Late game, defensive structures and more

[Stardance]

I’m enjoying a game where the khan fleets are a good challenge. 1.25 tech speed and 2.5 game difficulty on commodore.

The weird thing is, with fairly minimal investment (10 pop planet or habitat, fortress world, planetary shield generator, and unyielding tradition), can completely stop the khans fleet for years while it would absolutely roll over a fully outfitted star fortress with max defense platforms.

The khan eventually landed enough troops (epic) but it really struck home how little value the star base serves as an effective choke point compared to the planet.

I understand not wanting to make starbases impossible to defeat, I just wish starbases also had some sort of siege mechanic available so it can hold out longer.

 

[GC13]

It was obvious to me the intent was to delay the onset of battleships, not slow all tech. Some kind of intermediate ship hull technology between cruisers and battleships would help. Battlecruisers but not the FE design.

I've always favored compressing Stellaris to two ship sizes: escort and capital ships. Technology would gradually allow you to make these larger and larger, so you wouldn't have the current scenario where an empire calls the largest ship it's capable of making a "corvette". Having only two sizes to worry about also removes cruisers' redheaded stepchild status.

 

[ZeeHero]

Delaying battleships is like treating the symptoms of a disease which is easily preventable by say, not smoking, in real life.

If the tech tree was overall longer, and if there were more classes between corvette and battleship, that would fix itself.

Why don't we have frigates anymore? Should be Corvette>Frigate>Cruiser>Battlecruiser/Carrier>Battleship/Heavy Carrier>Dreadnought/Supercarrier>Titan/Jugg/Colossus

 

[GloatingSwine]

Delaying battleships is like treating the symptoms of a disease which is easily preventable by say, not smoking, in real life.

If the tech tree was overall longer, and if there were more classes between corvette and battleship, that would fix itself.

Why don't we have frigates anymore? Should be Corvette>Frigate>Cruiser>Battlecruiser/Carrier>Battleship/Heavy Carrier>Dreadnought/Supercarrier>Titan/Jugg/Colossus

How does that fix the problem? It's just more ship classes to never build. Like we have four ship classes since launch and at no point in the history of Stellaris has there been a reason to use all of them, or mostly even more than one at a time.

This is because there are no emergent or explicitly defined synergies between hull classes (there sort of used to be when a leading edge of corvettes could soak X shots but now they hold for a better target). There is, and has never at any point been any reason to build anything but the single best thing you currently have. (even when, hilariously, the "best thing" was a corvette with all its slots empty except three red lasers)

Like the idea from launch was that Destroyers beat Corvettes, Cruisers beat Destroyers, Battleships beat Cruisers, and Corvettes beat Battleships. But that's never actually been true enough at any point to impact fleet design, because the ship strength scales roughly linearly with fleet capacity (a destroyer is worth two corvettes, a cruiser is worth two destroyers). So if your opponent has 100 corvettes you can't have, say, 20 destroyers and 5 battleships and expect your destroyers to protect your battleships. You need 50 destroyers to counter the 100 corvettes and have no room left for anything for your protective screen to, well, protect.

 

[ZeeHero]

Then you yourself have admitted the real problem. Battleships should have better counters. The fact that battleships are the be all end all, or that any class is, is the problem.

"Slow battleships" that's like saying "Lets put off the game breaking issue for later"

 

[GloatingSwine]

Then you yourself have admitted the real problem. Battleships should have better counters. The fact that battleships are the be all end all, or that any class is, is the problem.

"Slow battleships" that's like saying "Lets put off the game breaking issue for later"

Right, but having more ship classes doesn't change that.

If you can't balance it so that four classes are all relevant you damn sure can't do it with seven, it'll just take a couple of hours longer to figure out what the degenerate build is.

