Possible idea addressing doomstacks

[Huck Sunbh]

At first, we limit the amount of ships an admiral can command, maybe based on the empire's fleet capacity and other small factors like the admiral's rank.

Second, in scenarios where 2 or more fleets of the same empire engage together in a battle against another fleet, the 2 fleets gain a "clash of command" penalty because there are 2 or more command figures, thus ships of the different fleets have difficulty coordinating under different admirals. The more admirals there are, the larger the penalty.
This can be used as some equivalent to HOI combat width, and would allow main battles to be fought with much less of the empire's navy, allowing for a simultaneous defense and offense on several "fronts".

Further more, a special fortress-station called "Fleet Central Command" can be built and fitted with various upgrades After the proper tech has been researched. This Fleet Central Command will help the fleets of the entire empire better coordinate and reduces the "clash of command" penalty. However, upon the destruction of the Fleet Central Command, all fleets gain a temporary "disorganization" penalty.
This would give an additional objective in a war, both for offense and defense.

About the penalties themselves, i can't give exact numbers as i don't know what will be balanced, but a clear line would be that the "disorganization" will be much more significant than the "Clash of command" penalty.

 

[DavetheGreat]

Not sure why there is so many disagrees, it's at least as good as anything else anyone has thought of so far.

That said, my advice would be to wait until Heinlein is released, then when we have seen how it plays with all the changes we will better know what to adjust further.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

The disagreement comes from people who are worried about limiting fleets, and to some extent rightfully so.

But yeah i agree that waiting for Heinlein is best. Who knows, maybe the new combat system would successfully stop lower class ships from suicide diving into enemy fire, and make capital ships properly tank damage, making fleets able to retreat with less casualties mid-battle, and separate the 1 decisive battle into several smaller ones.

 

[Rubido]

Why just not to add attrition? In the form of, well, some property of the dark energy what collides with effect of the huge amount of space-time warping drives. It's a Sci-Fi after all.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

I'm not sure if that would be as effective...

EU4 has it, and the only thing it causes is people to split their forces before engaging, but the battle itself is the usual doomstack.

 

[Tabris01]

Why just not to add attrition? In the form of, well, some property of the dark energy what collides with effect of the huge amount of space-time warping drives. It's a Sci-Fi after all.

You could add an additional supply count, which fleets would have to restore regularly. It would slow down warfare, as ships need to restock (which could draw on the ressources of the planet they use for it), and maybe even hamper doomstacks. The more ships you have in one fleet the longer the time you need to fill up and the more likely it is, that one planetary economy can not handle it

 

[Summin Cool]

The issue with having multiple fleets is the amount of micro that comes with it. Perhaps if some ui changes to the create new fleet and other things were made people won't be as worried. A transfer ships option wouldn't hurt as well.

Secondly it won't counter the doomstack. What is needed is the ability to generate significant warscore without killing fleets or taking planets as well as a nerf to the power projection of a single fleet.

What is probably a wise idea is to return warscore to mining stations and add in civilian traffic and attach warscore to those. then to reduce the speed/FTL speed of a doomstack. Giving a soft limit to a doom stack rather than a hard one.

Then what is needed is for the AI to intelligently place defense stations. As they would now be much needed to protect assets in your empire.

I might just ask for @Wiz on this one for his opinion.

 

[Rubido]

What about hardcore staff - delay in information receiving? This way you MUST have some ships in key systems and doomstucks are useless. All that is needed is to reinforce the space stations.

 

[Summin Cool]

Hear hear, System sensor range and FTL sensor range + Stealth would be a nice thing as well.

Smaller fleets are harder to detect, technologies to avoid detection via some special modules that sort of thing.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

You could add an additional supply count, which fleets would have to restore regularly. It would slow down warfare, as ships need to restock (which could draw on the ressources of the planet they use for it), and maybe even hamper doomstacks. The more ships you have in one fleet the longer the time you need to fill up and the more likely it is, that one planetary economy can not handle it

I think this will just end up like the attrition option,a fleet would be separated before the battle for supplies, but the actual battle will remain a doomstack clash.

What is probably a wise idea is to return warscore to mining stations and add in civilian traffic and attach warscore to those. then to reduce the speed/FTL speed of a doomstack. Giving a soft limit to a doom stack rather than a hard one.
@Wiz on this one for his opinion.

That might help, but only if the AI or the other player cooporates. If not then we are back at square one with a single battle to cripple the other's navy for the rest of the war, or have a cat and mouse war/ "base rush" where one side either tries to hunt down the other, or destroy his enemy's things faster than the enemy destroys his own.

 

[NarlantWeed]

All they need to do to address doomstack a is an attrition system. Each system can only support a fleet of so many ships, and a supply train determines how far the fleets can go in to enemy territory/away from friendly territory without suffering increased attrition.

