Stellaris Dev Diary #96: Doomstacks and Ship Design

[Slynx]

So we can finaly have a proper cool escort for our science ships with a level 5 scientist, sounds good.

I mean will civilian ship will also jump at the same time than military fleets if ordered to follow, for example ordering a fleet of 10 corvettes to follow a science ship which is auto exploring?

what's the difference with the situation right now?
just create a fleet of 10 corvettes. (set it's stance to aggressive, so they'll attack enemy on sight)
set science ship on passive+autoexplore (so it wouldn't flee at the first sight of the enemy)
select corvette fleet and right click on a science ship.
...
you're beautiful. corvette fleet is now following your science ship

 

[Peko?]

If they just drastically lower the weaponry ranges then "Lanchester's Square law" (which is responsible for all the problems) becomes "Lanchester's Linear law" which is far more in line with the results they want and people intuitively expect. Just drastically lower the weapon ranges so that everybody cant shoot everybody all the time, problem solved and no "magic force disparity" fudge factor is required.

We used to have drastically smaller weapon ranges (~50% of what they are now), it didn't help.

 

[GloatingSwine]

We used to have drastically smaller weapon ranges (~50% of what they are now), it didn't help.

Actually, the weapon ranges were doubled mostly for aesthetic reasons. Combat used to be a giant indistinguishable blob of spaceships.

 

[Lucian667]

We used to have drastically smaller weapon ranges (~50% of what they are now), it didn't help.

Maybe 50% wasn't drastic enough? Check out the wikipedia article on Lanchester's law. It isn't a matter of opinion its a mathematical law, if the ranges are very short then Lanchester's Linear law applies to casualties. Lanchester's Square law (which causes all the problems) only applies when every ship has enough weapon range to shoot any other ship on the battlefield.

Lower the weapon ranges enough and the problem goes away without invoking any magical fudge factors.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Maybe 50% wasn't drastic enough? Check out the wikipedia article on Lanchester's law. It isn't a matter of opinion its a mathematical law, if the ranges are very short then Lanchester's Linear law applies to casualties. Lanchester's Square law (which causes all the problems) only applies when every ship has enough weapon range to shoot any other ship on the battlefield.

Lower the weapon ranges enough and the problem goes away without invoking any magical fudge factors.

Only if you enforce minimum spacing between ships. As it is, all that would happen is what happened before, ships would all blob together and still all be in range all the time because there's no minimum spacing.

 

[ISitOnGnomes]

Maybe 50% wasn't drastic enough? Check out the wikipedia article on Lanchester's law. It isn't a matter of opinion its a mathematical law, if the ranges are very short then Lanchester's Linear law applies to casualties. Lanchester's Square law (which causes all the problems) only applies when every ship has enough weapon range to shoot any other ship on the battlefield.

Lower the weapon ranges enough and the problem goes away without invoking any magical fudge factors.

You would have to lower the range to comically short distances. They would basically be melee spaceships. Also, the shorter you make everything's range, the more that range matters. If BBs with artillery have the range to hit a handful of other ships, while everything else is stuck in melee, they become the gods of war.

 

[Peko?]

Actually, the weapon ranges were doubled mostly for aesthetic reasons. Combat used to be a giant indistinguishable blob of spaceships.

I know, but doubling the weapons ranges didn't worsen the issue so there's no reason to believe that decreasing them would help.

Maybe 50% wasn't drastic enough? Check out the wikipedia article on Lanchester's law. It isn't a matter of opinion its a mathematical law, if the ranges are very short then Lanchester's Linear law applies to casualties. Lanchester's Square law (which causes all the problems) only applies when every ship has enough weapon range to shoot any other ship on the battlefield.

It's a mathematical model that's called a law, not a mathematical law. It's actually a rather simplistic model, which has the benefit of illustrating an effect well but the down-side of often not being very good at predicting real world outcomes.
Try modding in lower ranges and see what happens.

 

[Lucian667]

Only if you enforce minimum spacing between ships. As it is, all that would happen is what happened before, ships would all blob together and still all be in range all the time because there's no minimum spacing.

It would certainly beat metagamey nonsense like an inferior force firing twice as fast because...... reasons.

You would have to lower the range to comically short distances.