Right now battleships are meta because X weapons and Launchers turn off all of the supposed advantages of all the other ship classes. For instance the advantage of cruisers is supposed to be that they have the highest disengage chance, but in order to even try to disengage a ship has to have under 50% hull take a hit and survive that hit. When the average damage of late game weapons is close to 50% of the cruiser's hull strength to begin with that can't happen. (On average damage a cruiser is left with 55% hull from the first neutron launcher hit, 10% from the second which doesn't get a disengage roll because it was over 50% at the start, and so can't possibly now survive a hit to try and disengage).

Which is why I say that fixing the problem starts with reining in that damage and increasing hull points.

Like for instance I would give corvettes a base hull of 500 and make the two "improved corvette hull" techs give +250 each (but move them a little later in the tech tree, so that eg they required Destroyers and Cruisers respectively to appear) and scale the other ship hulls appropriately, and remove all sources of bonus damage against hull.

Then reduce X weapon damage to about 1/3 of its current level but increase its rate of fire a bit to compensate, ditch Proton/Neutron launchers because they make plasma irrelevant and turn Kinetic Artillery into a standard tier 3-5 weapon making it a kinetic weapon that is better vs. armour.

The aim would be to remove all sources of massive damage so that apart from titan beams no ship is ever exclusively getting hit by weapons it can't survive at least 4-5 hits from, making disengagement a thing that has a realistic chance to happen in the late game.

Then you can balance defensive structures accordingly because you're balancing into an environment where you can actually reasonably expect ships to exist for a reasonable amount of time. (and balance their upkeep accordingly, the other unexamined thing here, they have almost the upkeep of a cruiser but less firepower and they can't move.)

 

[TheRevanchist25]

I don't think it was designed like that on purpose at all, I think this is an accident because they didn't consider how massive damage would interact with the rest of the mechanics and turned the numbers on X weapons up massively (because they kinda weren't all that special before 2.0) and forgot that that would completely turn off all mechanics which operate on ships under 50% health (like losing rate of fire, and disengagement) because there is now only 100% hull and dead.

Slowing tech down doesn't solve the problem, tuning down endgame single hit damage and increasing hitpoints so that battles take longer and ships and defence platforms get to shoot more without being deleted is what solves the problem.

I agree, this is just a case of massive power creep that the dev's didn't really think about the long term repercussions of. Defensive structures that had been removed, need re added and updated, new defensive options added, and god-tier weapon damage scaled back, also, crazy idea here...but maybe remove the repeatables.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Repeatables are an odd thing, because when you include piercing weapons the repeatables guarantee that if you go on long enough arc weapons will inevitably become the best. (IIRC it works out that if 33% or less of a ship's total health is hull, Arc+Cloud Lightning/Disruptor is better than any other combination of weapons.)

Repeatable techs are a nice idea and it would be a shame to see them go. Though I do think they should be distributed better. I'd put all damage ones in physics and all rate of fire ones in engineering, for instance, right now physics has two weapons repeatables and engineering has seven. (I'd also probably drop the defence platform specific repeatables, if platforms were useful in the first place having the same ones as ships would be enough)

 

[Tamwin5]

I don't think it was designed like that on purpose at all, I think this is an accident because they didn't consider how massive damage would interact with the rest of the mechanics and turned the numbers on X weapons up massively (because they kinda weren't all that special before 2.0) and forgot that that would completely turn off all mechanics which operate on ships under 50% health (like losing rate of fire, and disengagement) because there is now only 100% hull and dead.

Slowing tech down doesn't solve the problem, tuning down endgame single hit damage and increasing hitpoints so that battles take longer and ships and defence platforms get to shoot more without being deleted is what solves the problem.

Considering the lack of any starbase repeatables (only defense platforms), I think it was intentional. Turning up the damage on X weapons also points towards trying to make starbases weaker in late game, since theoretically the use case for a long range, high damage, 0 tracking weapon is against stationary targets.

You are also conflating two separate problems imo. The first is that starbases fall off too quickly. My stance is that this is meant to happen, just comes too early due to tech rushing. The second is that Artillery Battleships are OP. No amount of slowing down tech will solve that issue, just delay when it appears. My two solutions to that are to change sensors to percentage tracking rather than flat (so 0 tracking weapons actually have 0 tacking), and seriously buffing missiles to the point where every fleet needs at least some PD.

