Space Warfare regarding doomstacks

[Summin Cool]

It's well established that Doomstacks are an issue, and I do believe that we should be able to use more fleets as a single fleet doesn't feel right.

I feel that the core issues regarding Doomstacks is the effective power projection of a fleet, the intensity micro of commanding several fleets and the issue where it's often the case that the first inital battle is the deciding battle for a war.

I believe that the effective power projection can be reduced via two changes.
-Reducing the ability of planets to hold up a fleet while breaking down defenses
-Reducing Military FTL speeds by such a degree that a single stack usually isn't enough to defend an empire.

There are a few consequences, good and bad that arise from these changes:
-The amount of micro is reduced per fleet, thus allowing more fleets to be controlled reasonably by the player
-The lack of mobility for scouting that could be fixed via a dedicated scouting/interceptor ship section for corvettes that returns the full FTL speed.

For the final issue where it's often the deciding factor for the initial battle:
- Reduce the build cost and the build speed of ships to the point where it's possible to reasonably rebuild the entire fleet within the average war.

While losing ships is a bad thing and it should be, I believe that the speed at which you can replenish fleets is far too punishing for the losing player, they should be able to make a comeback if they can, but not be too excessive.

This change would reduce the deciding factor of the initial battle and thus reduce the intention of targeting the opposing fleet In addition the change ties into the reduction of the defences of planets as increasing both shouldn't skew the effects of losing too many planets too quickly and make the war a rush taking planets.

Lastly I was thinking about three additional, but not required (for the previous parts of the suggestion that is) warscore changes:
-Taken planets generate ticking warscore rather than a flat amount.
-Limiting the ability to take planets to being occupied planets only
-Allowing a condition where if you have 100 warscore in a war, and control 70% of an Empire you can fully annex said empire.

With it being less of a wait to take over a planet, a more strategic method of attacking ie you actually have to commit to an attack and still have the ability to take and hold small amounts of an empire rather than more risky all out attacks in order to overwhelm the opposition.

Therefore you have multiple choices as to your goals as well as methods of winning a war, that should help improve the experience a bit I hope.

Thank you for reading this rather long post.

 

[Drowe]

-Reducing the ability of planets to hold up a fleet while breaking down defenses

But lose control of the planet if you have neither a fleet in orbit/system or armies on the ground. And make planets more resistant to invasions.

Add actual benefits to occupying a planet besides warscore. A possibility would be to gain a fraction of the planet's income, depending on how good your control of the planet is, meaning how many armies are stationed there. Add empire wide happiness penalty for losing a planet to occupation that ticks down over time.

Add long-term consequences bombardment of the planet, for example a modifier that ticks up while the planet is being bombarded and ticks down very slowly after bombardment stops, reducing total resource output for several years and gives a small empire wide happiness penalty.

-Reducing Military FTL speeds by such a degree that a single stack usually isn't enough to defend an empire.

-The lack of mobility for scouting that could be fixed via a dedicated scouting/interceptor ship section for corvettes that returns the full FTL speed.

Alternative, scale it by total number of ships leaving one system with the same destination, single ships have no penalty, large fleets take significantly longer to coordinate simultaneous arrival.

What could be interesting, but is more complicated to implement is to add an option to ignore it, but ships will then not arrive at the same time, but some will arrive faster than others, distribution according to a bell curve.

- Reduce the build cost and the build speed of ships to the point where it's possible to reasonably rebuild the entire fleet within the average war.

That is something that becomes superfluous if fleet battles are no longer doomstack vs doomstack, since you can replace part of your fleet during war with no issues, just replacing your whole fleet from a loss is impossible.

-Taken planets generate ticking warscore rather than a flat amount.

Yes, absolutely.

-Limiting the ability to take planets to being occupied planets only

Instead make taking unoccupied planets require much more warscore than an occupied one. Make only core worlds require occupation to be demanded, not planets in sectors.

-Allowing a condition where if you have 100 warscore in a war, and control 70% of an Empire you can fully annex said empire.

I don't think that's a good idea.

All in all a solid proposal, but with room for improvement.