Call it whatever you want, as long at it actually works I'm all for it as long as it allows us to avoid "magical" solutions that make no sense.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Try modding in lower ranges and see what happens.

Ships will sit half as far apart and do the same as they do now.

 

[Danarcis]

I am so looking forward to playing this. My main worry is the first change, where an enemy which you should be able to utterly crush can give you a death by 1000 cuts. Which would be rather frustrating. Though I think that they'll be able to handle the balance.

 

[ISitOnGnomes]

I know, but doubling the weapons ranges didn't worsen the issue so there's no reason to believe that decreasing them would help.

Call it whatever you want, as long at it actually works I'm all for it as long as it allows us to avoid "magical" solutions that make no sense.

If you enabled collision, and reduced ship range to melee only, you would no longer need the force disparity modifier to help balance things out. This would be worse than the buff, in my opinion, but apparently not to Lucian667.

 

[Belasias]

A huge greeting, Stellaris Community.

First of all I would like to indicate that the proposed changes so far are steps in the right direction and that I am looking forward to enjoy them in the future patch. I greatly appreciate the work of the developers, as well as their ability not only to surprise us, the players, but also to listen to the community, in the same way that I value everyone who wants to share their bit to make this game, that we all enjoy, a better experience.

It difficult to share my opinion without being able to enjoy the final version that the developers have planned (it is certainly unfair to criticize something without having even given it an opportunity), but I will try to propose some humble solutions to what seems the biggest concerns so far.


Force Disparity Combat Bonus

As I have seen, this seems one of the main complaints so far.

I am quite sure that many would see it with better eyes if this bonus, instead of being applied in firing speed was applied in evasion. In this way, the greater mobility of a smaller fleet could be represented in front of a larger fleet, allowing the player in inferiority to create a strategy of attrition at the cost of losing their ships in combat. Offering this evasion bonus would also allow the ships to have the opportunity to evade combat using the new system.

I do not know if this solution will please everyone, but it is likely that this bonus applied to evasion seems more organic and natural and can solve this so-called "immersion-breaking" problem.


Command Limit (Hard Caps)

Many players have complained so far that they prefer a soft cap rather than a strict limitation, I think it is possible to solve this problem in a simple way.

The idea is to keep the Command Limit (how large any one individual fleet can be), but once the marked limit is exceeded, the ships within the fleet begin to lose effectiveness in combat and out combat, representing the complexity involved in organizing, managing and commanding a larger fleet, to the point of completely It is unviable to manage a fleet that far exceeds the Command Limit.

Example (The figures are merely indicative)

The 1st fleet of the United Nations of Earth has a Command Limit of 20 but at this time has a Fleet Size of 32. As the Fleet Size exceeds by 60% the current Command Limit of the fleet, the fleet suffers 60% of penalties to his speed, evasion and accuracy.


Admiral Skill

If the system mentioned above is taken into account, the Admiral's skill level would allow the Command Limit of the fleet he or she leads to increase. In case the Admiral died for any reason, the fleet would lose the temporary increase in its Command Limit and would be affected by the penalties mentioned above (forcing it to even make an emergency FTL jump). In this way the Admirals would be more important pieces in the composition of the fleet, since not only would they grant bonuses to the performance of the fleet itself, but also increase the number of ships that this can have.

Example (The figures are merely indicative)

The 1st fleet of the United Nations of Earth is led by an Admiral with a skill range of 3. Which allows not only a 9% of fire rate, but also a 30% to the Command Limit of the fleet, increasing the Command Limit of 20 to 26.


Naval Capacity and Starbases

With the changes mentioned above and the inclusion of the limit number of Starbases the Naval Capacity become something of the past.

To facilitate micromanagement every Starbase has a fleet assigned to it, which means that you can only have as many fleets as there are Starbases available (something like a control tower for an airport), turning each fleet into a valuable resource. The Command Limit of these fleets depends of the Starbase Level and specific modules built on it. Any specific improvement built within the Starbase that affects the ships, will only affect the fleet assigned to that Starbase.

If for one reason a Starbase is lost throughout the game, its assigned fleet would be forced to perform an emergency FTL jump to the closest Starbase and the ships will remain inactive (with 100% penalties) until they are assigned to other available fleets or dismantled.

