SIMPLE solution for doomstacks (I hope)

[CaptainCrisp]

This probably has been brought up by other players, but I've not been able to find a recent post with a solution to the doomstack problem similar to mine, so I'm just going to give it to you guys here.
So, my idea is simple: Ships could get an "emergency module" or an addition to their drive that gives them the ability to retreat after a battle. When their hp are down to zero, they are of course not able to take part anymore, but after the battle they may have survived (with maybe 5 or 10% hp), retreated to a friendly station and could be repaired by it.
In a way this is similar to EU4 where the penalty of a lost battle is your loss in soldiers/manpower with you than have to fill up.
I would consider that ships have a relatively high chance to retreat. Maybe your low-tech corvettes would start with 25% which would give you way more options in the beginning against those damn space-pirates, who look jealous at your prospering asteroid-mines
More pros I think of
-a new tech-tree for these new "emergency retreat modules". Maybe end-game modules give even 50% chance of surviving (or even more)
- Wars would last much longer because you always can destroy just a part of your enemys fleet, he would repair the surviving part and then can come back, thirsty for revenge.
-a new important role for Space stations and militarys stations -> repairing and protecting the remnants of your fleets
-new and useful talents for your admirals and governors
-attacking a superior fleet would not be hara-kiri anymore because you still would be able to do some damage which would require them to repair their ships, which gives you time to plan your next steps, build new ships etc.

I still don't think that this system would need much gameplay or Balance changes -> Number of fleets before and after a battle remains the same. You just can use your ships longer.
I would like to get your opinion on this, of course there are things I didn't think of. And sorry for my english, I am not a native speaker
Thank you for reading.

 

[Falendor]

Actually sounds like a decent idea.
Would make repair bonuses better, they may need to be nerfed if such a system is implemented.

 

[Urasboros]

I can agree to a system like this one, very much like the one of EUIV and other paradox games, make sense.
Maybe not the tech tree, but otherwise good idea.

 

[CaptainCrisp]

Thank you both!
@Urasbaros: Yes, I meant no tech tree, but new techs are always welcome imo Like special modules which are very expensive to build but make your favorite ship much more worthy.

 

[Karl244]

This is actually the combination of some ideas other people already had, but I totally agree with this combination.

 

[Rubido]

I would consider that ships have a relatively high chance to retreat. Maybe your low-tech corvettes would start with 25% which would give you way more options in the beginning against those damn space-pirates, who look jealous at your prospering asteroid-mines

Will pirates also have it?
Its a good idea, but not enough by itself. Some additional systems are needed. Like supply lines and new defense mechanics (stations and planetary).

 

[Pyramid_Head]

As long as it is not Shattered Retreat I can live with almost anything. Because Shattered Retreat is the worst thing to happen to Paradox games in terms of mechanics.

 

[Frozen Fallout]

This probably has been brought up by other players, but I've not been able to find a recent post with a solution to the doomstack problem similar to mine, so I'm just going to give it to you guys here.
So, my idea is simple: Ships could get an "emergency module" or an addition to their drive that gives them the ability to retreat after a battle. When their hp are down to zero, they are of course not able to take part anymore, but after the battle they may have survived (with maybe 5 or 10% hp), retreated to a friendly station and could be repaired by it.
In a way this is similar to EU4 where the penalty of a lost battle is your loss in soldiers/manpower with you than have to fill up.
I would consider that ships have a relatively high chance to retreat. Maybe your low-tech corvettes would start with 25% which would give you way more options in the beginning against those damn space-pirates, who look jealous at your prospering asteroid-mines
More pros I think of
-a new tech-tree for these new "emergency retreat modules". Maybe end-game modules give even 50% chance of surviving (or even more)
- Wars would last much longer because you always can destroy just a part of your enemys fleet, he would repair the surviving part and then can come back, thirsty for revenge.
-a new important role for Space stations and militarys stations -> repairing and protecting the remnants of your fleets
-new and useful talents for your admirals and governors
-attacking a superior fleet would not be hara-kiri anymore because you still would be able to do some damage which would require them to repair their ships, which gives you time to plan your next steps, build new ships etc.

I still don't think that this system would need much gameplay or Balance changes -> Number of fleets before and after a battle remains the same. You just can use your ships longer.
I would like to get your opinion on this, of course there are things I didn't think of. And sorry for my english, I am not a native speaker
Thank you for reading.

I was thinking along the same exact lines. I wonder if this can be modded in some how.

I would also suggest higher chances of surviving, much like EU IV, with a huge increase if you "died" with in the 2 months (say if you go MIA for a month after "death")

I also think along with this if there were a repeatable events that spawned small pirate attacks on your empire. The bigger the empire the more likely the chance of this kinda raider attack. These events would need to scale with your size and spawn multiple raiding fleets of different power through out your empire. They would be based on your tech and would need to happen often enough, so they make you want to keep your fleets spread out most of the time, but also not so often that they become a real problem (keeping fleets spread out should almost negate the event but if you aren't spread out it hits your infustructer hard)

In the end doomstacking will happen for important battles just like in EU IV, but I think this along with Terrain would help mitigate a need to always have 100% doom stacks. With Terrain/good defensive structures you can keep small forces spread through out your empire that can defend against larger forces. So even if the enemy doomstacks on you, you have a chance to win/stall for backup. Making ships retreat at death will also make it ok if you just out right lose the small force as most will likely survive the death. This also makes raiding parties worth having. Problem with raiding parties is they just weaken your doomstack and likely get crushed by a doomstack or a stack built to be big enough to crush your raid. So in the end raiding isn't worth it because you will lose more in the cost of the ship compaired to the damage you can do to any defended opponent. If that raiding party now fails it mostly comes back with this kinda change. And if your doomstack cant quite beat another doomstack you might be able to wittle it down so it can fight you in a second round with out getting kicked out in that second round since you have home field advantage.

