Ok this is ridiculous

[Zwollenaer]

That's mostly correct. Both are possible and happen currently.

I'm not sure how having planets eat armies will do anything to stop it, though, which is the major point I'm arguing against.

A more permanent solution is probably to have a fleet power cap for each fleet. Instead of allowing 100k doomstacks, cap it. You can only have fleets of a certain size before they become "uncontrollable" and start getting detrimental modifiers to their combat scores. -5% damage, -10% damage, etc. successively applied to each tier or percent it's over the max limit for that fleet. In DH, you can only have Corps of sizes up to four divisions (HQs modify this a bit) before they start getting huge ass negative modifiers that kill their ability to attack.

Of course, you still doomstack, but now you have to coordinate a doomstack over 20k blobs instead of a single 100k blob. It's the only way off the top of my head that would improve the situation. Getting rid of armies is just nixing a tedious and boring part of the game that adds literally zero value.

You make a lot of sense. There should be a cap, or even better: a supply system. Only X amount of ships can be effective in the same system before their supply lines become overwhelmed and my oversized armada fights at only a fraction of it's strength. It would make war a lot more realistic and I'd have a strong incentive to stop blobbing my fleets together as much.

 

[Milten]

A more permanent solution is probably to have a fleet power cap for each fleet. Instead of allowing 100k doomstacks, cap it. You can only have fleets of a certain size before they become "uncontrollable" and start getting detrimental modifiers to their combat scores. -5% damage, -10% damage, etc. successively applied to each tier or percent it's over the max limit for that fleet. In DH, you can only have Corps of sizes up to four divisions (HQs modify this a bit) before they start getting huge ass negative modifiers that kill their ability to attack.

Of course, you still doomstack, but now you have to coordinate a doomstack over 20k blobs instead of a single 100k blob. It's the only way off the top of my head that would improve the situation. Getting rid of armies is just nixing a tedious and boring part of the game that adds literally zero value.

Unless you limit combat engagement, it will only create more problems. People will just carry around five 20k fleets together instead of just one with 100k.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

the fact that he was taken out when he could have just turned around and stomped them shows the game is too limited/doesn't differentiate enough between what is actually a lose and what is still strongly in someone's favor.

- but he didn't turn around and stomp them, did he?
-54 is not 'strongly in your favor'

 

[Felfox]

- but he didn't turn around and stomp them, did he?
-54 is not 'strongly in your favor'

Okay I'll agree I probably read into it a tad too much because yes the warscore would imply he was getting destroyed. As I said I'm glad he lost to such a tactic as enemy gaining a bunch of victories faster than him. However, (and this is just reading into the post and could be 100% wrong!) it seemed implied that his fleet was much stronger than their combined forces and he could have destroyed them had he just gone after them from the start. The issue I'm seeing is that the game isn't really able to handle war on multiple fronts (which to a degree, this should be an advantage anyway!) And that his inability to simply -end- one of his opponents so that he COULD turn around and focus on the others ultimately cost him the game.

By no means should it be easy to fight multiple foes at once... But if you're the rebel alliance trying to take on the empire, freeing a bunch fringe planets while also technically losing an entire rebel cell (one of the factions was beaten) shouldn't be enough pressure to make the entire empire collapse. Now again I have NO idea how the battle went, only that I've seen the warscore arbitrarily award some pretty hefty points to the enemy even when for all intent and purpose I won every encounter. The system is flawed and shouldn't reward so strongly for taking a few bites out of someone when in the grand scheme of things, doesn't really set them back all that much.

But again Ill concede that I have no actual idea how his game went so I won't fight you further on that heh.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Okay I'll agree I probably read into it a tad too much because yes the warscore would imply he was getting destroyed. As I said I'm glad he lost to such a tactic as enemy gaining a bunch of victories faster than him. However, (and this is just reading into the post and could be 100% wrong!) it seemed implied that his fleet was much stronger than their combined forces and he could have destroyed them had he just gone after them from the start. The issue I'm seeing is that the game isn't really able to handle war on multiple fronts (which to a degree, this should be an advantage anyway!) And that his inability to simply -end- one of his opponents so that he COULD turn around and focus on the others ultimately cost him the game.