 

[Coyotezcrazy]

Interesting, but I'm not sure that the answer to Doomstacks can be entirely contained in warscore adjustments. However, as part of larger overhaul, it may have merit.

I'm curious what you'd think of my stack-limit-tied-to-Admiral suggestion borrowed from board games. Again, it's not a total solution.

 

[Drowe]

Interesting, but I'm not sure that the answer to Doomstacks can be entirely contained in warscore adjustments. However, as part of larger overhaul, it may have merit.

I'm curious what you'd think of my stack-limit-tied-to-Admiral suggestion borrowed from board games. Again, it's not a total solution.

Stack limit tied to admirals has been discussed in the doomstack thread, the problem with any mechanic like that is, that you could still make a doomstack by using multiple fleets and flying them together, unless you also add rather arbitrary limits to prevent that, it is not a solution.

 

[Coyotezcrazy]

You're right, it's not a solution. No single item is. I'm glad that so many ideas are being floated, 'cuz the game is worth it.

 

[HAL.9000.1]

Stack limit tied to admirals has been discussed in the doomstack thread, the problem with any mechanic like that is, that you could still make a doomstack by using multiple fleets and flying them together, unless you also add rather arbitrary limits to prevent that, it is not a solution.

Well, I'm not even in favor of fiddling with this aspect of the game, but it bears pointing out that there are a limited number of admiral slots available to each individual player, so tying fleet cap to admirals would definitely put some limitations on the size of fleet groups that could be deployed.

 

[Drowe]

Well, I'm not even in favor of fiddling with this aspect of the game, but it bears pointing out that there are a limited number of admiral slots available to each individual player, so tying fleet cap to admirals would definitely put some limitations on the size of fleet groups that could be deployed.

Not really, you can have fleets without an admiral, or you can constantly switch admirals from one fleet to the next. You can have 10 fleets and just one admiral flying together, sure the fleets without admiral are a bit weaker than they could be, but numbers always win the day.

And just imagine what would happen if fleets required an admiral to leave a system. Either you would be constantly reassigning your admirals or if you're prevented from doing that, you'll get situations where an admiral dies from old age and strands his fleet in the middle of nowhere. Since the idea was to tie the cap to admiral level, a newly hired admiral would be unable to command the fleet. Or, you might be out of influence and can't hire an admiral for another 2 years, which is especially damaging if that fleet was supposed to turn around a war you were losing. And everything you do to mitigate such situations, creates loopholes that can be used to bypass such restrictions.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

That is something that becomes superfluous if fleet battles are no longer doomstack vs doomstack, since you can replace part of your fleet during war with no issues, just replacing your whole fleet from a loss is impossible.

Depends. If we increase fleet upkeep in addition to increasing build speed, it would result in noticable income spikes during fleet loss. If balanced properly, income spike would be roughly enough to rebuild fleet back to its original state (and do that in timely manner). Thus, it could allow you to keep rebuilding smaller fleets faster than they are hunted down by enemy doomstack, making 'guerrilla warfare' somewhat viable: you can destroy enemy's economic base at no real cost to yourself (apart from warscore). No economy means enemy can't pay for his doomstack, so he'll be forced to split it in order to efficiently hunt your raiders. Result: some viability for small fleets, less doomstacks.

 

[Drowe]

Depends. If we increase fleet upkeep in addition to increasing build speed, it would result in noticable income spikes during fleet loss. If balanced properly, income spike would be roughly enough to rebuild fleet back to its original state (and do that in timely manner). Thus, it could allow you to keep rebuilding smaller fleets faster than they are hunted down by enemy doomstack, making 'guerrilla warfare' somewhat viable: you can destroy enemy's economic base at no real cost to yourself (apart from warscore). No economy means enemy can't pay for his doomstack, so he'll be forced to split it in order to efficiently hunt your raiders. Result: some viability for small fleets, less doomstacks.

