How should war be made more complex?

[Malonex]

I fear those suggesting to make warp times slower don't realize how annoying that would be, as it stands death stacks are "punished" in a sense that the larger your fleet the longer it takes to warp. Slowing warp down further wouldnt solve any of the issues and i feel that a solution can't be so black and white sadly, the current system is on the right track to being great - so long as you ONLY look at combat in space, ignoring invasions for now..

To improve the current system I would agree with the idea that techs need to have more umf to them when put on a ship, tier 1 corvette spam shouldn't melt a fleet full of destroys but it also shouldn't be the opposite... Perhaps even a cap on the amount of ships you can have in one single fleet would solve the doomstack problem and make combat more interesting. This would of course be applied to the crisis. I bet you're thinking "well how would that work vs high tech empire vs a lower one, simple. Do not cap the amount of fleets you can have so there is the ability for atleast a fighting chance in any situation, of course if you just stack a bunch of fleets on top of eachother that's essentially doomstack but this could be remedied with something like a flanking bonus or some modifier to reward strategy and discourage stacking - for example, fleet collisions . Stack your fleets and they run the risk of crashing into eachother and losing ships.

 

[Vanagloria]

I fear those suggesting to make warp times slower don't realize how annoying that would be

We do.

as it stands death stacks are "punished" in a sense that the larger your fleet the longer it takes to warp.

Not true. Warp is unaffected by fleet size, as are jump and hyperdrives. Only wormholes are affected by fleet size.

Slowing warp down further wouldnt solve any of the issues

It would greatly increase the risk involved in doomstacking, and make it more effective to split your fleet to attack multiple targets at once. So that's two issues that are, if not solved, improved upon.

 

[Malonex]

It would greatly increase the risk involved in doomstacking, and make it more effective to split your fleet to attack multiple targets at once. So that's two issues that are, if not solved, improved upon.

I think a better alternative would be to place a cap on the amount of ships you can have in a single fleet, by limiting this you avoid doomstacks. Additionally, combat modifiers would discourage having all of your fleets follow each other, and instead encourage multiple fleets to engage other targets or, a single target from different angles. Simple, but it would spice things up from what they are now and you would have no frustration of waiting X-seconds while you enter warp/hyper/wormhole space. Simply increasing the time it takes to travel would not add flavour to combat it would if anything make it more dull by dragging it on for longer.

 

[Riftwalker]

I'm curious what everyone's thought are on the issue of war. It's honestly too generic and straightforward right now, a game of "I want these planets let's march out there and invade those planets so we can take those planets," when surely a war is a matter of many different goals and aspirations with many ways of obtaining them.

The biggest thing I think the devs should do is add in more targets to attack/defend during war. Stuff like shipyards, huge buffs for frontier outposts and special stations for strategic resources, static defenses that actually contribute more to a war than just being a temporary and weak roadblock.

I was kinda thinking about this and thought about Heart of Iron's System. I think honestly, space war would be more interesting if represented as a front and no longer as massive fleets that just warp to the enemy home world. on Top of this front system, it would also have some stuff from the sea and air.

As for "why this would make sense", the ships are, currently, in space combats that last days and it takes a month or so based on your propulsion tech to get across an entire system. I think it's understandable that the ships may need supply runs just like the fleets did during WW2 to stay out afield. They would make different ships that are used differently in combat. some target supply vessels slowing down repair, or reducing the enemies 'fire rate' even. other's may be solely for defensive purposes and cannot be 'warped' to other systems, but are significantly cheaper. Deep strikes like paratroopers or marines(except in this case it's ships just jumping beyond a front) could also be done, in perhaps a move to cut off supply, etc, but would need specialized ships.

Front's might be drawn along planets kinda like how sectors are drawn except the planets would be the nodes, or maybe the line between would simply become contested.

Warp techs would have effects on fronts, like wormhole would be very hard to hit the supply of through interdiction, but if you can contest the local wormhole station, they'll take a massive hit to supply, they maybe even can have "cut off" divisions and deep strike get supply with almsot no issue, hyperlane would be limited in what direction their fronts can push(they would still defend the sides of a lane but they can't push in and contest) however, hyperlanes will be resistant to interdiction, but supply flows down the nodes. Warp is most easily interdicted, but will never have supply problems from controlling specific systems.

