Ship combat emergency phase-out

[Gaussia]

We have not really seen much of ship combat yet, but no doubt this will be the most important part of Stellaris (just like ground combat in the other PDS games).

The only real sample we have is the blorg totally destroying the reptilian fleet in one battle, and thus winning the war. One fear I have is that wars will primarily be decided by one large battle; both players gather up there fleet in one big blob, they meet, the smaller fleet get annihilated and the loser have no chance of rebuilding before the end of the war.
One cool thing in e.g. EUIV is that even if you lose most of you army survives and retreat, as long as you have manpower you are ready for a combat. The risks of suddenly loosing parts of your army that are detached from the main force are not so big.

The one counter to this we have heard of is the "Emergency FTL retreat". This could solve the problem, but we have not seen it, and when it was mentioned I think they said they did not really know how to make the AI use it. It would also require manual control by the player.


Inspired by other Sci Fi I would suggest adding the ability for ships that are about to get destroyed to make an emergency FTL jump. When the captain realize what's going on he'll push the big red button and hope for the best.

Of course such a jump is very uncontrolled. If successful the ship will go "MIA" (as seen a blorg ship done in the stream) while it tries to make its way home from wherever it end up with the emergency jump. Some ships will fail to perform the emergency FTL and remain destroyed, some would make the jump but not make there way back (due to damage or a very failed jump). Ships receiving lot of damage quickly simply would not have time to try.

The result is that after a big battle a good portion of your lost fleet would make it back home (in a sad state). If you have the resources you could repair the next to destroyed ships, maybe also use your previous knowledge from the big battle to re equip them to better face the enemy foe.

I think this would make a war hang much less on the individual battles, become more drawn out an exciting, allow for better utilization of stored resources. All packed in a system that requires no player (or AI) supervision.

TL DR; Ships about to be destroyed in battle will automatically try to make an emergency FTL jump. Some will succeed and be able to return home after going MIA a while. These next to destroyed ship could be repaired and be ready to face the enemy once again. I think such a system would make wars less dependent on the individual battles and generally more exciting (while requiring little player supervision).

 

[Aleks S. I]

I believe there is a manual "emergency jump" button available for fleets, however, I agree that having ships just attempt to do it automatically makes a lot of sense. Perhaps an "emergency jump" tech would make up for the issues explaining this for the various drive systems, as I believe all of them are supposed to only work at the edges of the system due to technobabble.

 

[Hertzila]

The Emergency FTL option we currently have had to be manually activated because the charge time it requires before activating leaves the ship vulnureable and I think only the hyperspace FTL method allows jumps in the middle of the star system, compared to warp which requires them to be at the edge of the star system and gates which require active gates.

That said, some form of control to order "routs" for ships if they get badly damaged might be nice (as a combat computer?) but I hope there will not be any automatic routing when my fleet is desperately defending my homeworld.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I do think it is paramount the AI is taught not to fight loosing battles to the last ship unless they are desperate. I know I will not do that... why would I?!?

The AI must be taught to fight under the protection of stations during defensive stances and use emergency jumps if outgunned in other situations. Otherwise we will be able to abuse how easy it is to just isolate the AI fleet and kill it off. It will then give us an easy time to take whatever planets we like, even if defended by stations.

I know the game are not finished yet, but the AI seemed to do all these bad things in the Blorg stream. It did not withdraw from the enemy system when a clearly superior enemy fleet jumped in. It charged the Blorg fleet with a couple of ships in its own system when it should have stayed around its station for protection.

I hope the AI will seem a bit more competent in this regard later on, at least after a few patches.

 

[Mundicus]

I agree with OP. The behavior and value of admirals/captains varies from sci-fi universe to another sci-fi universe. We have seen various behaviors and attitudes towards the manpower and fleets/ships. There are combats, where a total wipe-out occurs of one of the sides. There are also combats, where fleets retreat after engagement and repair up, etc. Apart from the particular sci-fi author's style (more or less realistic, etc), the behavior of the captains/fleets is often rooted in alien culture.

Less fatalistic/deterministic fleet engagements might be more exciting. However, I do not know how much pain and complexity we are asking here for - mopping individual routing units can be a real pain (cat&mouse).. or having enemy units retreat behind your defense line to later raid and assault your backyard stations and colonies.

I would like to think my admirals value the governmental property and lives of the crew - and would know to retreat when in danger of going "boom".

