Stellaris is a terrific game, but the naval combat always felt very bland to me. There's plenty of strategy in fleet composition and ship design, but little in naval warfare and fleet deployment. Rarely is it advantageous to divide your grand fleet before contesting the enemy's grand fleet; consequently, wars are typically decided in a single enormous battle. This is unrealistic. This is not fun.
As an FTL empire can strike anywhere with little warning, you should feel the need to protect all your holdings all the time. Think of HOI4 - any segment of the front without a unit constantly defending it is subject to instantaneous capture by the enemy. The war is thus a long slog fought on several fronts each with a fraction of the total strength of both empires. Determining how best to allocate your limited resources is the strategy that keeps you up at night. A larger, more advanced fleet would not necessarily be guaranteed victory if overcommitted to one system to the detriment of others. I'm not saying that grand fleets shouldn't be an option, but they should be discouraged. A grand fleet will do better in any single engagement, but while it's stuck fighting one battle the enemy can capture several other undefended systems simultaneously with their smaller fleets for example.
There are many ways to fix this and encourage diffuse fleets: scale fleet movement speed with fleet size (larger = slower), make naval engagements take longer, add civilian trade networks that must be defended or risk losing vital resources, make planetary bombardments more destructive to infrastructure and population (a single battleship left unopposed should be able to obliterate the population and economy of a planet), give pops more agency in war enthusiasm.
You incentivise diffuse fleets when the coast of a single unopposed ship is too great to temporarily ignore. Your people should be furious if you go to war and leave them undefended, even if the enemy never touches them. And maybe your grand fleet does win the day, but the destruction done to your empire because of your negligent defense should cripple you for years.
As an FTL empire can strike anywhere with little warning, you should feel the need to protect all your holdings all the time. Think of HOI4 - any segment of the front without a unit constantly defending it is subject to instantaneous capture by the enemy. The war is thus a long slog fought on several fronts each with a fraction of the total strength of both empires. Determining how best to allocate your limited resources is the strategy that keeps you up at night. A larger, more advanced fleet would not necessarily be guaranteed victory if overcommitted to one system to the detriment of others. I'm not saying that grand fleets shouldn't be an option, but they should be discouraged. A grand fleet will do better in any single engagement, but while it's stuck fighting one battle the enemy can capture several other undefended systems simultaneously with their smaller fleets for example.
There are many ways to fix this and encourage diffuse fleets: scale fleet movement speed with fleet size (larger = slower), make naval engagements take longer, add civilian trade networks that must be defended or risk losing vital resources, make planetary bombardments more destructive to infrastructure and population (a single battleship left unopposed should be able to obliterate the population and economy of a planet), give pops more agency in war enthusiasm.
You incentivise diffuse fleets when the coast of a single unopposed ship is too great to temporarily ignore. Your people should be furious if you go to war and leave them undefended, even if the enemy never touches them. And maybe your grand fleet does win the day, but the destruction done to your empire because of your negligent defense should cripple you for years.