 

[stern]

Other than that, my impression is that the problem goes back to doomstacks. They've never actually fixed, or even changed, the broken incentives that lead to doomstacking. If anything the chokepoint-oriented FTL redesign further entrenched concentrated forces.

I completely agree with you. All combat in stellaris is just an all or nothing clash between doomstacks. There is no attrition, no system "capacity limit" to sustain a fleet, no manpower, no specific unit you need to use to besiege a planet or a starbase. Even the armies you create to invade planets, they are simply made of minerals, and there is no big complexity in the land invasion.
But as I said in the OP, isn't it strange this dicothomy between planet and starbase? The planet is the costly thing to conquer but it doesn't offer much. Meanwhile the starbase/starport is responsible for the ownership of space itself, and it has the same flimsy defensive structures since the beginning of the game, some cannons, and auras. Planets don't even offer significant warscore/war exhaustion. I wish I could build fortresses in the starports.

 

[Mealya]

(I would probably also change Starbase weapons so they started with S slots, added M then L, then had some X slots as a Citadel). Adding them to the ship designer would need work though I think because they're a different data structure).

Something like that ?

(It's here https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2491182137 if you want)

To be simple vanilla Starbases need :
- X slots. many of them.
- L slots, many of them (more than X)
- T slot to have at least some damage on the attack team
- MORE shields. It simple, in the vanilla game, there x10 less shields than armor. With the domination of Neutron Launchers and Tachyon Lances, Starbases are just reduce to dust without doing anything.

In the current game end game starbases are just a joke. Something that is stationary, cost more than a Titan or a Juggernaut, has no range (Thx M slots), no firepower, barely no shields and is impossible to design.

Like said above : Fortress worlds. It does all you want to do with defensives Starbases and cost less. Even fort Habitat fortresses...

 

[ZeeHero]

There is nothing wrong with building big fleets with many ships. and "Doomstacking" hasn't been a thing since fleet capacity has been a thing.
There is a literal limit how much you can put in one fleet. Have people forgotten?

Yes it can be increased, never enough to put everything in one later on. Plus if you only have one big fleet, you're in trouble when it needs to be 100 jumps away in 50 days with no nearby gates.

So far as fortress worlds go, Planetary mass driver gun, missile batteries, and particle beam anti orbital weapons anyone? so that if you have a fortress world built up enough, it does the job the starbase wont.

 

[Pancakelord]

Since doomstacks are still the dominant way of playing, starbases don't end up fighting smaller fleets. Your enemy always throws everything they have at each starbase they attack because that's just how battles work. (And, of course, you can't deter an attack in a chokepoint-based map. Your enemy has to attack a given system because it's literally the only place they can go.)

That's still where I'd start. If the incentives behind warfare changed then system defenses could become more relevant, with starbases facing the individual fleets they were intended to fight rather than entire doomstacks every time.

IMO the solutions to doomstacking are some combination of making it less efficient (numerically) to stack fleets (#1), compelling empires to be "embattled"/fight on multiple fronts(#2), rewarding "non-head-on" tactics (#3) and introducing anti-spam/anti-dense fleet weapons (#4) - starbases/def platforms really only come in to that last one:

