Stellaris Dev Diary #96: Doomstacks and Ship Design

[SelorKiith]

Well, I think off the start it'll be low just to scale with total fleet capacity. However, look at the US navy right now. Every week they're pretending to be in galleys ramming other ships.

If you want a reason for there being a small fleet cap at the start, resources should suffice. Building a spacecraft that could traverse the stars would be expensive and take a lot of materials. It's not like building a squadron of fighters.

You know that we already have something for this? Namely the Naval Capacity which represents the economical part of fielding a fleet?
And your "explanation" has absolutely nothing to do as to why we can only put 30 Slots worth of ships into a Fleet...

What you think about is wrong as it's a fixed cap only increased via the Tech Lottery ie. you can very well end up never once seeing the option of upgrading your fleet cap or have it appear at the most inopportune moments.

 

[Elanith]

I like where this is going overall but do have some reservations especially that "Force Disparity Combat Bonus", but im willing to see how it goes.

Armor/Shields/Hull - not a horrible change, but i would have preferred a more hybrid approach. Where they both have HP and % reduction in damage. When the HP for that type is gone, it leaves either the next def type vulnerable or damage goes direct to hull.

As an example a kinetic shot would first hit the shields, doing some damage to the shields but still mitigating some of the damage, the remainder of the damage would pass through to armor, which mitigates most of what is left over, leaving only a small amount of hull damage.

All would still take some damage Armor, Shields and Hull, but Hull would take the least while Armor and Shields would take the brunt of it till they failed. Once they failed (or bypassed) Hull would become vulnerable.

This would allow a Corvet to get high mitigation on armor or shields, but those defenses could only take 1-2 hits of a Cruiser or Battleship before failing. It would still make armor and shields more valuable even on smaller craft, unlike now where its all but ignored.

 

[PirateJack]

So doomstacks were the problem. If I got it correctly, this means that now:

1. No more doomstacks because fleets are going to have a cap on how many ships they can have.
2. Ships can save themselves when utterly defeated.
3. The weaker side on a battle gets a bonus.

I do not fully understand the logic behind the bonus for the weaker side, but all this seems like a very good way to address the matter of doomstacks, pretty much banning people from putting too many ships in a single fleet. I just hope that Admirals get a lot more potential traits to earn, making them more diverse. Maybe even give the player a way to influence who gets which traits...? That would make for some nice decisions to take.


Also, I think this will be a DLC worth paying for. Good job, devs.

It's essentially so that a larger attacking force will take casualties/damage despite winning. As Wiz mentioned in the Dev Diary, Lancaster's Square Law dictates that a larger force will not only kill the enemy faster, it'll also take significantly fewer casualties as they eliminate the enemy's ability to harm them. The smaller force buff is designed to alleviate that by ensuring that a larger force will take more damage while still winning the battle. It means that the Fabian strategy can work, amongst other things.

EDIT: Tying this in with the armour changes, it also means that you can send out a small fleet to destroy the armour of the enemy, which will then limp home having done enough damage. You can then send in the torpedo fleet/s to do major damage to the enemy hull.

 

[methegrate]

Hope you're exams go well.

I disagree that this just adds more clicks to doomstacking. I think the scenario in most people's heads are two navies clashing over two opposing starforts. Since the likelihood of bordering another person with just a single chokepoint is laughable, let's assume that our empires have multiple contact points, entrances and star forts. Sure you can shove all your ships into one area, but you'd just make it easy for another player to beat you unless you had a significant advantage in size.

For example, if we both had 25k FP and we each had 3 star forts relatively along our border (A-C) and (D-F), you could take all of your navy to attack my fort D. Say I saw you massing for the war-dec and moved 15k FP up to fort D. Let's say all our forts are 10k FP. You come in expecting to stomp my navy and my defenses, cause 1.8 is fresh on your mind where defense stations are little more than beefy roadblocks. However, I don't keep my fleet anywhere near the front of the starfort. In fact, I place them behind the fort on the outskirts of the system. You engage the fort, while I meander around the outside waiting for your cruisers and corvettes to over commit to the fort. I then come in at an angle to your larger fleet and being pounding your back line. Your vettes and bruisers now have to peel off of the fort which continues blazing away at your ships while they attempt to shield your back line.