Also after a war you are more likely to be able to build back up if you are on the lossing side. Currently if you lose one war, that 10 years of peace is not likely to save you if you just lost 100,000 minerals worth of ships and only make 100 minearals after said war. With a change like this you could actually rebuild.

I have seen the Terrain and manpower brought up but I don't think it isn't needed in Stellaris and only hurts tall empires even more on combat. Currently Tall empires have less resources and less navy limit. Giving them another cap on navy isn't a good idea IMHO.

I really love the EU way of not destroying you after a pivotal battle. Even though I lost most of my men (read hitpoints) my infantry unit (read ship) retreats and after the battle I cant be attacked or do anything with the retreating army (read fleet) until it gets to a home territory

 

[JohnnyDepressio]

A simmilar Idea to acomplish this would be to change the damage model for the ships. At the moment a ship is fully capeable until it reaches zero HP, when it is destroyed. If that would be changed to a way where aq ship starts loosing weapons alongside loosing HP. So for example a ship which lost half its HP would have no offensive weapons left and start to retreat. Depending on a simple setting you give your fleet (Agressive / Neutral / Defensive) the whole fleet would start retreating after a certain number of ships is disabled.

 

[ross-g]

How do you intend for any of the mechanics mentioned in this thread to prevent or discourage doomstacks... ?

 

[JohnnyDepressio]

It wouldn't discourage doomstacks, but make other tactics viable. As it is in the moment there are few decisive battles with one fleet beeing compleetly destroyed. If a fleet would have a better chance to survive an unfavorable ballte without beeing anihilated. You could for example try to beat a superior enemy by agressivley using smaller fleets to attack his economy. Which might lead him to cut up his doomstack in response.

 

[blallo]

How do you intend for any of these mechanics to prevent or discourage doomstacks... ?

i suppose that the first post is referring to the fact that the winner of the first battle has a huge advantage over the rest of the war, not to the problem that most of the time you see a single huge fleet instead of small ones. this are different problems, but they both arise from the absence of mechanics. currently ships require 2 components, time and minerals, both this values are high if your empire is large (you have bunch of time if you can produce in parallel), therefore it does not matter if you have ship running away from a battle, because you are still using minerals. op suggested solution would only make war slower, since you would use less minerals for each battle. this is not the case in eu4 because one can convert money in man power (mercenaries) but cannot convert man power in money.
Solving op problem require at least a new currency, it might be space sailors, planetary mobilization or something else that detach battles from minerals, but ships fleeing battle does not tackle the problem that who has more income wins the war.

regarding the second doomstack problem, the single fleet wars. again it derive from the absence of other mechanics, but not only, a big part of it is that the player has to zoom in and zoom out from the sector screen. managing 5 armies in eu4 it's easy since you can see all of them at the same time, unless they are fighting on both sides of europe. this is much harder in stellaris since you are only watching a single battle at the time. On top of that you should be aware of what part of the systems your fleet are in, since one extreme could be safe while the other could be dangerous. Forcing the player to use multiple ships could be too micro intensive for many players.

 

[CaptainCrisp]

@blallo:
That's what I have in mind. This mechanic would just weaken the doomstacks ability to rush through enemy's territory.
If you are in a defense war and your fleet gets killed you often don't have any options left. In the time in which your enemy takes a few of your System with his still big fleet but damaged ships you just can't build a new fleet strong enough to not get insta-killed. If you had now the possibility to attack him quick with 60% or so of your fleet he will think twice about letting his damaged ship take a fight again. Instead he should either repair them or have a second fleet in the first place which can take the second fight (-> more and smaller fleets)

Edit: Yes, in this context a military resource would probably be useful. But if it can be converted from minerals I don't see the problem for tall empires.

 

[Avil]

Ring worlds, repair modules on battleships and repair admirals will be extreme value in that case.

 

[Mackus]

So, essentially a shattered retreat?

 

[blallo]

So, essentially a shattered retreat?

well, not necessary. science fiction offers a great deal similar tricks that can be instead.

• battlestar galactica: fighting does not interrupt ftl preparation, if you are running you can get engaged for a short while and then you can jump without losses, when you reach the next system the opponent has to initiate the jump torward you and you are already preparing to flee again. (i can see this for the warp drive in particular, but it gets kind of countered by hyperlanes)
• stargate: you can close hyperlanes(both allies and enemies ones), maybe a mothership special module that triggers when using the emergency jump. when it's triggered no hyperlane drive can be used to reach the current location of the escaping fleet.
• 40k: go silent, instead of jumping away, the fleet turns off everything and the enemies can't detect him, so you can wait for allies. it would require a detection system too.

shattered retreat is the boring way of solving the problem, but there are other ways.

 

[Summin Cool]

It isn't really shattered retreat, more of an auto retreat at low hull hp. I don't see how it will stop me from doomstacking the source of repair, ie the stations however.

 

[CaptainCrisp]

So stations and military stations would become much more relevant for wars. I don't think that this is negative about this system.

 

[Crissa]

Right now the warscore system actively penalizes retreating without taking damage.

In other words, to even score a space battle, you have to doomstack.

 

[jju_57]

No offense but how does this actually solve doomstack problem? OK you're outnumbered and retreat after taking some damage from my stack. I then follow you to your planet and simply destroy your starbase. I destroy all of your starbases so where do you retreat to now?

Making a starbase or station more powerful simply means I have to have a larger stack. It also means I can't defeat it without doomstacking. So what have I actually missed as I don't see this as a solution to stop doomstacks.