1. Capping fleet sizes to something lower
   • This has a larger impact later in game, with how auras and admiral buffs work with/between allied fleets. Yes you can still stack many little fleets but it isn't as effective as they'll all be using different admirals, and may not all benefit from titan etc auras.
   • I personally think only your "first fleet" (and a single federal fleet) should be capable of hitting large fleet numbers, whilst all other fleets should be capped at something lower.
2. Slowing FTL travel / curtailing gateway expansion AND adding more "trigger happy" (e.g. Aggression = 100) AIs / actual civil wars.
   • This is to force you to divide your forces and attention as your empire gets larger.
   • You don't currently need to split your fleet because you almost only ever fight a single thing at a time in Stellaris (or only have to travel down 1-2 lanes at a time, usually). If you had to account for much longer travel times and more frontiers in combat, you wouldn't be able to as easily justify stacking your whole navy up - at least nowhere near as much as you currently do.
3. Expanding the sources of WarScore - and intel reports - to encourage you to actively seek out something other than the enemy fleet (i.e. rewarding "asymmetric warfare")
   • Hunting down and slaying enemy titans or juggernauts adds a "King-slayer" effect on ALL enemy combatants adding +5%-50% warexhaustion generation for any subsequent battles in the next 6-12 months - the number scales higher based on relative power (so if you're some shitty little empire and you knock out an enemy titan, thats a massive blow to morale).
   • Capturing worlds of a certain type (e.g. Agri worlds) can cause a demodifier "shortages (that associated resource type)" on other worlds and starbases in the same sector - so caputring an enemy industrial world might drive up enemy upkeep and construction costs, whilst capturing a mining world might lead to industrial resource/output shortages, and capturing agri worlds might lead to starvation on other colonies for 6-12months.
   • Special projects spawning in adjacent starbase-less enemy systems (with a higher chance for them to appear if using certain fleet compositions - e.g. all corvettes, fleets at <40% full capacity [small fleets], aggregate friendly ships <20% total friendly naval cap, etc).
     • Stuff like
     • "Board mining/science/Outpost station" (takes 1-6 months) yields random stuff like
       • unlock an espionage operation vs that enemy to "spread demoralising war secrets" adding flat War exhaustion to them.
       • military intel / star-system intel reports on the local area for X months
       • adds +X% damage (flat OR X% damage when fighting with a smaller fleet) vs that empire for X months
       • Faster fleet movement speed for X months
     • "Assassinate local leaders/Sabotage Colony" (takes 1-3 months - spawns over UNcaptured worlds) - a strike team lands from orbiting corvettes and attempts to cause chaos, inflicting
       • As above, but also options for devastation / stability hits / chance for the planet to automatically flip to your side (occupied) / slim chance to kill governors generals if in area.
       • If done attacking a sector capital, there may be chances of "supply disruptions" in other sector colonies, reducing output.
     • "Raid supply convoy" - spawns a few hostile (AI/script controlled) transport ships that will spawn by the enemy starbase and flee to the edge of the system.
       • If you catch and kill OR board them (hulls spawn timed special projects) before they can FTL away (despawning upon FTL), you gain various short term buffs or WE effects vs the enemy. - more chance of this spawning if using small fleets (essentially working off the idea that transports are everywhere - like in the trade system - but only "important ones" show up to you).
4. AOE XL/Titan beams on starbases - this one ive tested and works well(enough) on 3.0. Though need to rewrite the event I use to be more performative.
   • Basically, with how I set it up, Starbases - whenever they get a kill* - will deal 75% of target HP to all nearby ships within X units, 50% damage to all ships within 2X units from the target, and 25% to all ships in 3X units from the target.
     • *event runs on ship killed - sadly we cant run events on damaged by (starbase) etc.
     • Its also not possible to determine which gun got the kill, so ive been mostly applying this to Ion Cannons which just have 1 gun, keeping things simpler. With a "unstable" Ion Cannon doing less direct dmg (but AOE damage) and a "Focussed" Ion Cannon doing only direct dmg. (and a Double/triple/quad barrelled rare version req. minor artifacts).
   • When you combine this with swapping all starbase S and M slots for L / XL weapon slots you suddenly see a very powerful starbase. (there is no need for S/M in this case, as the splash damage from L/XL hits rips apart fleets of small ships easily enough).

 

[ZeeHero]

Why is everyone complaining about a problem that doesn't exist? Doomstacks went extinct years ago.

This is hillarious.

Talk about real issues, like how battleships make most other ships obsolete, or how the AI has to cheat, and cheat hard, to be a challenge of any kind to a player.