Example (The figures are merely indicative)

The 1st fleet of the United Nations of Earth is assigned to the Sol Star Fortress. Without counting other modifiers, like Technology, Traditions. modules or Admirals assigned to it, the Command Limit of the fleet is 40 because it's a level 4 Starbase.

As he commented, in this way there is a much more organic and immersive naval capacity, focusing the combat more on the composition of the fleet than on its number and creating the option of counteracting the so-called doomstacks by having clear objectives (enemy Starbases) to which attack to disable the fleets.


I have many more ideas on this subject and I would love to share them with all of you, but I know that this is a huge reply, so if you have read this far, I appreciate your time and your attention.

 

[Zarex1590]

I actually just registered on this forum to leave my reply, because I have strong feelings about the proposed changes. I've been following DDs, but only now decided to chip in. Apologies if some of my ideas have already been spoken out.

1. I don't feel Doomstacks and current fleet engagements are such a big problem. Although I like idea about Admirals and capping amount of ships they can command, I feel a bit nervous about giving huge raw boosts to the smaller force against bigger. Its a bit unfair, to the bigger force. What I'm trying to say is that a larger force, even though it invested a lot of its resources into a fleet, they will still find it hard to win the battle/war against the enemy who didn't invest much into their fleet. So, at the end of the day its not worth investing that much into your fleets, because your smaller fleet will get an automatic boost against a bigger enemy.
Im not saying, a huge fleet should make war a piece of cake, but I just want to ask you be careful with the balance.

1.2. I do like idea of smaller forces being able to harass bigger fleets, so that a smaller / tall / technologically advanced empire has if not a definite, but still a chance to survive a defensive war against a bigger and more brute empire. Something like Guerilla tactics: traps, hit and run, raids etc. Your ideas are exploring this, but I think it'd be great if we could go a bit more in-depth into guerilla warfare. But Im not sure if simple raw bonuses to smaller fleets is the best idea. IMHO


2. Combat computers. Really good stuff! Finally, we should be able to tell our long-range artillery battleships to keep their distance and corvettes perform hit and run. Just on that note, it'd be great if you could implement features from 1.2. - so that corvettes could perform "guerilla-like" raids on large fleets to harass ships shields/armour/hall, without sustaining massive damage. Again, might be balance breaking or people might find it boring after a while, but I do think that Stellaris would benefit from more guerilla warfare.

3. Weapons - good stuff. Even more specialisation of the ships is great, but that creates a huge need to be able to see what weapons your potential enemies use. Are there any plans for any espionage mechanics, to be able to recon enemy ship design? I know that you can see enemy ships if you agree to trade sensor links, but I dont know why but my sensors can never make sense of enemy ship details. Spies would be a really cool addition.

Also, now that I'm here, I'll allow myself to write out some features that I'd like to see in future updates. Feel free to skip if you're not interested :0

1. Mercenaries. There was a mod for that but it was never flashed out. Rich, but small/tall empires could hire mercs to defend their worlds or allow a player to control a merc fleets inside it own territory. Or simply being able to rent a huge fleet for a fixed amount of time, but for a high price for your dirty work.

2. Espionage mechanic. Touched on that, but it'd be great if you could cause civil unrest at different empires through factions; steal technologies like in Civ; cause terror attacks on buildings/fleets; assassinations of the admirals/kings. All of that but with counter-espionage mechanics, which would be quite expensive.

3. Ground warfare. Im pretty sure people have spoken about that, but we need to tackle somehow the fact that defenders on a planet are always at disadvantage. They are hard capped at the amount of units they can keep, but attackers can bring an unlimited number of units and swarm the limited defenders. I dont know, maybe you did it on purpose, but I think offensive wars (especially ground ones) should be more expensive/hard than defensive.
Oh, and can you please also add templates for the ground units. Its a pain in a neck to add attachments to every single unit.

4. Ship trading. Im pretty sure one of the devs said that it'd be hard to balance it right, but still. It'd be great if you could export/sell your ships to other empires for cash (or whatever you ask in return). Its an additional source of income and allows to increase speed of production if an empire is at war. Even if their technology level is below, they should be able to use the advanced technology (with a certain penalty and not learning technology). It would work both ways - you're at war and you need ships ASAP - pay some minerals to your allies and they'll start producing advanced ships and give it to you. It'll be expensive, but hey - thats the Switzerland way

Whew, it was surely a long post. Thanks if you read it. Im pretty confident that most of my points have been said already, but I still want to get my opinion onto here, cause I really enjoy Stellaris and I think Devs are doing great job!