If doomstacks are unable to hunt down smaller fleets, and smaller fleets can cripple you without engaging your fleet directly, then doomstacks will become less common, if doomstacks are less common, so are decisive battles in which you could lose your whole fleet, if you don't have to replace as many ships, making it cheaper doesn't make a real difference, except for making fleet battles even less important.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

If doomstacks are unable to hunt down smaller fleets, and smaller fleets can cripple you without engaging your fleet directly, then doomstacks will become less common, if doomstacks are less common, so are decisive battles in which you could lose your whole fleet, if you don't have to replace as many ships, making it cheaper doesn't make a real difference, except for making fleet battles even less important.

The way I see it, doomstacks are effective because battles are too descisive in the first place, not because doomstacks can hunt smaller fleets. Thus, primary goal should be reducing descisivness of battles instead of finding a workaround. From economy viewpoint, that is the right course of action.

Besides, higher fleet upkeep serve other purposes apart from making battles have less impact:
- less ships overall (always a good thing)
- less influence of artificial fleet cap (that does more harm than good for small empires anyway)
- less achievable artificial resource caps (I believe, that if game does not want you to stockpile, it should be based mainly around upkeep costs, not upfront payments)

 

[HAL.9000.1]

Not really, you can have fleets without an admiral, or you can constantly switch admirals from one fleet to the next. You can have 10 fleets and just one admiral flying together, sure the fleets without admiral are a bit weaker than they could be, but numbers always win the day.

And just imagine what would happen if fleets required an admiral to leave a system. Either you would be constantly reassigning your admirals or if you're prevented from doing that, you'll get situations where an admiral dies from old age and strands his fleet in the middle of nowhere. Since the idea was to tie the cap to admiral level, a newly hired admiral would be unable to command the fleet. Or, you might be out of influence and can't hire an admiral for another 2 years, which is especially damaging if that fleet was supposed to turn around a war you were losing. And everything you do to mitigate such situations, creates loopholes that can be used to bypass such restrictions.

Good points, part of the reason why I'm not really in favor of messing with the rules to artificially neuter doomstacks. I was just noting that if you have a fleet cap that is enhanced by an admiral, the minor reduction in strength that can come from not having an admiral in charge would count for something. Again, I'm not really advocating for this, but say the max fleet strength without an admiral was 100K (just to use a number that's easy to extrapolate from). A 1-star admiral could up this by 10%, 2-star by 20%, 3-star by 30%, etc., in addition to the various other bonuses they confer. You could also add an extra skill that would add 10% to this number (upping the number of skills an admiral can have by 1 at the same time).

In and of itself this wouldn't affect doomstacks (or doomstack groups) much, although if you also stipulated that fleets in the same system could only have (1) 5-star admiral in command (the extra one would be sent back to HQ), as the game progressed it might cause some human players to diversify their deployments a bit. I already do this anyway, but that's just me. The AI already doesn't seem to care much about admirals (I will encounter five enemy fleets in a system, only one of which has a commander, on a regular basis).

As I have pointed out before, doomstacks make sense from a military standpoint, although if you are engaged in a war on 3 or 4 fronts (as I recently was) you can't just ignore 3 of the 4 sectors while you concentrate on only one. So multiple fleets are something of a necessity, although on each front localized doomstackery is still the prudent way to go. As it would be if this were real life.

The problem with neutering doomstacks, in my opinion, is that there is only so much a human being can manage at one time, and controlling three or four large fleets is about the limit for micromanaging. While the AI is fully capable of managing 20 smaller fleets and deploying them against small, local threats quite handily. Which is a credit to the AI programming, quite frankly. So the continued effectiveness of doomstacks, in addition to being historically plausible, is one way to equalize the balance between humans and the AI, because the strategy that humans can manage is actually the one that works best. And thank goodness for that.

 

[Drowe]

Good points, part of the reason why I'm not really in favor of messing with the rules to artificially neuter doomstacks. I was just noting that if you have a fleet cap that is enhanced by an admiral, the minor reduction in strength that can come from not having an admiral in charge would count for something. Again, I'm not really advocating for this, but say the max fleet strength without an admiral was 100K (just to use a number that's easy to extrapolate from). A 1-star admiral could up this by 10%, 2-star by 20%, 3-star by 30%, etc., in addition to the various other bonuses they confer. You could also add an extra skill that would add 10% to this number (upping the number of skills an admiral can have by 1 at the same time).