This whole time, my cruisers and corvettes get a bit of free time chunking your battleships and destroyers down before the combat system forces them to intercept your cruisers. I'm not sure if the smaller fleet bonus is added since my fort equalizes the total fleet power between us, but if it does, this battle goes even worse for you. I don't need to win. I just need to hurt you badly and stall. Since my ships won't be insta-wiped now and I can pull back with limping ships, I can confidently engage in this battle knowing that I have my other 10k FP attacking your fort C which is 15 systems away across from fort F. In that even fight, let's say I pull ahead and begin winning. It hurts me, but you can see that I will capture your fort C.

Now you have to make a choice, do you pull away from our battle over D, or do you press on with a severely softened battleship group and bet all the marbles? We've both taken similar losses over D, but the power I lost to my fleet was mainly front line, while I took out a few of your battleships costing you more in resources to replace. You decide this isn't going to plan and back out. Now I have your fort and you've gotten nothing for your doom stack. Keep in mind that this ignores the bonus from the defensive ascension which would have given my ships more fire power and increases my build speed for replacement ships. This also ignores any auras coming off of the fort that would have weakened your ships. With those factored in, your mindless doomstack rush looks like a bad idea. We could push the scenario further with me bringing my full power to crush your defenses over A while you try to reclaim C, then putting my 15k FP over E while waiting for you to doomstack your way over to retake A while my other 10k FP takes C away again, and then attacking B while you're committed to taking A, but by now you should see that these changes seriously wreck all plausibility of doomstacking. This is without even mentioning about how you now have to have at least 2 or 3 admirals of varying strength in control of your doomstack.

Taken in conjunction with all that's been revealed so far, warfare in this game is getting a vast systematic improvement. I offer anyone the chance to play me in a match after the patch hits. I have found ways to use tactics/strategy in the doomstack era other than "let the ai doomstack pound a planet while I snipe it's armies". All I see in these DD's are opportunities to have more strategic wars.

I will admit though that fighting other players who outstrip you in FP is virtually impossible to beat currently atm and in 2.0, will by no means be a cake walk, but in 2.0, I can picture scenarios where a decent strategy will prevent total annihilation, if fleet power isn't vastly different, forcing status quo or even white peace (PLEASE GIVE US WHITE PEACE WIZ). But if it's like 140k FP vs. 60k FP...then you toast in a 1v1 bruh, no matter what you do, 2.0 or not. Rage quit, ask to be a vassal, delete the file... I don't know.

Respectfully, I'm not sure I understand how any of this would work.

If the defensive position really is that strong, doesn't that mean I need to attack with more forces, not less? If your starbase is 40% of my fleet strength alone, I need to throw everything I've got at it just in case you reinforce it with some ships. If I split my fleet, then all I'm doing is inviting you to send those reinforcements so you can trash that smaller fleet. Whoever sends in the most ships will win the battle. Realistically, all we've done is confirm that I can't attack at all unless my fleet is 40% bigger than yours, because otherwise you can doomstack and guarantee a win.

So, I have to doomstack. Now, you decide whether to split your fleet.

But why would you do that? If you doomstack in return, you get to fight my 25k with your 35k in system and beat my entire fleet. Let's say under the new system I do some damage and you don't delete my fleet. I limp away at 20% power and you're reduced to 80% strength. Why wouldn't you want that?

The only reason would be if an alternative target would weaken me to an equivalent or greater degree. What would that be? What do I have that would be worse than losing a major battle with all my ships involved? (Or I could commit less than all my ships, but again, that would invite almost certain defeat.)

And even if we ignore that, what's your advantage to splitting the fleet? Nothing about the new mechanics suggest that you can "pin down" my fleet more easily than you can right now, nor that Fort C will be particularly worth taking or losing. Fleets will have some differences in how they're built, but not how they're deployed. You order them to go and fight, not "come in at an angle and [pound the] back line."

Everything you describe feels like it could happen just the same right now, but players don't do that because taking Forts C or D doesn't matter. I want to destroy your fleet, after which I can take your forts at ease. Yes, instead of destroying your fleet I'll now cripple it, but isn't that six of one/half dozen of the other?

