I just started my first war and seeking battle I pushed my military fleets into the nearest enemy planet only to be met by a force of comparable albeit slightly larger fleet power. Not dissuaded, I retreated to friendly space because figured I could just rebuild my military and come back stronger. And so then I build some more ships, refit the ones I already have, then send them out again, only to, again, be met by a force slightly more powerful than them.
This has happened 3 or 4 times now. No matter what I do, no matter how aggressively I build up my ships or how much I upgrade them, I always end up a couple hundred fleet power beneath them at every single encounter. To specify how much this arms race has gotten out of hand, consider that when I started the war with 16 ships and now I'm at 34, and now I'm looking down the barrel of 40-ship enemy fleets coming at me.
I can only come to two conclusions: firstly, that the game has rubberbaning AI or two, that this is a honest arms race wherein the winner of the war will be the one who can build their military up faster and bigger.
On one hand Stellaris doesn't seem to be a rubberbanding game, but on the other I can't possibly see how my enemy is ahead of me: I have several more colonized worlds (5-2 in favor of me) and way more mining stations than they do (I've even destroyed some of theirs for around 1 warscore each).
Granted, I know fleet limit is really more of an efficiency threshold than a hard limit, but the idea of them simply going over their limit doesn't explain it either. For reference I have more planets with spaceports than they have stars in their empire, so they should be much lower; if they're pushing themselves over a tiny fleet limit, then I can't possibly see how they'd have the minerals to create and maintain 40-ship, 1.4k power fleet.
It seems I'm just out of options, being a much bigger empire who somehow ends up inexplicably outgunned and outnumbered every single time by an enemy that can't possibly have the resources to keep up with, let alone surpass me. I presume that my mineral production is superior (how could it not be?) so I could just hurl myself into battles I'll lose but know I can rebuild faster than them or perhaps starve them of minerals constantly rebuilding themselves, but that all depends on knowing how much they have and how much they make. How do I know this? The lack of information on other empires is pretty shocking to me.
So what do I do? How am I supposed to figure out how much resources, fleet limit, technology, etc. an empire has? This seems drastically different from CK2.
In CK2, pre-invasion planning always involved checking out the enemy's income level and treasury (so you knew whether that 20k army would turn into a 30k army with mercs) as well as the size of their military overall. When war began you could see their expenses, assuring yourself that they'd go bankrupt and their mercs would rebel if you could just survive for a few more months.
But in Stellaris, it seems you have to settle for vague descriptors like "superior" or "equivalent". Forgive me if that's essentially useless "information"; am I just missing out on something I could do?
This has happened 3 or 4 times now. No matter what I do, no matter how aggressively I build up my ships or how much I upgrade them, I always end up a couple hundred fleet power beneath them at every single encounter. To specify how much this arms race has gotten out of hand, consider that when I started the war with 16 ships and now I'm at 34, and now I'm looking down the barrel of 40-ship enemy fleets coming at me.
I can only come to two conclusions: firstly, that the game has rubberbaning AI or two, that this is a honest arms race wherein the winner of the war will be the one who can build their military up faster and bigger.
On one hand Stellaris doesn't seem to be a rubberbanding game, but on the other I can't possibly see how my enemy is ahead of me: I have several more colonized worlds (5-2 in favor of me) and way more mining stations than they do (I've even destroyed some of theirs for around 1 warscore each).
Granted, I know fleet limit is really more of an efficiency threshold than a hard limit, but the idea of them simply going over their limit doesn't explain it either. For reference I have more planets with spaceports than they have stars in their empire, so they should be much lower; if they're pushing themselves over a tiny fleet limit, then I can't possibly see how they'd have the minerals to create and maintain 40-ship, 1.4k power fleet.
It seems I'm just out of options, being a much bigger empire who somehow ends up inexplicably outgunned and outnumbered every single time by an enemy that can't possibly have the resources to keep up with, let alone surpass me. I presume that my mineral production is superior (how could it not be?) so I could just hurl myself into battles I'll lose but know I can rebuild faster than them or perhaps starve them of minerals constantly rebuilding themselves, but that all depends on knowing how much they have and how much they make. How do I know this? The lack of information on other empires is pretty shocking to me.
So what do I do? How am I supposed to figure out how much resources, fleet limit, technology, etc. an empire has? This seems drastically different from CK2.
In CK2, pre-invasion planning always involved checking out the enemy's income level and treasury (so you knew whether that 20k army would turn into a 30k army with mercs) as well as the size of their military overall. When war began you could see their expenses, assuring yourself that they'd go bankrupt and their mercs would rebel if you could just survive for a few more months.
But in Stellaris, it seems you have to settle for vague descriptors like "superior" or "equivalent". Forgive me if that's essentially useless "information"; am I just missing out on something I could do?
