Space battles are broken and it ruins the game

[Zoolimar]

Make ships cheaper and the maths changes so that you can afford to split up your doomstack because the losses you take can be made up for by the benefits you gain.

If the ships are cheaper why not build more and make a bigger doomstack?

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

If the ships are cheaper why not build more and make a bigger doomstack?

Keep maintenance costs the same on a per hull basis and economically, you can't support a bigger doomstack.

 

[Jman5]

Keep maintenance costs the same on a per hull basis and economically, you can't support a bigger doomstack.

I really like your idea of lowering the build cost, however I don't think we should just leave maintenance cost as-is. It would need to be increased to off-set the savings. Perhaps 50% build cost reduction, but monthly alloy upkeep increased from 0.33% to 1 or 2%.

This way if your fleet tanks, your alloy/month will temporarily shoot up and it will be easier to rebuild your fleets to fight again.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

I really like your idea of lowering the build cost, however I don't think we should just leave maintenance cost as-is. It would need to be increased to off-set the expenses. Perhaps 50% build cost reduction, but monthly alloy upkeep increased from 0.33% to 1 or 2%.

This way if your fleet tanks, your alloy/month will temporarily shoot up and it will be easier to rebuild your fleets to fight again.

I agree with you absolutely, To clarify what I meant by 'on a per hull basis': a basic corvette currently costs 100 alloys and requires 0.33% maintenance in alloys, and after the changes I propose, a basic corvette would cost 50 alloys but require 0.66% maintenance in alloys. This way, maintenance cost would still be 0.33 alloys/month and be the same per hull.

 

[-Marauder-]

Hoi4 is much more complex, the sheer number of provinces with individual infrastructure and supply routes through ports leads to heavy calculations. Additionally HoI has to calculate thousands of Divisions and their individual supply, while Stellaris would just need to handle a small number of fleets.

I have a great idea, you guys could stop trying to turn Stellaris into Hoi4 in space? Every time you guys got your will so far, the game got worse for it.

 

[Jman5]

I agree with you absolutely, To clarify what I meant by 'on a per hull basis': a basic corvette currently costs 100 alloys and requires 0.33% maintenance in alloys, and after the changes I propose, a basic corvette would cost 50 alloys but require 0.66% maintenance in alloys. This way, maintenance cost would still be 0.33 alloys/month and be the same per hull.

If you do that it leaves you with excess alloy left over from the reduced build cost, which leads to increased fleet size. What I thought would be more meaningful is if the build cost is knocked down, but the increased upkeep eventually offsets that savings to keep the alloy economy from inflating. So instead of going from 100 build and 0.33 upkeep to 50 build + 0.33 upkeep, it goes to 50 build and 0.5 - 1.0 upkeep.

 

[-Marauder-]

I'm adamant the doomstack problem is a result of Stellaris's design decisions, particularly how expensive it is to produce and lose ships. Lost ships add to war exhaustion, so sending ships on missions in small groups is definitely suboptimal. Your most valuable asset are your fleets, so losing them is catastrophic. Make ships cheaper and the maths changes so that you can afford to split up your doomstack because the losses you take can be made up for by the benefits you gain.

Agreed. The fundamental problem is. Your fleet is your singular most important possession. Unless you fight someone with a Colossus or "Total War CB Potential" the fleet is the ONLY thing that matters. It's your most important, most expensive, and most decisive asset. The enemy can occupy half your empire, as long as you don't lose your fleet while they lose theirs you will be able to make a comeback.

Because ships also take forever to actually produce. So even if they could afford to replace their entire fleet, they can't do so in a timely manner. Once you smash their fleet none of their gains matter as you will be able to roll them back and then over. Likely while also gaining more warscore from destroying the fleet than they gained prior. And depending on their economy, they might still be rebuilding their fleet once the ten year grace period is over.

 

[Kinkness]

My biggest issue is that weapons are not very balanced. A fleet of destroyer and corvettes can easily kill a much larger fleet of battleships because the battleships cant hit the smaller ships. If the AI were to create mixed fleets then it wouldn't be much of an issue but it mostly creates destroyer fleets so your nice shiny battleship fleet will have a hard time. Its supposed to be rock scissor paper but it isn't.

edit: Citadels should be lethal to ships smaller than battleships and titans. That way the AI would be forced to build larger ships. A corvette or a destroyer with its small guns shouldn't be able to penetrate the armor of a fully fitted citadel.

The problem is because there is no real "Size" to weapons beyond S/M/L and the difference between those is nominal..

Literally you're looking at a 2 point difference in damage between Small and Medium.. and most of the battleship weapons are Mediums and Large.. meaning small corvettes literally are nearly as powerful in damage output as a Battleship....

It should rqeuire at least a minimum of 10 corvettes or more to equal 1 battleship in power...

Then you have teh fact you got these wierd middle ground ships that don't do much like Destroyers.. not as strong as cruisers, but not worth it like corvette spams...

It's just all a mess of incompetent balance, and short sighted zero inspiration development cycles..