 

[EntropyAvatar]

The most efficient use of all my ships is to put them all together to fight against the enemy, there is nothing else that is more important to either protect or engage against that would make up for the cost of not having all of my fleet in one place to fight the enemy. Without changing this, my behavior will never change, combat wont be as decisive now and its easier to come back, but its still always going to be 1 fleet vs 1 fleet as thats just the best way to fight against the enemy

It seems like the starbases will tend to concentrate various aspects of an empire's war-making capacity in a few systems. You might have a star base that represents 30-40% of your shipbuilding capacity, or 30-40% of your command limit. Note that for a given development level, a starbase's defensive capacity trades off against it's construction, supply and economic capacity, so the best-defended star bases aren't necessarily the most important.

So I think if you can capture one of the aforementioned "keystone" starbases from an empire, that will be worth losing a battle against your opponent's doomstack, especially if the lost battle does not represent a complete wipe, and you inflicted loses on your opponent as well.

So to sum up, starbases will be much, much more important to war fighting capacity than individual spaceports are now, so that provides something that is important to protect or capture. At the same time, the less decisive battles and the reduction of the outnumbering effect mean that you aren't paying as high a price for not keeping all of your fleet in one place.

 

[methegrate]

Hmmmm. Perhaps but unless economy and maintenance works differently then that practically encourages (players need discouragements as well) players to still doomstack and ignore the admiral buff. Though yes I see what you're saying in that it's not a magic bullet as multiple fleet following may still be a thing and the game should naturally encourage other methods.

Oh, I agree completely with that.

It's why I also agree with the other commenters who say that those economy, maintenance and strategic-level changes needed to be the focus of the doomstack update. Focusing on tactical advantage and outcomes is treating the symptom, not the disease.

 

[ahiromu]

The "Force Disparity Combat Bonus" seems like a cheap cop out. I get why you're using it, but please use it sparingly. If I outnumber you 5:1, why should I lose anything? I get that logic needs to take a backseat in games sometimes; maybe a small boost to fire rate/evasion (10-15%) is warranted; in the end, it seems like the wrong move to force 20 ships to destroy 10 ships out of a 100 ship fleet "just because". I just imagine you guys simulating a battle and adjusting it until it reaches whatever value you want, and it seems like there should be a better way.

(The 50% increase to fire rate scared me, if it's going to be significantly below that, cool)

 

[terrycloth]

This is a real thing that real navies at the start of the 20th Century had to face. Fast torpedo boats were the new big threat to lumbering battleships, and they were cheap to make and maintain.

The answer to that was the Torpedo Boat Destroyer, or better known as simply the Destoyer today. We have that hull type in Stellaris today. It would be interesting if it could actually be used in the game for what it was originally intended to counter in real life.

Of course, the real life meta now is to use nothing but destroyers for ship-to-ship combat.

 

[CommanderNova]

So doomstacks were the problem. If I got it correctly, this means that now:

1. No more doomstacks because fleets are going to have a cap on how many ships they can have.
2. Ships can save themselves when utterly defeated.
3. The weaker side on a battle gets a bonus.

I do not fully understand the logic behind the bonus for the weaker side, but all this seems like a very good way to address the matter of doomstacks, pretty much banning people from putting too many ships in a single fleet. I just hope that Admirals get a lot more potential traits to earn, making them more diverse. Maybe even give the player a way to influence who gets which traits...? That would make for some nice decisions to take.


Also, I think this will be a DLC worth paying for. Good job, devs.

I don't think there is going to be a DLC

 

[Roddo]

The only thing I don't like is the first point of them all.
The disproportionate casualties solution is not at all clear, and I bet it will not render any better solutions to the losing side.

Say I take my 1k corvette fleet, and split it into 10 different fleets, then send 'em against another 1k corvette blob fleet?
Numerically I have the same fleet power, but I should be getting a HUGE buff for nothing. This will lead to hilarious results I bet.


Why instead of buffing the weaker side, you debuff the stronger one?
Use the already existing (and quite forgotten) feature of the game, evasion.

Inflict a accuracy penalty to the aggressor, a substantial one, indicating that their numbers are getting in the way, thus giving the smaller fleet more time to inflict damage.
And you'll only have to check the amount of ships engaged on one side and the other... do the math, and apply whatever "evasion debuff" need be.
It can even be a debuff that will change as ships retreat/get destroyed.

 

[JediBear]

all missiles bypass shields entirely.

Not happy about this. There's no good reason for missiles to bypass shields from the perspective of verisimilitude.