In and of itself this wouldn't affect doomstacks (or doomstack groups) much, although if you also stipulated that fleets in the same system could only have (1) 5-star admiral in command (the extra one would be sent back to HQ), as the game progressed it might cause some human players to diversify their deployments a bit. I already do this anyway, but that's just me. The AI already doesn't seem to care much about admirals (I will encounter five enemy fleets in a system, only one of which has a commander, on a regular basis).

As I have pointed out before, doomstacks make sense from a military standpoint, although if you are engaged in a war on 3 or 4 fronts (as I recently was) you can't just ignore 3 of the 4 sectors while you concentrate on only one. So multiple fleets are something of a necessity, although on each front localized doomstackery is still the prudent way to go. As it would be if this were real life.

The problem with neutering doomstacks, in my opinion, is that there is only so much a human being can manage at one time, and controlling three or four large fleets is about the limit for micromanaging. While the AI is fully capable of managing 20 smaller fleets and deploying them against small, local threats quite handily. Which is a credit to the AI programming, quite frankly. So the continued effectiveness of doomstacks, in addition to being historically plausible, is one way to equalize the balance between humans and the AI, because the strategy that humans can manage is actually the one that works best. And thank goodness for that.

I'm not really in favour of neutering doomstacks either, I don't think they need to be. Primarily it's that there are no other valuable targets beside fleets and the all or nothing nature of battles that I think are the two main culprits. The first is obvious, if someone can disrupt your supply and trade routes or do long lasting and significant damage to your economy, you need to split up your fleet to protect multiple targets. The second keeps fights from being all or nothing affairs.

 

[HAL.9000.1]

I'm not really in favour of neutering doomstacks either, I don't think they need to be. Primarily it's that there are no other valuable targets beside fleets and the all or nothing nature of battles that I think are the two main culprits. The first is obvious, if someone can disrupt your supply and trade routes or do long lasting and significant damage to your economy, you need to split up your fleet to protect multiple targets. The second keeps fights from being all or nothing affairs.

Regarding "all or nothing battles", what if fleets had a retreat point that, instead of being a fixed number of days (which is usually long enough to let an entire smaller fleet be destroyed), was expressed in terms of either percentage or absolute point losses? Thus your fleet(s) would automatically retreat from a battle that they were losing too badly. Admirals could raise this limit, or at least allow you the option to set it manually. One minor issue with this is that I have had battles where I started with the loss ratios against me, only to win the battle handily once my fleet closed the range, so I don't exactly know how this would affect current battle planning/balance. If the losses were expressed in absolute terms (not strength points but rather cap slots), that would be an advantage to using multiple fleets instead of just one doomstack. Again, just thoughts for consideration.

 

[Drowe]

Regarding "all or nothing battles", what if fleets had a retreat point that, instead of being a fixed number of days (which is usually long enough to let an entire smaller fleet be destroyed), was expressed in terms of either percentage or absolute point losses? Thus your fleet(s) would automatically retreat from a battle that they were losing too badly. Admirals could raise this limit, or at least allow you the option to set it manually. One minor issue with this is that I have had battles where I started with the loss ratios against me, only to win the battle handily once my fleet closed the range, so I don't exactly know how this would affect current battle planning/balance. If the losses were expressed in absolute terms (not strength points but rather cap slots), that would be an advantage to using multiple fleets instead of just one doomstack. Again, just thoughts for consideration.

A moral system that once it gets below a certain point, automatically retreats the fleet is not a bad idea, essentially it should depend on what kinds of ships you're losing, a corvette swarm would probably fight until at least half are destroyed, a fleet of battleships might retreat after losing just 10%-20%.