So, my two cents to the proposal in original post: maybe it could be a military policy (rules of engagement or rules of disengagement, do not know the military terms)? A policy that could be picked for individual fleet or maybe the entire civilization - i.e. "Stand the ground", "Preserve the fleet", etc?

So, militaristic and maybe fatalistic civilizations could fight to the death, others could be more cautious or cowardly.

 

[mrinku]

Jump out aside, ships that are faster in normal space *should* be able to disengage at will. Weapon ranges are clearly not (and should not be) interplanetary.

I'd hope this is the case, and that one of the agonizing ship design decisions is going to be capability vs mobility.

You might also face the problem of risking your swifter ships to protect your sluggish ones, or the choice to abandon the tubs to preserve the racers.

 

[Athenacaelum]

Mass Effect style; sacrifice; 5th and 4th fleet to save the 1st fleet!!

Forgot how it went exactly but you get the point, lol

 

[sdeezie]

I like the idea of setting a "fleet retreat" policy for the admirals to automatically follow: "retreat at 50% losses", "fight to the last ship", or something like that. Likewise an automatic "fleet repair" policy like from EU4, which I think might be new for EU4 with Mare Nostrum.

I do think it makes a lot of sense not to make retreat contingent on player intervention, in the interest of squashing yet another micromanagement task and letting you get back to your work as Galactic Dictator.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Individual ship captains should order the ship to retreat when they are in danger to be destroyed... that would make the battles a bit more interesting.

If fleet actually worked more like WW1 or 2 where they mostly try to escape when wounded would make things more dynamic. Of course willingness to retreat should be a trait by the ethos of the empire, the stance the player give the ships/fleets or the Admirals willingness to remain in the battle.

 

[Hertzila]

Of course willingness to retreat should be a trait by the ethos of the empire...

I hope that would not be part of the retreat considerations. As thematic as it might be for Fanatic Militarists to never turn tail and Fanatic Pacifists to do it always, I'm fairly certain every military would realize that being so dogmatic in regards to war would only ever end badly.
Not that a player couldn't RP it by always using the policy of "Attack! Attack! Attack!".

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I hope that would not be part of the retreat considerations. As thematic as it might be for Fanatic Militarists to never turn tail and Fanatic Pacifists to do it always, I'm fairly certain every military would realize that being so dogmatic in regar
ds to war would only ever end badly.
Not that a player couldn't RP it by always using the policy of "Attack! Attack! Attack!".

No... as everything else... it would be something that influence their behaviour, not making it inherently predictable.

 

[mrinku]

As THE strategic asset, a "preserve the fleet" mentality should probably be the default, although sometimes you just have to fight suicide missions for strategic reasons, just as in history.

 

[eddyill]

II would also be cool if ships could get stuck in deep space with only sub light engines engines, this would be represented with them jumping out but not reappearing until decades after the battle. There could also be a special project attached.

 

[mrinku]

Even though the game glosses over sublight fuel requirements and life support, ships wouldn't be designed for decades of interstellar sublight travel. They could veto it for that reason alone.

But... it would be a good thing to have. I expect there will be a "no FTL" mod pretty early on that replaces the FTL techs with various sublight options. Could be combined with stargates... Iain M Banks' Algebraist had that - each end of the wormhole had to be created at the same location, and then you had to push one end to where you wanted it. Takes centuries to set up a new connection between stellar systems in his book, but decades or years could be implemented.

 

[Balkri]

I remember playing Distant Worlds... the auto jump in case of damage, even if it make sense... can end up being annoying, like entire fleets warping out if they end up with "low shield" and making battles extremely confusing and inconclusive.

Don't take this in the wrong way, i'm in favor of clever IA but make a single mistake in the "preserve ships" mentality and you can get a mess of Warps in both sides that in the end don't resolve nothing :/

 

[Gaussia]

Good point.

Initially I thought of it as when the ship were about to take fatal damage there would be a chance that the crew mamanged to phase out the ship. And from there another chance that it managed to get home safely.

Adding policies (or assign tactics to specific ships or fleets) on whenever to phase out earlier, making them less likely to be destroyed but staying in the fighter shorter, was something I did not think of. If you then also weight in how "dangerous" the enemy fleet seems to be Balkri is probably right that there could be unforseen consequences one would have to think of.

As with most things it seems one can expand on it almost indeffinetly...