SIMPLE solution for doomstacks (I hope)

[General Apocalypse]

Simple solution ? Fleet tactics and fleet formations , without those options doom stacks are the only choice. How big is the stack only depends on how fast you can bring them all together. Faster speeds = more stacks , Warp Drive = 1 Mega Stack.

 

[Summin Cool]

Imo It needs a change of tack with ships in general.

What I think should happen is that FTL speed and non-combat sublight speed should be reduced severely, 50-75% ish as well as a further debuff to fleets above 1/3rd of your total fleet capacity. Then you add warscore to mining stations and generate ticking warscore by being present in enemy space.

What this does is reduce the power projection of a single fleet, IE the area at which a single fleet can reasonably cover without delays to engaging an opposing fleet. The mining stations and ticking warscore allows for raiding, and the reduced speed also reduces the amount of micro that is needed.

This should be more helpful when you have civilian traffic that generate supplies and so on.

Therefore what should happen in a war is that there should be 2-3 fleets, one should be protecting assets from raiding fleets, the others either attacking or defending. The consequences of having a single doomstack is that it may catch a fleet, but it won't stop the other 2 from raiding/destroying stations resulting in the ability to outmaneuver your opponent.

That being said, reduce the time needed in order to create a ship and buff defenses + reduce warscore from destroying a full stack. I often find wars are not wars but battles with big payoffs. While I understand in certain scenarios doomstacks will still be favoured such as attacking a key station or choke point multiple options should always be presented to the player in warfare to make the player seem he is deciding what to do and not just being railroaded by the game.

The issue with this is the amount of micro as stated in other threads. This should be reduced by the reduction in FTL and sublight speed, and the micro of building ships should be reduced by placing a invoice system where you can choose sectors or multiple stations to build ships from a single menu. The ships then travel to a rally point introduced in 1.3.
Not to mention that the create new fleet menu needs a rework as well as adding a transfer to fleet option could be added.

Lastly another addition should be added: Stealth, The ability to scout out the opposition and other stealthy things should be a very nice raiding tool at the expense of durability. Although Ticking warscore should not be generated by fleets with stealth. So having a dedicated raiding fleet could be an option to throw a curve ball at the opposition.

 

[Spaceball_one]

First post on the forum, so hello to everyone.

Just an idea:

I'd tackle the doomstacks by introducing a simple supply line mechanic. I.e., let's say there would be station modules dedicated to supply fleet operations, like instead of a hangar you install a supply depot which has a capacity of supplying N fleet units and has a range of R light years around. Operations inside the radius are cheap for the N covered units, outside of it are expensive. A bit like the Crew Quarters maintenance bonus or in fact just an extension of it. The bigger the fleet, the more you have to build.

This would cause the following effects:

-Forward bases would be a thing now on the gameplay. Gaining a foothold and building and defending supply hubs would be a must if your intentions of territorial conquest are serious.
-Supply depots would be a priority target. Leaving undefended forward bases could very well mean the end of the invasion by making it too expensive, if they're lost.
-Would disencourage lengthy unsupplied operations with huge fleets on enemy territory.

And I'll add some side tweaks:

-The highest tech tier of the supply system would grant the ability to mount the supply modules on battleships or maybe transports.
-Occupying planets should still give some resource yield to the occupier.
-Occuppying may grant a proportional part of the resource stack of the sector.

With this -and some stats rebalancing- I would expect that invasion armies would be actually playing a role other than denying the enemy the income of planets. Increases the strategical value of wealthy systems as well, as they can support your war effort on the offensive.

In short, supply bases and planet occupations are meant to encourage the attacker to divert forces to protect them to some extent. Still room for blitzkrieg but with a soft limit to it.

 

[Philthy]

First post on the forum, so hello to everyone.

Just an idea:

I'd tackle the doomstacks by introducing a simple supply line mechanic. I.e., let's say there would be station modules dedicated to supply fleet operations, like instead of a hangar you install a supply depot which has a capacity of supplying N fleet units and has a range of R light years around. Operations inside the radius are cheap for the N covered units, outside of it are expensive. A bit like the Crew Quarters maintenance bonus or in fact just an extension of it. The bigger the fleet, the more you have to build.

This would cause the following effects:

-Forward bases would be a thing now on the gameplay. Gaining a foothold and building and defending supply hubs would be a must if your intentions of territorial conquest are serious.
-Supply depots would be a priority target. Leaving undefended forward bases could very well mean the end of the invasion by making it too expensive, if they're lost.
-Would disencourage lengthy unsupplied operations with huge fleets on enemy territory.

And I'll add some side tweaks:

-The highest tech tier of the supply system would grant the ability to mount the supply modules on battleships or maybe transports.
-Occupying planets should still give some resource yield to the occupier.
-Occuppying may grant a proportional part of the resource stack of the sector.

With this -and some stats rebalancing- I would expect that invasion armies would be actually playing a role other than denying the enemy the income of planets. Increases the strategical value of wealthy systems as well, as they can support your war effort on the offensive.

In short, supply bases and planet occupations are meant to encourage the attacker to divert forces to protect them to some extent. Still room for blitzkrieg but with a soft limit to it.

It would still be possible to snowball a constant war if you did it right. For example, you could loot the supplies of a planet then move on to the next one, so your fleet only rarely had to rebase. I do like this in general though, and welcome to the forums!

 

[LordVladek]

It would still be possible to snowball a constant war if you did it right. For example, you could loot the supplies of a planet then move on to the next one, so your fleet only rarely had to rebase. I do like this in general though, and welcome to the forums!