Crash course in super basic kindergarden logic. Just becuase a high powered fleet can defeat any starbase too easily does not mean doomstacks still are a thing. you need many seperate fleets now, and have for years.

and if you mean by "Doomstack" wad all the fleets together in one attack, well sorry, but cutting fleet cap wont help, only make that issue worse.

 

[methegrate]

IMO the solutions to doomstacking are some combination of making it less efficient (numerically) to stack fleets (#1), compelling empires to be "embattled"/fight on multiple fronts(#2), rewarding "non-head-on" tactics (#3) and introducing anti-spam/anti-dense fleet weapons (#4) - starbases/def platforms really only come in to that last one:

1. Capping fleet sizes to something lower
   • This has a larger impact later in game, with how auras and admiral buffs work with/between allied fleets. Yes you can still stack many little fleets but it isn't as effective as they'll all be using different admirals, and may not all benefit from titan etc auras.
   • I personally think only your "first fleet" (and a single federal fleet) should be capable of hitting large fleet numbers, whilst all other fleets should be capped at something lower.
2. Slowing FTL travel / curtailing gateway expansion AND adding more "trigger happy" (e.g. Aggression = 100) AIs / actual civil wars.
   • This is to force you to divide your forces and attention as your empire gets larger.
   • You don't currently need to split your fleet because you almost only ever fight a single thing at a time in Stellaris (or only have to travel down 1-2 lanes at a time, usually). If you had to account for much longer travel times and more frontiers in combat, you wouldn't be able to as easily justify stacking your whole navy up - at least nowhere near as much as you currently do.
3. Expanding the sources of WarScore - and intel reports - to encourage you to actively seek out something other than the enemy fleet (i.e. rewarding "asymmetric warfare")
   • Hunting down and slaying enemy titans or juggernauts adds a "King-slayer" effect on ALL enemy combatants adding +5%-50% warexhaustion generation for any subsequent battles in the next 6-12 months - the number scales higher based on relative power (so if you're some shitty little empire and you knock out an enemy titan, thats a massive blow to morale).
   • Capturing worlds of a certain type (e.g. Agri worlds) can cause a demodifier "shortages (that associated resource type)" on other worlds and starbases in the same sector - so caputring an enemy industrial world might drive up enemy upkeep and construction costs, whilst capturing a mining world might lead to industrial resource/output shortages, and capturing agri worlds might lead to starvation on other colonies for 6-12months.
   • Special projects spawning in adjacent starbase-less enemy systems (with a higher chance for them to appear if using certain fleet compositions - e.g. all corvettes, fleets at <40% full capacity [small fleets], aggregate friendly ships <20% total friendly naval cap, etc).
     • Stuff like
     • "Board mining/science/Outpost station" (takes 1-6 months) yields random stuff like
       • unlock an espionage operation vs that enemy to "spread demoralising war secrets" adding flat War exhaustion to them.
       • military intel / star-system intel reports on the local area for X months
       • adds +X% damage (flat OR X% damage when fighting with a smaller fleet) vs that empire for X months
       • Faster fleet movement speed for X months
     • "Assassinate local leaders/Sabotage Colony" (takes 1-3 months - spawns over UNcaptured worlds) - a strike team lands from orbiting corvettes and attempts to cause chaos, inflicting
       • As above, but also options for devastation / stability hits / chance for the planet to automatically flip to your side (occupied) / slim chance to kill governors generals if in area.
       • If done attacking a sector capital, there may be chances of "supply disruptions" in other sector colonies, reducing output.
     • "Raid supply convoy" - spawns a few hostile (AI/script controlled) transport ships that will spawn by the enemy starbase and flee to the edge of the system.
       • If you catch and kill OR board them (hulls spawn timed special projects) before they can FTL away (despawning upon FTL), you gain various short term buffs or WE effects vs the enemy. - more chance of this spawning if using small fleets (essentially working off the idea that transports are everywhere - like in the trade system - but only "important ones" show up to you).
4. AOE XL/Titan beams on starbases - this one ive tested and works well(enough) on 3.0. Though need to rewrite the event I use to be more performative.
   • Basically, with how I set it up, Starbases - whenever they get a kill* - will deal 75% of target HP to all nearby ships within X units, 50% damage to all ships within 2X units from the target, and 25% to all ships in 3X units from the target.
     • *event runs on ship killed - sadly we cant run events on damaged by (starbase) etc.
     • Its also not possible to determine which gun got the kill, so ive been mostly applying this to Ion Cannons which just have 1 gun, keeping things simpler. With a "unstable" Ion Cannon doing less direct dmg (but AOE damage) and a "Focussed" Ion Cannon doing only direct dmg. (and a Double/triple/quad barrelled rare version req. minor artifacts).
   • When you combine this with swapping all starbase S and M slots for L / XL weapon slots you suddenly see a very powerful starbase. (there is no need for S/M in this case, as the splash damage from L/XL hits rips apart fleets of small ships easily enough).