By no means should it be easy to fight multiple foes at once... But if you're the rebel alliance trying to take on the empire, freeing a bunch fringe planets while also technically losing an entire rebel cell (one of the factions was beaten) shouldn't be enough pressure to make the entire empire collapse. Now again I have NO idea how the battle went, only that I've seen the warscore arbitrarily award some pretty hefty points to the enemy even when for all intent and purpose I won every encounter. The system is flawed and shouldn't reward so strongly for taking a few bites out of someone when in the grand scheme of things, doesn't really set them back all that much.

But again Ill concede that I have no actual idea how his game went so I won't fight you further on that heh.

mneh, it's not a fight. i just think that he could probably have easily smashed fleets one after the other. but he said himself that he was 'keeping his eye on the prize'

 

[Felfox]

mneh, it's not a fight. i just think that he could probably have easily smashed fleets one after the other. but he said himself that he was 'keeping his eye on the prize'

Sorry, force of habit on forums heh! You're probably right though, had he really been as strong as he said then he should have just crushed them all and this would have been moot heh. Though I do think it would be nice to somehow be able to force an opponent to at least back off if you crushed them but not the rest yet. At the same time, going for what you want and getting it should be rewarded a bit more I think.

There's really no excuse for getting mad that you lost to a back door and raided into oblivion because to me that's a perfectly logical solution to a more powerful enemy, the system just needs to be better optimized is all.

 

[cosmeIII]

EU4's war exhaustion and enthusiasm could work nicely in Stellaris. It could also fix problems like these, as bigger empires would take longer to get exhausted from occupation of worthless fringe colonies, instead getting exhausted due to loss in battle or occupation of main core worlds.

 

[Adamsrealm]

There should be no straight out warscore reward for occupation, the warscore should be ticking (and only for the planets you want to cede/liberate/cleanse). The accumulated score should be removed and reset if the occupation is broken, this would give some strategic value to occupying planets and streamline/focus wars as opposed to the all out slogs we have at the moment.

Also if you do not occupy/control a planet, you should not bet able to demand related wargoals unless you have 1000 warscore.

 

[Caspoi]

One easy solution to the influence problem in particular that still keeps to the spirit of why they have it in the first place would be to make it so that after you declined their reasonable demands then for a while, unless you turn things around and stop loosing, you will have an empire wide modifier that drains influence rather than just a direct flat loss of it. Apart from the realism argument that it would take some time until you population would really start to wallow in despair it would mean that spamming surrender requests is no longer a viable strategy (which i annoying, unintuitive and idiotic). A rebalanced warscore system or new and improved ground invasions are all well and good but would most likely require a ton of work (and thus probably come in some major expansion) while this would solve the OP's greatest gripe and could easily be done by the developers in an hour.

 

[kourada2]

Ok I'm glad this has spawned a good idea and opinions exchange.

My problem with the situation I described is not the fact the I lost the war. The problem is that in reality I didn't. It was a calculated risk. Let one of them (the bigger) occupy my entire fringe sector while I take the others out one by one. By the time I was at -54 3 of my opponents were defeated (small ones 3 to 4 planets each) and I was starting to push the big one back. I destroyed his fleet and was on my way to reclaim the lost sector worlds. See what I mean?

Forcing the player to operate in the same mentality as the AI is bad gameplay that's all I'm saying. Just because the AI would have accepted peace at -54 warscore doesn't mean anything. The AI HAS to operate under certain rules in order to function properly. The player doesn't. The AI also gets buffs in every aspect of the game because it can not cope with the challenges presented, should the player get them too? No, because that's the meaning of the game overcoming the challenges. The fact that I didn't pay any heed to the warscore is because I 've never lost a war like this in stellaris before (in over 400 hours of gameplay). I discovered the influence cost and the autoaccepting mechanic yesterday with this situation. I didn't even notice it the fist time I pressed decline. Don't get me wrong I 've lost wars but never felt cheated. But this time I lost it! Maybe it's because I was about to turn this around and was deprived of the thrill

I was impressed by the tactics used against me really. 5 smaller enemies chipping away at me on every front and retreating when my armada appeared in the system. I m all for them breaking me with this guerilla strategy but not like this. They lose the war but I lose my unity. I lose my empire from within that's what should have happened. Unrest and rebellion on the occupied planets because I sacrificed them to the altar of warmongering and expansion. That's good gameplay, making the player take decisions that matter long term and dealing with the consequences. Not this, ok you lost that's it, wrap it up thing.