But you'd still need to stop, bomb the planets and take them over. This means that a defender has time to react. The biggest question with this is: How would the AI handle it? Are they going to try and occupy every planet or do they do so only with some planets, that are at completely different places. Of course, there's the possibility that the AI may be competent at it, but I wouldn't bet on it.

 

[jju_57]

Simple solution ? Fleet tactics and fleet formations , without those options doom stacks are the only choice. How big is the stack only depends on how fast you can bring them all together. Faster speeds = more stacks , Warp Drive = 1 Mega Stack.

Actually it's the opposite. If you have a large empire you need more stacks to protect the opposite borders. With FTL or large wormhole jumps I can get my one stack easily from one end to the other. Warp will take months.

 

[Vjeldan]

I think the "doomstack-problem" and "one single big war leads to victory" is not an easy one and it will take several mechanics to interact to get rid of it. But i believe there are many things that are possible to start countering.

* This game with Orion in its Name offers lots of options to upgrade your planetary defense, so they scale with time and advancement, which means you cannot simply walk to the homeworld of someone. This would even encourage doom-stacks, but it will drive off enemys from just destroying everything in one swoop. And this is important for other mechanics to counter doomstacks. A place to retreat to.

* Somewhere I postet an Idea of giving admirals an attribute how many ships they are able to command in a battle efficiently. If there are more ships partaking, then there is a growing malus. There could also be an attribute how well this admiral is able to coordinate with other admirals to decrase this malus with other fleets that are led by an admiral. To have no special admiral in a fleet should weaken the fleet considerably. This will reduce the fleets you want to use, since you will need admirals. This also means the number of admirals, governours etc. should be increased a little. But the main point is, that depending on your available admirals your type of fleets will change. You've got a lot of admirals with great fighting capabilitys but that cannot handle big fleets? So give him the single very fast spaceforce that you employ to weaken the weakly defended outer worlds of your enemy. You've got two admirals with excellent communication and fleet-command? Well you've got your doomstack, but it had a cost, and maybe some admirals have special abilitys to counter doomstacks. Like better emergency modules to escape, or.... AoE-Lasers? That shoot a ray around and hit multiple targets.

* AoE-Effects: Any kind of AoE-Effect is good to discourage amassed little ships. It does not help against doomstacks of only big ships though.

* Escape Options: Yes! They could help, IF there is a stationary well defended homeworld or similiar where to retreat to.

* Slower Space-Travel: If it takes a considerable amount of time just to get somewhere, then you probably don't want to send all your fleet away from your then unprotected lands. Also there maybe should be technologies and modules to make ships a lot faster but with cost's to battle-strength. So you may decide if you need fast but weak ships that come in time to react, or have more stationary ships but with better fighting capabilitys.

* Diplomacy and Strategy in regards to AI: An AI that will attack someone that sended all his fleets away is annoying, but it helps to at least split your fleet into offensive and defensive. Combined with a far slower space travel you might split it even further into... say slow but (hopefully) all destroying Main Attack, fast attack ships to bring pressure to outer worlds and mining stations, defensive big fleet,... and fast emergency defense fleet that may hold off the enemy long enough till the big defensive fleet is incoming. If the AI is doing this also, this will encourage players to do the same... as long as it is efficient to do so.

* Ressources and Trade: Why should this help with doomstacks? The same way as planetary defenses, but the opposite way. It restructures how an empire is build. There are easy targets and there are difficult targets. You are able to take on the enemy fleet, but not in their home system. You could try to engage the slow main fleet so your fast marauding party can attack some vital ressource. To have this work there must be more ressources then just minerals and additional pylons. Yes there are more ressources, but they are not decisive. If alien-pets would be THE source of happyness for your xenophiles then taking them away would be a decisive loss, even if its not the home world. Also... if the AI would declare his opinion on certain acts, like the xenophile-spiritualist empire that demands you to give back the holy alien-pets or else you would risk the anger of some terrible space-gods... this would give a feeling of effectiveness even if its not THE decisive loss. Just an AI-statement here and there could change a lot!


But I fear there is no single solution. A greater web of mechanics is needed to support the single mechanics. Untill then it could remain by smashing big piles of minerals into each other, and the one who had the bigger pile, maybe with better technology, wins.

 

[Vjeldan]

Also helpful might be

* Ground combat... : I know Wiz said he doesn't want ground combat to be a big thing. But if there is a war for ground control on a planet that takes several years, then there might be space-ship wars above the planet for support-lines. The groundbattle doesnt need to be too detailed, but if it takes long enough and there is some importance, then there is a reason to split your fleet to attack more planets at once, since it takes so long. This works best in combination with very long travel-times, so it is of strategic value where your fleets are.

* Fuel: There could be some mechanic that space-travel gets slower the farer away you are from your planets and stations, since your supply is not given anymore. This would make it a lot more risky to just run your whole fleet into enemy terrain where its far slower. And maybe even in attack you want to split your fleet on various targets, since you hope the enemy can't defend them all. And since there are escape options now you can get away with it without risking your own empire.

 

[LordVladek]

I think something like fuel would be best for more drawn out wars, as it would force fleets to return to a base, but it would not fight doomstacks.
Instead of fuel we could also use ammunitions/heat sinks that get used up in battle, and/or food, which gets consumed even when your fleet stands still. This would need rotating rapid response fleets a pain in the ass, though.