Civilian ships will remain the same.

armies, MIGHT remain the same or at least mostly the same, as the fortification mechanic might be changed or removed if something like this were done, but armies could changed to do other things than just taking planets. some might be able to deep strike past enemy lines, others might be able to also board ships allowing them to assist in naval battle(they don't capture ships though, just do damage), some might make it their specialty to hit planets in contested systems under enemy and allied fire, etc.

in this case, space stations will probably just add a few "garrison" ships if the front attacks their system, and provide a bonus to ground defense, however, attackers can target space stations and defenders can prompt it to self-destruct on planet loss.

I've much preferred HoI's mechanics in war over EU/CK's, but that could just be me. I think it abstracts a lot of it all, while adding more options in hwo to deal with enemies as well, no long it's about force power versus force power, alone.

 

[Riftwalker]

I think a better alternative would be to place a cap on the amount of ships you can have in a single fleet, by limiting this you avoid doomstacks. Additionally, combat modifiers would discourage having all of your fleets follow each other, and instead encourage multiple fleets to engage other targets or, a single target from different angles. Simple, but it would spice things up from what they are now and you would have no frustration of waiting X-seconds while you enter warp/hyper/wormhole space. Simply increasing the time it takes to travel would not add flavour to combat it would if anything make it more dull by dragging it on for longer.

this just means you stack multiple fleets... all this does is limit admiral's usefulness. currently it's still just better to hit an enemies military and destroy that, after that you just play clean up, that won't change by simply limiting fleet sizes.

 

[Riftwalker]

All the things that make war interesting, on the surface of a planet, do not exist in space. In space, you can see forever in all directions. There is no high ground to fight over and exploit. No rough terrain to avoid and/or exploit. You can't lay in ambush. Laying siege to a world? Say that sentence again, and honestly think if that process would take anything less than an eon. You can't starve out a world. No matter how reliant on outside food sources it supposedly is (this would never, EVER be a thing)

The stars and stray matter could confuse your sensors over long distances, if you're really close to the star, you definitely can't see very far as there's just too much energy on everything near you. you can't see far away simply because your sensors are being flushed with so much radiation, likewise you can hit farms from distances farther than the moon with your battleship, you can most definitely siege a planet to dust. ECM most definitely will be employed to abuse this "terrain" to it's fullest. Inferior fleets might even attack from the star to take advantage of this. Also, nothing is neater than firing from behind a planetoid and using it's gravity to bank your shots at the enemy.

Combat would likely occur at distances where gravitational trajectory is important, lasers wouldn't be very powerful at these huge distances, the high ground is literally the position of less gravitational interference as when you fire from near a planetoid, your shots will simply have to take the planet's gravity into account. Space isn't empty, even though it mostly is, this just means that battlegrounds will be larger. (I kinda dislike for this reason that lasers are long range versus the kinetics, kinetics would have poorer accuracy but massive range)

 

[Malonex]

this just means you stack multiple fleets... all this does is limit admiral's usefulness. currently it's still just better to hit an enemies military and destroy that, after that you just play clean up, that won't change by simply limiting fleet sizes.

It's important to read the posts before you reply, I will however admit that neglected admiral's and you do have a point. Something would need to be done about that, however in my previous post I stated a solution to stacking the fleets, and how simple combat modifiers would easily encourage different strategies other than amassing all fleets into one area, a flanking bonus alone would make players bait enemies into a system to face their doom.

 

[Drowe]

The notion that space has no terrain is kind of presumptuous. Space (system space, at least) is full of debris, dust, asterouds/comets/rogue planets and the like.

That's a misconception, coming from confusing terminology and pop culture. Sure there is debris and all those things flying around but it's like putting a drop of water in an empty swimming pool and call it filled.

Hell even the gravity wells of orbitals themselves can offer a tactical advantage.

More likely a tactical disadvantage because fighting out of a gravity well is the space equivalent of fighting an uphill battle.

Point is, space is not a blank sheet (again, speaking of system space, where the battles occur, vs intersystem space, which would be somewhat barren, but could house everything from tiny particle clouds emitting ionizing radiation, to microsingularities).