Because I see a lot of EU4 referencing here. The situation in EU4 terms would be playing England against France + native allies. France occupies your colonies in America with the natives and then forcing you to surrender London while you 've beaten their army in Europe and control Paris.

The solution to what in my opinion is the problem here would be to just prioritize core systems as targets of the highest value. These systems are the ones that should never fall. The Homeworld of course being the top prize. As for sectors prioritize value based on population and production. One thing I failed to mention is that the majority of the systems in the big occupied sector were new colonies with 2 -3 or 4 pops each. A sector with two full 25 planets should count vastly more than a sector with 5 new colonies each having 2 to 3 pops. Also factor in fleet strength. And there's your war score. New mechanics like war exhaustion or empires will to fight should also be implemented.

 

[Drowe]

I can think of one neat way to make doomstacks less of a viable tactic, it wouldn't make it impossible and it shouldn't, but it would have consequences to do so.

My proposal would be to rework sectors to require a fraction of your total fleet to be assigned to them, this would give the assigned ships over to the sector AI and remove it from your direct control or alternatively those ships may not leave the sector but remain under your control. If you don't assign enough ships to your sectors, they would be unhappy with you, a simple penalty to happiness. Other things that may happen is pirates showing up and raiding your mining stations or a penalty to influence and lots of other things. Probably should be increasing over time and start relatively low.

This could of course lead to a scenario where you lose your main fleet and have still quite a few ships in sectors you can't do anything with. So it needs to be possible to unassign them from their sectors to get them back. Doing so while you have few ships should be less detrimental than doing so at your fleet cap, but may be worth doing as the opening move of a war or to bolster your defences against a strong opponent by calling in ships from a sector on the other side of your empire.

This would give you a reason to spread out your fleet during peace time and keeping fleets separate even during war, but still retain the option of forming a doomstack, even if it comes at a price and you may not want to keep it like that for long. All those ships assigned to sectors still count against your fleet cap, so you can't "hide" fleets in sectors to get around the cap.

 

[PirateJack]

Well, chances are that the reworked faction system is going to be integrated into warfare by having certain factions gain influence depending on the circumstances of the war.

So if you're winning a war, the militaristic faction is going to gain influence, which is great for a militaristic nation as they profit from that. If you've got a ton of planets occupied, however, maybe the pacifists will gain power, decreasing your overall influence gain and potentially pushing it into the negative.

It is a much more organic system than the one in place and I think it will help solve this problem too a degree.

 

[D Inqu]

My problem with the situation I described is not the fact the I lost the war. The problem is that in reality I didn't. It was a calculated risk. Let one of them (the bigger) occupy my entire fringe sector while I take the others out one by one. By the time I was at -54 3 of my opponents were defeated (small ones 3 to 4 planets each) and I was starting to push the big one back. I destroyed his fleet and was on my way to reclaim the lost sector worlds. See what I mean?

Well the equivalent in EU4 would be to beat Wallachia and Moldavia, and let Turkey eat half of your country. It's not hard beating minors, but it does not mean you are actually winning. For the warcore to be below -50 even if you have captured around 10 planets and have space combat warscore, means you lost a lot, even if you take the Black Knight mentality.

Fair enough if it's a calculated risk. But if Warscore hits -25, then the plan is clearly not working as the enemy is taking things from you too fast for the plan to work, and it may be a good idea to recapture you planets first.

Forcing the player to operate in the same mentality as the AI is bad gameplay that's all I'm saying.

Not same mentality, but similar rules. The AI rules on diplomacy are easily seen using tooltips. You can exactly predict with the tooltip, and tailor your peace offer to make them fold early. The player already has a massive advantage by being able to refuse offers. The influence cost is there to slightly limit that advantage.

You are plying the same game, so you need to at least partially follow the same rules. Imagine if instead this is was the opposite. You beat an enemy, and they just say "lol no". And just stay at war, until some other faction goes to war with you.

The fact that I didn't pay any heed to the warscore is because I 've never lost a war like this in stellaris before (in over 400 hours of gameplay).