Thanks!

 

[GloatingSwine]

Force Disparity Combat Bonus

As I have seen, this seems one of the main complaints so far.

I am quite sure that many would see it with better eyes if this bonus, instead of being applied in firing speed was applied in evasion. In this way, the greater mobility of a smaller fleet could be represented in front of a larger fleet, allowing the player in inferiority to create a strategy of attrition at the cost of losing their ships in combat. Offering this evasion bonus would also allow the ships to have the opportunity to evade combat using the new system.

I do not know if this solution will please everyone, but it is likely that this bonus applied to evasion seems more organic and natural and can solve this so-called "immersion-breaking" problem.

The problem with this is that it will either be completely irrelevant (because evasion is almost completely irrelevant anyway) or completely overpowering due to the return of the infinite dodge corvette.

Just call the bonus "Target Rich Environment", problem solved.

Admiral Skill

If the system mentioned above is taken into account, the Admiral's skill level would allow the Command Limit of the fleet he or she leads to increase. In case the Admiral died for any reason, the fleet would lose the temporary increase in its Command Limit and would be affected by the penalties mentioned above (forcing it to even make an emergency FTL jump). In this way the Admirals would be more important pieces in the composition of the fleet, since not only would they grant bonuses to the performance of the fleet itself, but also increase the number of ships that this can have.

Example (The figures are merely indicative)

The 1st fleet of the United Nations of Earth is led by an Admiral with a skill range of 3. Which allows not only a 9% of fire rate, but also a 30% to the Command Limit of the fleet, increasing the Command Limit of 20 to 26.

Admiral skill changes too frequently and drastically (admirals skill up somewhat quickly and crash down from 10 to 1 instantly). This factor needs to change relatively infrequently and predictably to minimise unnecessary UI fiddle. That's why admiral skill is a bad idea.

Also admiral skill is hard to build mid to late game without someone to fight, you'd have to send newbie admirals into losing fights against bigger opponents just to skill them up so they can come back with a bigger fleet to actually win....

 

[ISitOnGnomes]

1. I don't feel Doomstacks and current fleet engagements are such a big problem. Although I like idea about Admirals and capping amount of ships they can command, I feel a bit nervous about giving huge raw boosts to the smaller force against bigger. Its a bit unfair, to the bigger force. What I'm trying to say is that a larger force, even though it invested a lot of its resources into a fleet, they will still find it hard to win the battle/war against the enemy who didn't invest much into their fleet. So, at the end of the day its not worth investing that much into your fleets, because your smaller fleet will get an automatic boost against a bigger enemy.
Im not saying, a huge fleet should make war a piece of cake, but I just want to ask you be careful with the balance.

There is no indication this will be a huge bonus. It will be a scaling bonus up to 50% when you double their fleet size, and that number is always subject to change. This doesn't mean it will just go up by .5% for every 1% more ships you have, either. It could just as easily kick in when you are 25% larger than the other fleet, and go up by .66% for every 1% larger you are beyond that. The stated intention is just to ensure that a large empire still has to bear at least some cost for military expansion, and I see no reason to believe it will be anything other than that.

 

[Kristian2]

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Again... I have no Problem with losing Ships or even the whole Fleet to an inferior Enemy if they got the drop on me, lured me into a trap or whatever...
I have a Problem with it when we are going Face-to-Face, with me having almost as much Artillery Range Ships as they have Ships in total and they suddenly do massive amounts of damage out of nowhere that they would never do in literally any other situation.

I don't really see how the FDCB would affect that scenario.

If you massively outrange the enemy with high-powered weaponry... well, you'll still wipe the floor with them. The FDCB only affects enemy firing speed- which only matters if they can get close enough to you to, you know, actually fight. The point is that when the enemy fights you, they'll be more likely to inflict some degree of damage/losses to your fleet.

If your concern is that the FDCB will nerf your artillery fleets, your concerns are unfounded.