For all intents and purposes system space is empty, the distances involved are so enormous, that debris and other objects simply do not matter. The sun concentrates 99.8% of all matter in the solar system. That means nearly all the mass inside of a sphere with a diameter of 3 light years is concentrated at the centre, and the majority of the remaining 0.2% is concentrated in the planets.

The systems themselves actually already reside in nebulae in game, which is a big deal, and can be a tactical consideration as us, and more so if the effects get expanded.

Nebulae are another misconception, they only contain between 100 and 10000 particles per cubic centimetre compared to 2.7*10^19 particles per cubic centimetre inside our atmosphere and 1 particle per cubic centimetre in interstellar space. On interstellar scales that matters, but not on an interplanetary scale.

As far as world being starved out, sure, but it can be literally slagged out from under the people's feet, which isn't an interesting mechanic to say the least

There are multiple ways to do that without glassing the planet. To feed billions of people food production must be industrialised, bombing logistic centres will do the trick, as would food processing plants. It doesn't matter how much food you grow if you can't distribute it or turn it into something that people can digest. Dropping a couple of firebombs on crop fields or bomb hydroponic farms, is all that's needed to create food shortages and eventually a famine. Why people always assume that you have to bomb a planet into oblivion to have a meaningful effect on a planet to feed itself is beyond me. Striking key industries is much more effective than carpet bombing.

 

[Riftwalker]

It's important to read the posts before you reply, I will however admit that neglected admiral's and you do have a point. Something would need to be done about that, however in my previous post I stated a solution to stacking the fleets, and how simple combat modifiers would easily encourage different strategies other than amassing all fleets into one area, a flanking bonus alone would make players bait enemies into a system to face their doom.

i did read it all double the fleet at -25% is still better than just a single fleet. unless stacking everything makes an entirely worse fleet(which paradox isn't likely to do) you'll still stack them.

hell, at best it means i have a few fleets stick around just outside of battle waiting for the first fleet to lose so that i can send in the next one...

 

[Ambereyed]

Another problem is imo lack of fleet supplies system. Now fleets can operate for years on enemy territory on the other side of galaxy without need to come back to spaceport. It's a bit unrealistic if you compare it with navies. Every navy need to resupply from time to time. And this is why naval bases are so important. This is why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, or why Russia annexed Crimea with naval base in Sevastopol.

In my opinion every ship should have some kind of supply bar, which would represent amount of ammo, fuel, food for crew, medicaments, etc. With time (faster during battles) this bar should deplete, resulting in maluses to ship effectivity.

There should be special modules in ship designer, or even special ship types, which would increase amount of supply. Players should be faced with dillemma: should they use slots for weapons and armour, making more powerful "raiding" ships, or use slots to increase supply to have fleet with higher strategical value?

Supply should of course replenish, depending on fleet position. In a spaceport or inside own territory this should be faster. On enemy territory it should be far slower, depending how far from nearest spaceport your fleet is - to represent guerilla warfare and raiding supply lines. If you go too far from your spaceport, then supplies replenishment will be slower than depletion, making your fleet less efficient and more vulnerable to attacks. 40k doomstack with 100% supplies should be able to even fight with 80k doomstack, but with 50% supply.

Each spaceport should have also its own "supply capacity", depending on level and instaled modules. It means for example spaceport lvl 2 should be able to resupply only 20k fleet, but not 40k fleet.

This solves many problems with doomstacks:
- you need infrastructure to supply big fleets.
- this infrastructure is vulnerable to attack. Enemy can avoid decisive battle and raid your supply spaceport to weaken your main fleet.
- rebuilding infrastructure costs time, slowing your war progress for a while.
- so you need to split forces to defend your "supply spaceports".
- your fleet have limited operational time and range - you have to come back closer to your spaceport to resupply from time to time, which gives enemy possibility to strenghten defences and overall makes space blitzkrieg less effective.
- having bigger fleet isn't insta-win. When supplies are low your fleet is less efficient and smaller enemy fleets can be dangerous.

And so on

Sorry if my post is little chaotic

 

[Drowe]

Another problem is imo lack of fleet supplies system. Now fleets can operate for years on enemy territory on the other side of galaxy without need to come back to spaceport. It's a bit unrealistic if you compare it with navies. Every navy need to resupply from time to time. And this is why naval bases are so important. This is why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, or why Russia annexed Crimea with naval base in Sevastopol.