It's never too late to learn from mistakes.

I lose my empire from within that's what should have happened. Unrest and rebellion on the occupied planets because I sacrificed them to the altar of warmongering and expansion. That's good gameplay, making the player take decisions that matter long term and dealing with the consequences.

I too hope that the next expansion will add more mechanics to war and control over occupied territory. But since this does not exist at the moment, we have what we have.

 

[jedzenie]

Or maybe better the solution than fleet power cap for each fleet is units number limit (army cup) dependent, for example, on the number of population (manpower) or the number of planets (the amount of the barracks where you can train units)

But this have sense only when occupied planets must be guarded. thanks to this the invasion must be well planned and it makes invasion force as a precious resource that must be defended with a higher commitment than now.

Occupation of planets should require either to leave on planet part of troops(option A)
or the creation of garrisons (opt. B) (no matter whether we call it occupation troops or police or whatever), which would require time - the more the population to pacify / saving, the more months. Only then these few units could safely join the rest of the army. Maintaining garrisons should costs (whether minerals or cash or manpower)
For both option should be the risk of revolution, guerrilla warfare, etc.
the chance of armed rebellion should be modify by the strength of the garrison, the number of units left, provision (if you are starving you are a bit more rebellious), propaganda (credits) or indoctrination (science)

I'm not sure if the game was better with option A or option B.
Perhaps the two to choose from ...

This is my spontaneous idea to add the war (and for gaining warscore) a little more tactical planning.
And thanks to that fleet and army will gain in importance

\\ But maybe to make it all to work properly we should separate (2 skill caps) defensive army of invasion. but … not sure

And the second thing Annoing thing ... in every war in which AI is on defender side It set the war demands on my home world (well, almost). Even if it is far, far behind my other sectors. It's stupid. I don’t expect that Ai will be calculating the strategic value of the planets but…
I occupy Hawaii so I want your capital. Give me Washington DC .. what the $#&@#

 

[EntropyAvatar]

The limit of my creativity, though, is I'm not sure what the third strategy should be. Warscore can be balanced to make the OP's situation even more common, so that when someone rolls up a doomstack you split the fleet and take ten planets for every one they do. So far so good, and losing just means you got outplayed. But then without our "scissors," raiding would just become the game-winning strategy. It would be the exact opposite problem of now with everyone racing to see how few troops they can use to take a planet.

What about the middle ground? The response to a raiding strategy is defeat in detail. So if they divide into ten fleets and start trying to capture your worlds, you divide into five fleets, intercept and destroy the raiders. Now they have no fleet to defend themselves and a vulnerable to raiding of their own worlds. The "divide into a few fleets" strategy is in turn vulnerable to defeat in detail from the doom stack.

 

[Emraldis]

As a thought, what if occupying (or blockading) a star system gave you warscore? You'd only get it once you'd destroyed everything in orbit in the system, and the system would need to contain a colony, but this would encourage the player to split up their fleets somewhat, since you'd need to leave behind fleets, or portions thereof, to defend conquered systems. Then the player would need to think about how many ships to leave behind, and it could allow for an opponent who is only a bit weaker in fleet power to be able to fight back, rather than loosing their entire fleet in a doomstack fight. Or, even better, you only get the warscore from occupations, if you have a fleet blockading the star system, so once I've landed an army and conquered a planet, I need to keep at least one corvette in-system to be able to gain warscore from that system. If I choose to leave only a corvette in each conquered system, the defender can then come a long with a fleet of a couple destroyers or something and destroy all of those corvettes, thus negating the warscore. If you tie this with slower fleet movement in hostile territory, that means that an attacker will need to properly fortify and defend all the systems they take, which could be done using military stations, as long as they still have that one corvette in-system. I think this may add some interesting strategic play to the war system, and help reduce the dominance of doomstacks. Ofc, warscore would have to be rebalanced somewhat with this, having a ticking warscore system would probably end up being the best, with target planets giving far more warscore than non-target planets. This would allow players to hold out with fewer planets under their control, as long as they are able to defend the systems they take.

 

[terrycloth]

EU4's war exhaustion and enthusiasm could work nicely in Stellaris. It could also fix problems like these, as bigger empires would take longer to get exhausted from occupation of worthless fringe colonies, instead getting exhausted due to loss in battle or occupation of main core worlds.