I agree, and would emphasize #3.

My concern with #2 (embattled/fight on multiple fronts) is that I'm not sure how much it would actually change things. Offhand, I can't imagine Stellaris actually being any slower than it currently is. Speaking personally, ever since they slowed FTL down in the 2.0 update I can only play it on the "Fastest" setting. But that aside, I think the issue with multiple fronts is that it still doesn't change the basic gamble. Yes, you're taking a risk by concentrating your forces, but whichever empire takes that risk will win.

So if I concentrate my forces, I might lose to a third party on another border. But if I split my forces I'll definitely lose to the enemy I'm currently fighting.

I think the key to breaking up doomstacks is to focus on the strategic level. Right now fleets are both the tool and the goal. You need to defeat their fleet to win, and you use your fleet to defeat theirs. So you never need your ships to be in multiple places at the same time because nothing else matters. I think I would focus asymmetric warfare there. Wars need to be decided by targets that have nothing to do with the fleet. Your ships need to be just how you achieve those goals.

• War Score/War Exhaustion - War score/exhaustion should be based almost entirely on taking civilian targets like planets and starbases. I get the logic of why fleets are a huge part of this calculation, but it just doesn't work. It's how we have the current situation, where so long as the fleet's intact you can never lose. It should work the opposite way. The fleet should exist to protect planets and bases. If I take those, it doesn't matter what the ships are doing.

• Economy - As you suggested, taking major planets and star bases should impose significant economic costs. It would be nice if that happened organically, but making that work would require a (desperately needed) overhaul of the economy as a whole. Short term, your idea is a good one. Peg consequences to a world or base's type so that if I take a trade base or industrial world, the consequences ripple across the empire.

• Tactics -There should be targets you can attack that can, essentially, allow you to defeat the enemy fleet without ever engaging them. Some sort of logistics system would be great. Right now we have a super basic form of that with anchorages and shipyards, but going over your naval cap should hurt more than just increased energy upkeep (which is a trivial penalty). If losing your fleet capacity was a serious blow to your ability to wage war, it would add a risk to creating a doomstack. A concentrated force maybe can't be defeated head on, but it can lose to an asymmetric assault.

• Travel - None of these targets matter if you can't reach them. The game needs a way around chokepoints, so that players have to make choices about where to commit their defenses and which targets look vulnerable. Otherwise we're right back where we started. The correct answer is to stack your ships in the chokepoint, and by the time you're taking civilian targets and industrial worlds the war is largely over anyway.

Of these, I would say the most important are travel and war score. War score requires changing the fewest mechanics. It's just rebalancing the numbers, but doing that would immediately change the incentives of warfare. I would be free to ignore the enemy's doomstack because the best way for me to win the war would be to avoid those ships and hit their unprotected planets instead. Tying it back to the OP, that's where system defenses would come in. Now a fortified starbase could fight off a smaller fleet, or deter me from attacking altogether.

Travel is harder to fix, but just as essential. The game needs some way for me to reach those worlds. If there's a single chokepoint blocking access to the enemy's territory, then I have to fight those ships no matter what. Or if there's only or two roads I can take, they can concentrate their forces and just whack my divided fleets one-by-one. Whatever the travel fix, it's critical because there's no point in adding new targets if players have to go through the doomstack in order to ever reach them.