 

[LordofSaxony]

I kinda viewed the FDCB as 'shooting into a crowd' type of thing. I just think it should just effect the chance to hit rather than shooting speed. But still, I don't think it will solve the problem. I just think there needs to be a reason to break a doomstack up. That keeping it together isn't the best tactic. Maybe it's extremely slow when a doomstack moves about, being that there's too much gravitational/warp/etc in the area due to the mass of ships. The more ships you pile on, the slower the doomstack. Sure it might take out anything in it's way, but by the time it gets to the other side of the sector to rescue an ally, it's too late, the ally's world is on fire and it's people are obliterated.

 

[Drakonn]

mostly neutral to the ship changes themselves, but with hyperlane, + retreat option, is there a option to force your fleet to fight to the death to bide time? (is that with auto retreat?) or is the missing in action timer going to be shortened?

The "No Retreat" War Doctrine does this I believe. Wiz mentioned it in a post.

Wouldnt it be better, and more realistic when critical damaged ships try to move out of comat rage of enemy ships, not get with some kind of magic Invulnerable? At least i would atack such ships with higher priority.

Key word is "try" in that sentence. If you're going to lose then those ships are dead. With the changes the loser has a chance to rebuild and repair and not have the war lost in a single battle. Think of it as an emergency micro jump the outer edge of the system (which isn't shown on screen because that'd be confusing clutter). Since the ships are so damaged they won't contribute anything to the fight anyways having them wait on the edge of the field to see what happens is better.

Oh, I agree completely with that.

It's why I also agree with the other commenters who say that those economy, maintenance and strategic-level changes needed to be the focus of the doomstack update. Focusing on tactical advantage and outcomes is treating the symptom, not the disease.

Very true. We still have a lot of dev diaries to go by all indications so maybe we'll get an economy one as well.

 

[kpipersburg]

Was just curious if stations counted for the FDC to kick in or not. For ambush situations, is it better NOT to use two fleets to trap another fleet as the trapped fleet might then get the FDC bonus? Reinforcing a starbase that's losing with a fleet that tips the combat bonus in your favor wouldn't result in a sudden FDC for the enemy fleet would it? Granted yes, both sides should take losses so maybe that's okay.




Really hoping so as it seems to be getting in that direction now.

I wondered about FDC in relation to forts too. We'll have to wait and see. I just hate how it is now with the enemy fleet devouring your fleet as if it's nothing then turning back to the defense station like an afterthought.

I think you're right about ambushing a smaller fleet. Bringing in both fleets to hammer and anvil them might bring out the bonus, but you'd also be hammering their battleships directly with one half of the ambush. Wiz also implied that the bonus merely makes the fleet perform better (20% fire rate) but doesn't turn them into Spartans. So @Drakonn feel free to ambush away.

On that note, I hope the devs get rid of the all seeing eye of the ai. I'd like to be able to pull off ambushes in nebulae and bring in surprise fleets from unclaimed space.

 

[Ur-Quan Lord 13]

Wouldnt it be better, and more realistic when critical damaged ships try to move out of comat rage of enemy ships, not get with some kind of magic Invulnerable? At least i would atack such ships with higher priority. Why let almost dead prey run away? So they can fight you again another time? I would not follow them as long there are other fighting enemy ships in range, but as long they are in range, why stop shoting at them? That is almsot so stupid like all villains tell their evil plans wich can not be stoped.... and than get stopped... Or at least make it like this, that pacifist empires or that ones wiht something like "Ethical considerations" dont shot at this ones. But fanatic puryfires and other ones wiht something like a brain in their head dont care about that.


Are this two not basicly the same?

I like this changes ok this two i Quoted maybe not that much but most of it sounds good

Well, the ship only has a chance to disengage. Do you think that's because some captains will say "I retreat at 25%" and others say "nope, gonna die"? That's probably at least partially by policy (which is why war doctrine can affect it). More likely, all of them say "I'll retreat below 50% health, because it makes sense" and sometimes... they just can't. But, if they retreat with 2% health left, that doesn't mean they just now started to try to run. It means they started to try to get out of battle at 50%, and finally managed to evade enough shots and dim their reactors or whatever to stop being targeted.

And swarm means circle the enemy, picket means stop at close range and shoot.

The "Force Disparity Combat Bonus" seems like a cheap cop out. I get why you're using it, but please use it sparingly. If I outnumber you 5:1, why should I lose anything? I get that logic needs to take a backseat in games sometimes; maybe a small boost to fire rate/evasion (10-15%) is warranted; in the end, it seems like the wrong move to force 20 ships to destroy 10 ships out of a 100 ship fleet "just because". I just imagine you guys simulating a battle and adjusting it until it reaches whatever value you want, and it seems like there should be a better way.