But more importantly, there needs to be a way to retreat in a controlled manner. You could order your ships to the edge of a system and immediately jump, to a nearby system. This is not something you can do if you just jumped into the system, but it doesn't have quite as long a cooldown as the current emergency FTL. It does have a chance to damage and destroy ships, since you're bypassing safety regulations, but you would still have a force that is capable of fighting. Also the fleet you just escaped from knows where you are and will try to hunt you down, so you better keep moving until the fleet gets reinforcements. If it was coupled with slower FTL speeds for large fleets, small fleets can escape relatively unscathed if they run into a doomstack, unless the doomstack splits off a smaller force to hunt them down (FTL wind-up could depend on the number of ships from one faction moving from A to B instead of fleet size, to prevent people from just using a lot of smaller fleets)

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

I say: simplify it to the level of CK2 (eliminates need for individual ship calculations), taking stages from here (good enough approximation):

Spoiler

Opposing dreadnoughts open with a main gun artillery duel at EXTREME ranges of tens of thousands of kilometers. The fleets close, maintaining evasive lateral motion while keeping their bow guns facing the enemy. Fighters are launched and attempt to close to disruptor torpedo range. Cautious admirals weaken the enemy with ranged fire and fighter strikes before committing to close action. Aggressive commanders advance so cruisers and frigates can engage.

At LONG range, the main guns of cruisers become useful. Friendly interceptors engage enemy fighters until the attackers enter the range of ship-based GARDIAN fire. Dreadnoughts fire from the rear, screened by smaller ships. Commanders must decide whether to commit to a general melee or retreat into FTL.

At MEDIUM range, ships can use broadside guns. Fleets intermingle, and it becomes difficult to retreat in order. Ships with damaged kinetic barriers are vulnerable to wolf pack frigate flotillas that speed through the battle space.

Only fighters and frigates enter CLOSE 'knife fight' ranges of 10 or fewer kilometers. Fighters loose their disruptor torpedoes, bringing down a ship's kinetic barriers and allowing it to be swarmed by frigates. GARDIAN lasers become viable weapons, swatting down fighters and boiling away warship armor.

Neither dreadnoughts nor cruisers can use their main guns at close range; laying the bow on a moving target becomes impossible. Superheated thruster exhaust becomes a hazard.

Might also add some 'proper' flanking, debris fields (inevitable to apear in brawls... also, inevitable to mostly damage the larger side, thus making close battles more even), retreats/morale and whatnot.

Also the fleet you just escaped from knows where you are and will try to hunt you down, so you better keep moving until the fleet gets reinforcements.

Meh. Was the case before 'lost in emergency FTL'. Simply made AI chase that fleet like mad, even worse than the way it chases single ship you 'sneak' into its territory. I'm not saying AI can't be improved, but my expectations are not that high.

 

[Drowe]

Meh. Was the case before 'lost in emergency FTL'. Simply made AI chase that fleet like mad, even worse than the way it chases single ship you 'sneak' into its territory. I'm not saying AI can't be improved, but my expectations are not that high.

You still have the option to do that, the other option is useful in specific circumstances, for example if reinforcements are on the way, but your fleet can't hold out until they arrive without losing too many ships. Or you could fall back to a system with defenses. You also forget the other part of the suggestion, slower FTL speeds for larger fleets, it doesn't even have to be much, just enough that a large fleet won't be able to catch a smaller fleet that is determined to get away (and a suggestion on how to prevent getting around that restriction by flying multiple smaller fleets is to calculate it by total number of ships going from A to B)

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Problem is not that AI could chase your fleet down and destroy it, problem is that some cosmic horros could destroy AI fleet too focused on chasing down yours. Alternatively, you can lure AI's fleet away to the other side of the galaxy where it'll be useless for a while. Too exploitable in AI's current state, hence 'lost in FTL' bandaid.

 

[HAL.9000.1]

A moral system that once it gets below a certain point, automatically retreats the fleet is not a bad idea, essentially it should depend on what kinds of ships you're losing, a corvette swarm would probably fight until at least half are destroyed, a fleet of battleships might retreat after losing just 10%-20%.

