventually be blocked by the lack of rooms for strategies at all.

 

[PK_AZ]

At this point discouraging doomstacks only gives more irritations to the players.

I guess if we continue to try thinking of a solution in such a perfectly black and white environment, we will never have a solution.

I think we should make one thing clear. The objective is NOT to discourage doomstacking. The objective is to create interesting warfare mechanics, and it just so happens that such mechanics would probably discourage doomstacking.
I think it is really important and really overlooked distinction.

 

[methegrate]

I think we should make one thing clear. The objective is NOT to discourage doomstacking. The objective is to create interesting warfare mechanics, and it just so happens that such mechanics would probably discourage doomstacking.
I think it is really important and really overlooked distinction.

Agreed to this. This is why I don't personally like the suggestions for mechanics like system caps, starlane limits, or other things to put hard limits on how many ships the player can use. Doomstacking should still be an available strategy. It's just that there should be other, equally viable strategies. Doomstacking should give you the benefit of force concentration, but should have an equally significant downside.

I think the ideal model would be a sort of rock-paper-scissors of strategy. "If they doomstack, I do X. But if I do X, they can do Y. But if they do Y, I can doomstack. But if I doomstack, etc."

Right now those alternative strategies don't really exist. Nothing outweighs the importance of keeping your fleet safe; nothing outweighs the advantage of maximizing your force in any given fight; and nothing outweighs the need to hit a chokepoint with everything you've got.

 

[Ragnarok Ascendant]

Hence why a lot of the suggestions have been along the lines of 'make the systems and planets vital'. Giving you more strategic assets to protect, limiting your fleet's supplies, and finding ways to counter force concentration would make doomstacks a risky move.
If you have the ability to split your fleet to actually cause massive damage to the enemy economy by raiding them, it makes a doomstack charge towards the capitol something the enemy can't do without risking total losses everywhere else.
Asymmetric forces don't exist in Stellaris. There is no means of prosecuting a guerilla war, no way to beat the enemy via intelligent tactics, and no way to affect the many things that should rightfully be affected in a grand strategy game, from supplies to infrastructure to morale.
Give options and targets other than fleets, and the meta will change.

 

[methegrate]

Hence why a lot of the suggestions have been along the lines of 'make the systems and planets vital'. Giving you more strategic assets to protect, limiting your fleet's supplies, and finding ways to counter force concentration would make doomstacks a risky move.
If you have the ability to split your fleet to actually cause massive damage to the enemy economy by raiding them, it makes a doomstack charge towards the capitol something the enemy can't do without risking total losses everywhere else.
Asymmetric forces don't exist in Stellaris. There is no means of prosecuting a guerilla war, no way to beat the enemy via intelligent tactics, and no way to affect the many things that should rightfully be affected in a grand strategy game, from supplies to infrastructure to morale.
Give options and targets other than fleets, and the meta will change.

Completely agree. Although I think almost by definition the one other change we would need in there is ending the chokepoint system. I think you put it exactly right with "give options and targets other than fleets," but if those options and targets are locked behind a single massive starbase (or two massive starbases, each supported by half a fleet) then we're right back where we started.

 

[Ragnarok Ascendant]

Completely agree. Although I think almost by definition the one other change we would need in there is ending the chokepoint system. I think you put it exactly right with "give options and targets other than fleets," but if those options and targets are locked behind a single massive starbase (or two massive starbases, each supported by half a fleet) then we're right back where we started.

My personal idea is to have Speculative Hyperlane Breaching be a tech that unlocks the current form of Jump Drive (with the debuffs), and have Jump Drive tech give a perfected version without debuffs. Unless you're fighting a tall, heavily fortified empire (ie, what I play), you should be able to pop in, raid, and pop back out before the doomstack can catch you.

 

[Oscot]

you should be able to pop in, raid, and pop back out before the doomstack can catch you.

I'm getting 2016 'Nam flashbacks of playing fleet whack-a-mole.
I do not feel like returning warfare to this state would be an improvement.

 

[Ragnarok Ascendant]

I'm getting 2016 'Nam flashbacks of playing fleet whack-a-mole.
I do not feel like returning warfare to this state would be an improvement.

Under this understanding, there should probably be a 'maximum tonnage' thing where you can't send too many ships. Your options are to then split your forces to counter the small raids while using static defenses to hold your borders, or to build static defenses over vital locations - ie, planets, unique resources, etc - ro defend those places while concentrating your fleet to preserve your ability to respond to a main assault.

 

[Iosue Yu]

Just for the moment forget about balances and progressions.

Would setting an unchanged limit of 20 command points on each fleet solve anything? Given no 2 ships can use the same hyperlane at the same time.

So every play is forced to use smaller fleets.

(Not final solution. Just testing different components.)

 

[ctl3]

I think we should make one thing clear. The objective is NOT to discourage doomstacking. The objective is to create interesting warfare mechanics, and it just so happens that such mechanics would probably discourage doomstacking.
I think it is really important and really overlooked distinction.

You are right. I feel that this thread talked too much about the solution of some unbalanced or unreasonable mechanism. A boring game mechanism won't magically be fun even if you make it 100% balanced and reasonable. To keep the discussion on rail, everyone who makes proposal on this thread should summarize how his proposal would make the game more fun.

 

[Oscot]

then your enemy has to doomstack because they need to commit enough assets to kill your base and half your fleet at the same time.

OR your enemy has to go into the fleet designer and make his fleet the rock-paper-scissors counter to yours, which he can do since your static half fleet is amenable to looking at from across the border.

Doomstacking will always be an option; there's nothing physically stopping an enemy from piling all his assets on one spot. Our task needs to be to make this strategic option not the best one in all cases, as it is now.

In e.g. EUIV it's usually a bad idea because

1. Combat width means you get diminishing returns once your army exceeds 2*W
2. Province supply limit means you're likely to lose a lot of men to attrition if you throw them all into one battle
3. More warscore available from provinces (because there is a larger number of provinces?) means that maximally splitting your forces can be a better route to victory than blamming the enemy stack. If you try to hit every target in sequence with one army you'll be at it forever.
4. Actually significant terrain bonuses mean that a small force that fights smart can frequently defeat a lumbering doomstack, slashing the strategic dominance of the latter; having a good battlefield is much better than having twice the men
5. The map geography (OCEANS) naturally lends itself to multi-theatre warfare

ALL of these things are missing from Stellaris. Even one would probably solve most of the problem, seriously.

 

[Dragatus]

[...] but if those options and targets are locked behind a single massive starbase (or two massive starbases, each supported by half a fleet) then we're right back where we started.

To a degree that is correct. But you can split the doomstack once you're past the chokepoint and we can already control the amount of chokepoints with the hyperlane density game setting.

Would setting an unchanged limit of 20 command points on each fleet solve anything? Given no 2 ships can use the same hyperlane at the same time.

That would make controlling your fleets a major annoyance.