In my opinion every ship should have some kind of supply bar, which would represent amount of ammo, fuel, food for crew, medicaments, etc. With time (faster during battles) this bar should deplete, resulting in maluses to ship effectivity.

There should be special modules in ship designer, or even special ship types, which would increase amount of supply. Players should be faced with dillemma: should they use slots for weapons and armour, making more powerful "raiding" ships, or use slots to increase supply to have fleet with higher strategical value?

Supply should of course replenish, depending on fleet position. In a spaceport or inside own territory this should be faster. On enemy territory it should be far slower, depending how far from nearest spaceport your fleet is - to represent guerilla warfare and raiding supply lines. If you go too far from your spaceport, then supplies replenishment will be slower than depletion, making your fleet less efficient and more vulnerable to attacks. 40k doomstack with 100% supplies should be able to even fight with 80k doomstack, but with 50% supply.

Each spaceport should have also its own "supply capacity", depending on level and instaled modules. It means for example spaceport lvl 2 should be able to resupply only 20k fleet, but not 40k fleet.

This solves many problems with doomstacks:
- you need infrastructure to supply big fleets.
- this infrastructure is vulnerable to attack. Enemy can avoid decisive battle and raid your supply spaceport to weaken your main fleet.
- rebuilding infrastructure costs time, slowing your war progress for a while.
- so you need to split forces to defend your "supply spaceports".
- your fleet have limited operational time and range - you have to come back closer to your spaceport to resupply from time to time, which gives enemy possibility to strenghten defences and overall makes space blitzkrieg less effective.
- having bigger fleet isn't insta-win. When supplies are low your fleet is less efficient and smaller enemy fleets can be dangerous.

And so on

Sorry if my post is little chaotic

In essence I agree with you, a supply system would make it more interesting, and it would make sense to introduce one. I disagree with how you would go about it though. It doesn't really need to be that complicated. The natural state of a ship is to be fully supplied, it therefore would make more sense to give it a modifier if it can't be adequately supplied than keeping track of an additional value for each individual ship. Better yet, tie the value to the fleet instead of individual ships, that would make it a lot more manageable and would need less computing power to do.

Something else to think about is how you are going to deal with the three different FTL Methods, each should work differently. Intercepting supply ships which use wormhole travel is a very different thing than intercepting those using hyper lanes.

 

[Eze]

I think a better alternative would be to place a cap on the amount of ships you can have in a single fleet

Another problem is imo lack of fleet supplies system.

These two statements together, I think.

I wouldn't support a hard cap on the number of ships in a fleet, but I do think a semi-soft cap, like the one in place for total fleet power or core worlds where after that cap inefficient management leads to increased 'supply' use.


To be clear, I would replace the current "ship upkeep" cost in energy with this "ship supply" resource, reducing the amount of abstraction rather than having two separate costs.

 

[dying0d]

Actually, SotS system is simple and easy enough. They had a ship (tanker) that carried fuel. Every ship used fuel to warp around space. Out of fuel, youre adrift. Need to send tankers to get that fleet back to a friendly planet(every system was represented by a singular planet) to refuel.

That doesn't add anything complex to the game, other than having to ensure your fleets are fueled (aurora is the same way, but there is also maintenance supplies and ammo so that's way too complex for Stellaris scope) to be useful. If you don't, the doomstacks stalls.

Other than some reworked Hoi supply line system, I can't think of a way to determine stacking otherwise. Combat penalties may work, but are not really anything more than a penalty arbitrarily put in, and admiral command limits are a little meh as well.

Unless you go full galciv and cap a fleet like their logistics point system does

 

[Malonex]

Now fleets can operate for years on enemy territory on the other side of galaxy without need to come back to spaceport. It's a bit unrealistic if you compare it with navies. Every navy need to resupply from time to time. And this is why naval bases are so important. This is why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, or why Russia annexed Crimea with naval base in Sevastopol.