(The 50% increase to fire rate scared me, if it's going to be significantly below that, cool)

It looks from the screenshot like the max fire rate increase is actually higher, but final numbers aren't final. As for explanation why, I'm sure it's the thing I'll get to repeat over and over: If your weapon's fire rate is actually its max fire rate, how does an admiral increase that by 30%? Because that's not the weapon's max fire rate. Better positioning and coordination and communication = more opportunities to fire. How does being outnumbered increase fire rate? More opportunities to fire. Think that doesn't make sense in space? Then remove admirals, they don't make sense.

Edit: and if the bonus isn't big enough to at least allow a fleet at 50% size to do some meaningful damage, it just won't accomplish the goal of giving a weaker opponent some actual methods to do damage and end the war before losing everything.

 

[terrycloth]

Wouldnt it be better, and more realistic when critical damaged ships try to move out of comat rage of enemy ships, not get with some kind of magic Invulnerable? At least i would atack such ships with higher priority. Why let almost dead prey run away? So they can fight you again another time? I would not follow them as long there are other fighting enemy ships in range, but as long they are in range, why stop shoting at them? That is almsot so stupid like all villains tell their evil plans wich can not be stoped.... and than get stopped... Or at least make it like this, that pacifist empires or that ones wiht something like "Ethical considerations" dont shot at this ones. But fanatic puryfires and other ones wiht something like a brain in their head dont care about that.

Maybe they engage the emergency heat sinks and go dark, making them really hard to target? They could certainly turn off all their active comms and emissions. They don't have to be completely invisible, just a really inefficient target while active enemies are still around.

 

[Drakonn]

Use the already existing (and quite forgotten) feature of the game, evasion.

Which has been stated several times in the thread buffs corvettes far too much (which is an issue corvettes and evasion have had before) and also affects battleships far too negatively.

Say I take my 1k corvette fleet, and split it into 10 different fleets, then send 'em against another 1k corvette blob fleet?
Numerically I have the same fleet power, but I should be getting a HUGE buff for nothing. This will lead to hilarious results I bet.

I'm just going to leave Wiz's post below. You engaging with multiple fleets won't give you a buff when you shouldn't have it.

No, you are not. Total combat sides is what the bonus is calculated on.

 

[Drakonn]

I wondered about FDC in relation to forts too. We'll have to wait and see. I just hate how it is now with the enemy fleet devouring your fleet as if it's nothing then turning back to the defense station like an afterthought.

I think you're right about ambushing a smaller fleet. Bringing in both fleets to hammer and anvil them might bring out the bonus, but you'd also be hammering their battleships directly with one half of the ambush. Wiz also implied that the bonus merely makes the fleet perform better (20% fire rate) but doesn't turn them into Spartans. So @Drakonn feel free to ambush away.

On that note, I hope the devs get rid of the all seeing eye of the ai. I'd like to be able to pull off ambushes in nebulae and bring in surprise fleets from unclaimed space.

Believe Wiz has stated that stations can more than equal a fleet in terms of power now if built right. Looking forward to that change.

Based on the communications/sensors/galactic terrain diaries you might very well be able to.(ambushes that is)

 

[Shimmler]

Love all the changes!

But there's one thing in this Dev Diary that puzzles me. I totally understand why you want to deal with Doom Stacks, but I just can't see the difference between bringning my full fleet cap into the system using one fleet (currently) or ten fleets (Cherryh). I mean, that would still be 100% of my overall fleet cap moving together.

I do like the new "Force Disparity Combat Bonus", I just don't see how forced fleet splitting helps with the doom stack problem if I'd still be able to move my whole fleet around the galaxy basically the same way I'm doing it now.

 

[Riftwalker]

Which is the question I made in my first comment in this thread: How has the doomstack problem been solved?

The proposed solution will result in exactly what we have right now, but with the extra hassle (clicks) to assemble extra fleets

i see this showing up a lot, and this was mostly to deal with needing only 1 admiral for your nation, a side effect of doomstack, not to outright get rid of them. now you don't outright lose admiral bonuses by splitting your fleet, and so might feel less reluctant to split on a moments notice.