 

[Belasias]

Tank you very much for taking your time to read my message and respond to my suggestions, GloatingSwine.

The problem with this is that it will either be completely irrelevant (because evasion is almost completely irrelevant anyway) or completely overpowering due to the return of the infinite dodge corvette.

Just call the bonus "Target Rich Environment", problem solved.

As I said before, I have no problem with the new suggested changes, what's more, I'm looking forward to trying them in a short term future. With my suggestion I seek to harmonize the opinions of those who see the application of the bonus in the fire rate unrealistic.

As I understand it, the possibilities of hit are calculated as follows:

Chance to hit = max (0, accuracy - max (0 evasion - tracking))

If we take the example of a regular red laser against a regular corvette, the numbers translate into the following:

Chance to hit = max (90%, accuracy - max (60% evasion - 70%, tracking)) = 90%

If we increase to a maximum of 50% the evasive capacity of the fleet (taking this 50% as the maximum) thanks to the evasion bonus the impact possibilities would be 70%, I suppose that quite far from becoming an infinite dodge corvette. It's just a matter of adjusting figures, in the same way that they adjust right now.

In any case, your solution is as valid as any other at this time ... and possibly more elegant.

Admiral skill changes too frequently and drastically (admirals skill up somewhat quickly and crash down from 10 to 1 instantly). This factor needs to change relatively infrequently and predictably to minimise unnecessary UI fiddle. That's why admiral skill is a bad idea.

Also admiral skill is hard to build mid to late game without someone to fight, you'd have to send newbie admirals into losing fights against bigger opponents just to skill them up so they can come back with a bigger fleet to actually win....

The truth is that you are talking about problems that I consider more realistic effects in mechanics, no a real issue. Please, let me explain.

Admirals only acquire experience in battles, destroying ships or losing them, which makes sense. If you want your admiral to improve you need to involve him in real combat (Maybe in the future there is another way to improve them, through training projects, for example), which means that those empires in peace would have worse admirals than those in continuous war.

If your empire is in a period of peace it is easier for you to manage your resources in other things than naval power, so that your Command Limit will not be a real problem (Basically it's like now, when you make the decision not to improve your spaceports and invest those resources in other buildings).

In any of the cases, in the suggestions that I propose, at no time there is an obligation that a fleet should be lead by an Admiral, you can build ships (and even exceed the Command Limit if you wish) in your fleets. The extra that the admiral offers is a small advantage for those empires that care about combat (whether bellicose or not).

Having limited the number of fleets to the number of Starbases, player attention will not end up dispersing among dozens of fleets, nor will the UI be saturated with multiple warnings or tracking of these fleets.

I hope to have explained myself better this time.

 

[The Pill]

I am talking about the Force Disparity Combat Bonus...

And again that is all part of war. An inferior force will fight much harder than a larger force even if they know they will lose. This doesn't mean that a larger force will lose but it means that the group they are attacking won't just roll over either. There have been many times in war were a smaller force was able to stop or route a larger enemy force. This doesn't happen all the time But it does happen so your still not seeing space magic.

 

[GloatingSwine]

As I said before, I have no problem with the new suggested changes, what's more, I'm looking forward to trying them in a short term future. With my suggestion I seek to harmonize the opinions of those who see the application of the bonus in the fire rate unrealistic.

As I understand it, the possibilities of hit are calculated as follows:

Chance to hit = max (0, accuracy - max (0 evasion - tracking))

If we take the example of a regular red laser against a regular corvette, the numbers translate into the following:

Chance to hit = max (90%, accuracy - max (60% evasion - 70%, tracking)) = 90%

If we increase to a maximum of 50% the evasive capacity of the fleet (taking this 50% as the maximum) thanks to the evasion bonus the impact possibilities would be 70%, I suppose that quite far from becoming an infinite dodge corvette. It's just a matter of adjusting figures, in the same way that they adjust right now.

In any case, your solution is as valid as any other at this time ... and possibly more elegant.

Yeah, this is why it becomes useless. Even a corvette only gains 20-30% practical evasion, cruisers and battleships would gain nothing as 50% of no evasion is still no evasion.

This is also why evasion bonuses currently in the game are also useless and evasion is a useless dead stat.