I love doomstacks

[DredMorte]

I see alot of people around here complaining about doomstacks. I would just like the developers to know, on the odd chance they read this, that I love them. In fact, I feel strongly compelled to say they are my favourite thing about Stellaris.

I played other Paradox games an unhealthy amount and quite frankly, the whack-a-molle sillyness of war was the lowest aspect of them.

I agree that invasions should be elaborate and time consuming operations. I agree that it should be possible for smaller fleets to evade the enemy and wreck havoc deep into enemy territory, taking mining stations and so forth. I agree that smaller empires should be able to make life unexpectadely difficult for the invader.

But dam, I love me some epic fights with gigantic fleets dueling to the death. They are the main reason I got this game and keep playing it.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

A doomstack isn't just "a giant fleet". You can one without the other- "doomstack" refers to the entire idea of your entire roster of ships being concentrated in a single place most of the time.

 

[gajop]

I don't think people dislike big battles that decide the war, but the fact this is all there is to it.

Imo, problems are:
1) Defenses. You cannot build defenses and fortify a system against doomstacks. I'd say you can't even fortify it well against what would be considered mid-late game raiding parties.
2) Raiding. Raiding is largely ineffective as mining stations aren't worth much, combat is slow and blitz capturing planets takes time because of the planetary shields. It's hard to inflict reasonable eco damage as most of it is on planets which are well protected. It's also not possible to design raiding ships (high dps, high speed, low health).
3) Travel. Galaxy travel is too fast, allowing your single doomstack to effectively respond on all fronts, even in a large empire. In comparison it's quite slow within a system, and especially slow during combat (regardless what the fleet is fighting).
4) Battles. Battles are decided (mostly) by who has the larger fleet power. It's hard to anticipate the enemy ship composition as you cannot spy, and I don't feel it matters that much anyway - certainly no hard counters like in some RTS games. Also you cannot control how ships behave in combat, most importantly their preferred range (although some mods do address this, allowing you to specify this when designing the ship).

I think all of this can be resolved, but a solution will probably need to address at least points 1-3 simultaneously.

 

[Mcwynne]

I agree that eu3 style ping ponging of defeated fleets would be horrible, and something some people seem to miss. But there has to be some sort of middleground between that and slamming two stacks together and call it a day*.

* Or as is the case now, spend an hour pointlessly parking a fleet by every enemy planet to combat the broken war score symstem. All while the enemy keeps sending suicidal, single ships to combat you.

 

[Diezy]

AoE weapons could be a good equalizer, where the damage is evenly dealt all over their fleet. Right now the only thing that leaps to mind is the Arc Emitter, although I'm not entirely sure if actually chains to hit more ships at a time!

With experience from other games, a stronger doomstack would still win a direct encounter, with superior DPS and area damage of their own whittling your fleet before theirs. If several smaller groups with AoE weapons engage a larger one, they'd need to be picked off one by one, while the big fleet is AoE'd by all 3, 2, 1 fleets still left alive, which might let them catch up and even do more damage.


Hit-and-run is messy when it comes to warscore, you can't hit them without forcing a full engagement, and emergency FTL takes a while to get going even if you're a trickster. Harassing with Carrier Strike craft and missiles from across the system would be a nice, cheap way to fight. It would benefit the current balance, where Energy and Kinetic direct instant damage dominates the forced full-on encounters.

Rockets/Carriers/Torpedoes should be effective harassment instead, able to attack across the system w/o engaging in full combat, where you unload a salvo and run, and punish them for not bringing point defense along!

Maybe certain suicide-type super-weapons, could be very punishing against a clumped up force, but I wouldn't keep my fingers crossed just yet, since the more stacked ranged units they have, the exponentially more suicide units you'll need rushing their position, to get a successful strike.

 

[FrosT37]

Doomstack destroyer, placed at a convenient choke point:

https://gineipaedia.com/wiki/Iserlohn_Fortress