If the fringe colonies are worthless, maybe you should be able to release the occupied sector because 'it doesn't matter' and have it stop counting for warscore?

I mean, it's not like the inhabitants of the sector are still going to want to follow you since you won't defend them.

 

[methegrate]

What about the middle ground? The response to a raiding strategy is defeat in detail. So if they divide into ten fleets and start trying to capture your worlds, you divide into five fleets, intercept and destroy the raiders. Now they have no fleet to defend themselves and a vulnerable to raiding of their own worlds. The "divide into a few fleets" strategy is in turn vulnerable to defeat in detail from the doom stack.

The concern I'd have there is I'm not sure the numbers work. It actually feels like a setup for the OP's complaint. If we re-weight so that raiding gets you better warscore (to make it a way to beat doom stacks), then by the time you've hunted down each little fleet they'll have scored so many points that the war just ends. That's the whole point after all.

The key to rebalancing numbers in raiding's favor (thus making it a viable strategy) is that an equal fleet can run up the score faster than the doomstack can crush it in detail. Let's say we each have 100k fleets. I split mine into 10 divisions, you split yours into 5. I attack and take 10 planets. You counter attack and kill 5 of my divisions and take half those planets back. While this is going on, my remaining troops carry on and take another 5 planets. And now I've got the combined warscore of taking 10 planets, less my fleet losses, but that should be enough to put me over the top in most wars.

So instead your incentive is to try and take my planets faster than I'm taking yours, so you split your fleet into 11 divisions to see if those are still enough to take one of my world's, and we're in an arms race in the exact opposite direction.

I mean, right now I think you're right. The appropriate response to raiders is to take your doom stack and whack them all in detail. Knowing you'll do that, I only split my fleet into 5, so you only split your fleet in half, so I don't split my fleet at all and we have the current situation. In the OP, it looks less like the computer was clever and more that he just ignored what was happening in his own territory.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

The key to rebalancing numbers in raiding's favor (thus making it a viable strategy) is that an equal fleet can run up the score faster than the doomstack can crush it in detail. Let's say we each have 100k fleets. I split mine into 10 divisions, you split yours into 5. I attack and take 10 planets. You counter attack and kill 5 of my divisions and take half those planets back. While this is going on, my remaining troops carry on and take another 5 planets. And now I've got the combined warscore of taking 10 planets, less my fleet losses, but that should be enough to put me over the top in most wars.

Ideally the game would have a 10-way split be better than a doomstack. So by the time a doomstack has hunted down let's say 5 of the sub-fleets, the doomstack player has lost. However, all else being equal, a 5-way split should be able to kill the 10-way split 5x faster than a doomstack (each battle takes somewhat longer and more losses, but 5 hunter fleets could also more easily trap a raiding fleet). So you try to set the parameters such that a raiding strategy can win before a doomstack can take them down, while it will be wiped out by a 5-way split before being able to achieve enough warscore. Theoretically I think there should be room in between those two.

Knowing you'll do that, I only split my fleet into 5, so you only split your fleet in half, so I don't split my fleet at all and we have the current situation.

I think part of this is a question of how quickly you can react to changes in your opponent's ship distribution. That depends on how easily you can tell where they are and how quickly you can concentrate or disperse your fleets (or change their existing orders). I think slower-moving fleets with limited sensor range and orders that can't be quickly reversed would make for more satisfying operational gameplay.

The other element I think would help would be more variance in system defenses. So you have fringe systems that don't require a strong fleet to capture, moderately defended systems where you can do some damage to mining and so but which would require strong forces to actually take the planet, and fortress systems where you'd need a highly concentrated force to even survive a raid and taking the planets would be a long siege.

 

[GizahNL]

imho the only change that should be made is that demands can not be forced on planets that are NOT occupied or at least blockaded for X months. So for the AI to influence drain and force surrender of your homeworld it should've had to occupy it first.

It makes for a way more sensible game

-edit- also the technique to deal with this is to not click on the peace offers, and let them expire automatically, this gives you a bit more time to take back enough planets before the AI can force you. If I recall correctly the moment you decline the AI can send another offer.