But more importantly, there needs to be a way to retreat in a controlled manner. You could order your ships to the edge of a system and immediately jump, to a nearby system. This is not something you can do if you just jumped into the system, but it doesn't have quite as long a cooldown as the current emergency FTL. It does have a chance to damage and destroy ships, since you're bypassing safety regulations, but you would still have a force that is capable of fighting. Also the fleet you just escaped from knows where you are and will try to hunt you down, so you better keep moving until the fleet gets reinforcements. If it was coupled with slower FTL speeds for large fleets, small fleets can escape relatively unscathed if they run into a doomstack, unless the doomstack splits off a smaller force to hunt them down (FTL wind-up could depend on the number of ships from one faction moving from A to B instead of fleet size, to prevent people from just using a lot of smaller fleets)

Agreed. Right now it seems to be the worst of both worlds; not only can you not order your fleet engaged in combat to maneuver (i.e. run away within the system), but it is also prevented from jumping for some fixed number of days, and in the meantime continues to advance to its doom. Being able to order the fleet to move away from the enemy and to have it jump when its morale hits the breaking point would mean that the all or nothing scenario would be easier to avoid. A fleet exclusively composed of smaller ships would actually have a speed advantage when trying to open the range, which would make fleet organization by class and type more plausible.

The idea you have suggested about relating fleet size and jump speed is also an interesting one, and is used in David Weber's Honorverse and Starfire series as well. In the Honorverse a warp point is destabilized longer proportional to the size and number of ships that are transiting together, so that if you jumped a large fleet the warp point might be "out of commission" for a day or more, where in the Starfire books all ships making transit at the same moment had a chance of materializing in the same space on arrival, which would lead to some spectacular explosions (leading to most fleets choosing to transit ships one at a time but in very rapid succession).

 

[Drowe]

Agreed. Right now it seems to be the worst of both worlds; not only can you not order your fleet engaged in combat to maneuver (i.e. run away within the system), but it is also prevented from jumping for some fixed number of days, and in the meantime continues to advance to its doom. Being able to order the fleet to move away from the enemy and to have it jump when its morale hits the breaking point would mean that the all or nothing scenario would be easier to avoid. A fleet exclusively composed of smaller ships would actually have a speed advantage when trying to open the range, which would make fleet organization by class and type more plausible.

The idea you have suggested about relating fleet size and jump speed is also an interesting one, and is used in David Weber's Honorverse and Starfire series as well. In the Honorverse a warp point is destabilized longer proportional to the size and number of ships that are transiting together, so that if you jumped a large fleet the warp point might be "out of commission" for a day or more, where in the Starfire books all ships making transit at the same moment had a chance of materializing in the same space on arrival, which would lead to some spectacular explosions (leading to most fleets choosing to transit ships one at a time but in very rapid succession).

I have read neither of those book series, but I could imagine that jumping a fleet together requires precise calibrations of the FTL drives to match each other exactly, which takes a while and longer the more ships you have. But even just being able to run away at sublight speeds would help a lot.

But I think that would require having customizable roles, or at least benefit from it. You may want to have a battleship with smaller guns and afterburners close range together with your cruisers, while your artillery tries to stay at maximum distance. Or have cruisers guard your artillery battleships, maybe as escort carriers. Have torpedo corvettes dash in, fire and then get out of dodge before doing another run. There is much that could be done to make fights more interesting.

You could have a small squadron of corvettes shadow an enemy battle fleet, simply because they don't have a snowball's chance in hell to catch up to them before they jump out. Small fleets of corvettes and destroyers might hunt hypothetical supply convoys and so on.

 

[Drowe]

Problem is not that AI could chase your fleet down and destroy it, problem is that some cosmic horros could destroy AI fleet too focused on chasing down yours. Alternatively, you can lure AI's fleet away to the other side of the galaxy where it'll be useless for a while. Too exploitable in AI's current state, hence 'lost in FTL' bandaid.

AI doesn't have to be that stupid you know, it can actually figure out that it can't catch you if it doesn't get you after the first jump, and simply go back to what it was doing before. If such a rushed jump has consequences, such as a temporarily disabled FTL drive, then it might make sense to chase after the fleet, otherwise not.