 

[ZeeHero]

No, what is needed is a rework of starbases and defense platforms in general. For one thing defense platforms should not have to be manually rebuilt each time they get destroyed. they should be rebuilt over time automatically when the starbase regenerates (if it is under your control, theres a good argument for the PLATFORMS themselves not coming back under enemy control til war end) also we need the large platforms back with more guns and armor. we used to have massive size defense fortresses. becuase we dont were stuck with the early game weak ones in late game. Duh they are useless.

People complaining about problems that only exist becuase of other problems which should have been fixed a long time ago, lack of updating certain core mechanics when others are updated.

I definitely agree on the warscore though, no one, NO ONE, thinks the war system doesn't need a rework.

If your definition of doomstack is putting all the fleets in one place, then cutting fleet cap will do NOTHING to fix it.

Should add some defensive techs for starbases/planets in late midgame and late game like electronic warfare suites, which gain power the more seperate fleets are in a system, and so if you throw 2 fleets into the system it will debilitate them far far more than if you send 1 big fleet filled to cap with your most elite ship builds.

that counters doomstacks in the later game, while not ruining anything else.

 

[methegrate]

There is nothing wrong with building big fleets with many ships. and "Doomstacking" hasn't been a thing since fleet capacity has been a thing.
There is a literal limit how much you can put in one fleet. Have people forgotten?

You can put multiple fleets in a single system.

People do float the idea of putting a fleet cap on systems. I tend to think that wouldn't work, the best incentive would still be to keep your ships as close together as the rules allow. But as-is the fleet cap does nothing about doomstacking because the rules still let you attack one target with every ship you own.

 

[ZeeHero]

You can put multiple fleets in a single system.

People do float the idea of putting a fleet cap on systems. I tend to think that wouldn't work, the best incentive would still be to keep your ships as close together as the rules allow. But as-is the fleet cap does nothing about doomstacking because the rules still let you attack one target with every ship you own.

Fleet cap on systems would be awkward and super un fun. See my above suggestion for defensive systems that cripple larger numbers of enemy fleets, that's a counter that can be as hard or soft as needed and adjusted as needed.

 

[SS Boss]

Sins of a Solar Empire had the Twin Fortresses perk in one the expansions, it allowed you to build 2 Starbasses in a system. An ascension perk in Stellaris could do the same thing. Since they implemented Juggernauts as starbases that could move, the second starbase could be a variant juggernaut design that looks like a starbase again without engines, so the game's data would not need to be modified to handle the case of 2 starbases because the second base was really a ship.

And Sins' starbases are way more powerful and important than Stellaris', btw. Its something I want, a super citadel as megastructure. Restricted numbers like Titans, way more powerful than the normal ones. Probably using a perk too (you can buff the Unyelding perk or create a new one).

 

[Stardance]

Since this thread is turning into an interesting collection of ideas, thought I would throw this out.

What would you think if starbases could have a small arsenal of troops stationed on them that required transports to invade?

Starbases aren't destroyed (usually), and the mechanics of sieging a planet DO function as a choke point. So why don't we just move some of that functionality into the starbase? Make it so starbases can be invaded, like a habitat - Make it so a fortified starbase would require a few transports to fight (and that fight does take a bit of time, usually). The starbase doesn't grow in power - it isn't still shooting at ships - but it Does slow the fleet down, much like a planet would, and re-establishes the importance of starbases as chokepoints.

Not all starbases would have garrisoned troops, only if you built the appropriate building. In essence, choosing for it to function as a chokepoint.

The other idea would be to have FTL inhibitors not function as an all-or-nothing-your-fleet-cannot-pass. But instead borrow the idea of attrition, much like in crusader kings. Sure, you could march through that castle area, but it is going to cost you some troops. Sure, our ships could go through that mined gateway, but they will take some damage and we might lose some.