I don't think comparing a space ship to a surface ship is fair, surely a space ship - being much larger has the capacity to carry more supplies fully expecting to be out for long periods of time, if a supply chain , or a need to resupply was added how would that function with civilian ships? I personally don't want to recall my science ships while they survey and locate enemy empires and even if I DID recall them, what happens if they don't make it back fast enough and run out of supplies? Do my leaders starve, etc.

To be clear, I would replace the current "ship upkeep" cost in energy with this "ship supply" resource,

I think it's a good way of balancing economy to have the ships drain energy resources while deployed, especially if you have too many. It punishes spamming of ships, or at least it tries to. If you added a new resource to replace a ships consumption of your "money" then in times of war where you'd normally take a hit to your economy, you would flourish as if nothing was happening.

double the fleet at -25% is still better than just a single fleet. unless stacking everything makes an entirely worse fleet(which paradox isn't likely to do) you'll still stack them.

I disagree, if there was a risk of me losing ships due to improper management and carelessly piling them on top of each other I wouldn't do it in fear of losing a battle. If stacked fleets ran the risk of accidents such as the obvious risk of colliding with another ship surely that would discourage the player from stacking. Even if it didn't destroy a ship, but instead damaged it it would still be an element the player would have to think about, instead of the current "put everything in a pile, send it in and forget.".

However, putting more thought into it there would still be an element of stacking. But truly what COULD make players actually WANT to avoid stacking.. besides punishments to warp speed, as I believe we would all still use doomstacks as the AI would.

 

[Malonex]

admiral command limits are a little meh as well.

Maybe make the admiral cap it's own category for leaders, making them their own entity rather than sharing a pool with the rest of your leaders - though this is pretty meh.

They had a ship (tanker) that carried fuel. Every ship used fuel to warp around space. Out of fuel, youre adrift.

I like this idea but it still doesn't answer the question of how this would interact with civilian ships, do I have to build a tanker for my science ship as it explores? or are they exempt from needing supplies.

 

[dying0d]

All ships in SotS acted that way, so yes, science ships would need to resupply. Constructors generally hang out near spaceports, but so would they.

Wasn't putting forth a solid idea, just showing how some other games (one which fit the niche stellaris does; less micro, the other a complex 4x) handle stuff.

Though fuel didn't stop doomstacks from happening, but as a resupply system, is better than adding more bars/modifiers to keep track of concerning combat capability is concerned.

I personally like the remote resupply Avenue over the Hoi supply lane stuff personally, it feels more authentic but I don't want to see stellaris be a click fest, as games that do use it, are turn based(aurora is real time ibguess, just each turn is of variable length, but I'd say it's turn based myself)

 

[Eze]

I think it's a good way of balancing economy to have the ships drain energy resources while deployed, especially if you have too many. It punishes spamming of ships, or at least it tries to. If you added a new resource to replace a ships consumption of your "money" then in times of war where you'd normally take a hit to your economy, you would flourish as if nothing was happening.

Well no, because you would still need to provide that "supply" resource to mobilize your fleet - which means taking resources way from other places, which means your economy does still take that hit.

 

[Kilian.K]

In my opinion it is to easy to win a war through blockages. Especially in the late game you can easily win a war without confronting the enemy navy just by splitting your fleet in many parts, placing those in the right locations and then declaring war. You easily reach 100% war-score within one minute after declaring war. The enemy has no time to react.

This could be solved by adding a time factor to the the blockage, so that you get the full war-score for the block only after a certain time.

 

[dying0d]

In my opinion it is to easy to win a war through blockages. Especially in the late game you can easily win a war without confronting the enemy navy just by splitting your fleet in many parts, placing those in the right locations and then declaring war. You easily reach 100% war-score within one minute after declaring war. The enemy has no time to react.

This could be solved by adding a time factor to the the blockage, so that you get the full war-score for the block only after a certain time.

Everyone always talks of gene warrior spamming and ignoring bombardment, but seriously this. I run some wars without ever invading period, as you get the full warscore from hovering even a single ship over a planet.

I generally ask for only one planet at a time too, so I can specifically pull this off, without ever really risking my fleet in battle.(the star port doesn't count, I roll over them after the first few years anyway)


The level of cheese is amazing

 

[Zavaleta]

We need "Siege leaders" for planet bombardment like in CK2 and EU4. Having a third party come in and invade a world you bombarded is incredibly annoying. For god sakes!