That's how eu4 combats doomstacks and it works really well.

 

[grommile]

What about hardcore staff - delay in information receiving?

Well, that's one way to screw the AI - or make players explode in rage when they give up on enabling the AI to cope with it and make the AI immune instead.

(To be clear: communications delays are absolutely a valid feature in a space strategy game, but if you put them in after release you are asking for trouble, from both a development perspective and a PR perspective.)

 

[Kyle Lionheart]

Paradox has never dared put comm delays in any of their historical games, where they would really belong and be useful to represent real historical issues. (except for the HoI series, maybe)
They will not put them in a soft sci-fi game.

Stack penalties should be much more acceptable, not to mention easier to implement and balance.

 

[shadowclasper]

What about hardcore staff - delay in information receiving? This way you MUST have some ships in key systems and doomstucks are useless. All that is needed is to reinforce the space stations.

That'd be fine for things like judging the relative strength of empires (go look at the intel, espionage, and spies post in the suggestions forum), but not so good for commanding star fleets. Sword of the Stars II tries it but it's really their clunkiest mechanic.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

All they need to do to address doomstack a is an attrition system. Each system can only support a fleet of so many ships, and a supply train determines how far the fleets can go in to enemy territory/away from friendly territory without suffering increased attrition.

That's how eu4 combats doomstacks and it works really well.

But the fleets will just be separated most of the time, and swarm a single system when a battle begins, returning into a doomstack for the battle, and break afterwards to prevent attrition. That doesn't really solve anything, It's still 1 battle whose victor has practically won the war.

 

[Rubido]

Maybe we need to look at the problem from some different angle? If we make ships much more sturdy (same with space stations) and enable individual emergency warping (with ships warping out of combat became missing and appear later at nearest station), when even total defeat can cost points at war score, but most of the fleet would be able to retreat and regroup. Main point - reinforcing stations. Some shields powered from planet itself can really add to the solution. As long as you have power you can maintain this shield, BUT it drains energy quickly, and you cant afford to maintain it in several systems. It can withstand (though not for too long) one doomstuck, but two fleets in two systems will be a problem.

What do you think?

 

[Karl244]

What about ships fleeing the battle after x damage. Then all the fled ships move to a friendly owned system.
This means that first off, doomstack vs doomstack isn't the end of the fighting, however, after that battle the fleets have to merge and repair and stuff.
Might not be the best solution, but combined with a few other ones, it could be good.

EDIT:

Maybe we need to look at the problem from some different angle? If we make ships much more sturdy (same with space stations) and enable individual emergency warping (with ships warping out of combat became missing and appear later at nearest station), when even total defeat can cost points at war score, but most of the fleet would be able to retreat and regroup. Main point - reinforcing stations. Some shields powered from planet itself can really add to the solution. As long as you have power you can maintain this shield, BUT it drains energy quickly, and you cant afford to maintain it in several systems. It can withstand (though not for too long) one doomstuck, but two fleets in two systems will be a problem.

What do you think?

This bassicly.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

I 100% think that all forms of stations should be heavily reinforced, even at the cost of reducing weapons slots.

Regarding the other thing, having more durable ships is a must. Splitting forces to hit different systems and wear off those planetary shields is nice, but i still think the most important issue with doomstacks is how do we make it more beneficial to not fight a single battle with everything you got, but to spread the combat across multiple systems.

Edit: the retreat system is good, it'll help not make the 1 battle dictate the entire war.

 

[Kayden_II]

There is a Mod - "Space is an Ocean", which upscales the Star-Systems by 100 and downscales the FTL by 100 ...
Interesting Approach in Theory ...
You can make a single big Doomstack, but till You may have engaged the Enemy, You may have lost a significant Amount of Stations and Planets, which could makes It necessary to split your Fleet ...

And I still like the Idea to have the Ability to connect Spaceports (and/or Military-Stations) with each Other to have a strong Spaceport-Complex against an Enemy-Fleet and with the Ability to produce more than 1 single Ship at the same Time against to much Micro-Management.

 

[Huck Sunbh]

First:

And I still like the Idea to have the Ability to connect Spaceports (and/or Military-Stations) with each Other to have a strong Spaceport-Complex against an Enemy-Fleet and with the Ability to produce more than 1 single Ship at the same Time against to much Micro-Management.

This is perfect. "Military infrastructure". With this we can centralize production and defense into specific locations in our space, both making it easier to defend, and giving the war the needed objectives other then to just conquer planets.

Second, i'm not sure if separating fleets to defend will be that appealing, as if you already have so much planets that losing a few won't matter, it would be better to just send as much as forces to punch through the enemy, and if the enemy separated his fleet to both attack and defend, his defending force would just be crushed by an all out attack. It causes either a cat and mouse war, or a base rush war.
There needs to be an actual game mechanic to encourage splitting fleets.