Stellaris Fleet Logistics System for fixing Doomstacks

[Naga Niome]

---I meant to post this weeks ago, but got extremely busy, so I apologize if this irrelevant at this point, I just loved this game and planned on returning to it soon enough.---

I spent a long while pondering this topic on how to fix the issue of Doomstacks and the substantial diminishing effect it currently has on gameplay, and whilst doing so, another thread spawned. It essentially seized most basic tenets of the ideas I wanted to bring about, but perhaps a second thread more or less in conjunction, with my own viewpoints could bring more attention to this issue, more highlighting and awareness to the developers and community.

As already suggested, a mechanic is needed that places a soft cap not a hard one, upon the size of fleets so that this can encourage the broadening of space warfare to engulf multiple systems instead of one. Yet I want to broaden this revision of the current gameplay, so much so, that it emulates some of the core features that the "Hearts of Iron" series possesses. To an extent it appears as if its replicating some futuristic high command structure, whilst inserting alongside some pseudo-mechanic that only resembles the attrition-abstracting supply system "in Europa Universalis 4" in appearance.

High Command Structure: To summarize as basically as I can, we have one dedicated menu that combines Admirals, Generals, and your Ruler into one family tree diagram akin to "HoI" and the "Total War" series. Yet, below your Leader, are two portraits that can ONLY be occupied one by an Admiral on the right, and a Governor on the left. They're equivalent to the ranks of Grand Admiral, or Fleet Admiral, and the Governor depending upon your form of governance is essentially your Reichsfuhrer, Vice President, or Secretary of State perhaps in equivalency. Layman's terms for this thread, your Grand Admiral's traits and experience affects everyone all admirals and generals below him, as does your Grand Governors affect all planetary and sector governors and scientists below him.

The reason why I do not support the inclusion of a "Grand General", is because I personally eschew from the belief that the futuristic "navy" and "army" are neither one-in-the-same which is applied to the "airforce" being consumed by the archetypal space-navy, and in all affairs, the army relies solely upon the resources of the navy and state to bring it from one location to another thus putting its importance secondary to that of the navy. Thus, all Admirals and Generals in the diagram fall below the Grand Admiral, unless one specific General is chosen as the representative of the army which be ideally situated beneath the Grand Admirals position in my diagram. This viewpoint I must admit is unreasonable, and although I appear contradictory, I do believe firmly that gameplay trumps realism however much love I hold for realism whenever possible.

Your Ruler however doesn't affect anyone below him as his attributes already have an effect on his political entity at large anyway; he/she's Grand Governor replaces their position upon early death temporarily, unless particular form of governance dictates otherwise. We can open this up to countless circumstances, whether RNG-based or player-influenced, such as political coups due to unhappiness, Fallen Empire assassination, future espionage mechanic if ever implemented, etc. You could go as far as to have disasters occur, whereas in your democratic government for example, if you made many divisive Policy changes and lost at least one war, can have the buildup for some representative recall in which unhappiness has led to your party and anyone else removing your Ruler from office, and putting in place someone else.

Fleet Logistics Limit: This mechanic is a large conglomerate mesh of bonuses and penalties applied in an hourglass-ran manner of fashion. For lack of better of words. This is the core idea that emphasizes a soft-cap be placed upon fleets being thus while fleets can theoretically field an endless mass of ships, this will only be done so at the individual ships expenses. The consequences upon the three attributes: Damage, Evasion, and Speed. Yet, the "expenses" will go further, affecting also the damage and accuracy potential of every ships individual weaponry. This is an artificial simulation, for the expression of an Empires admiral inability to reasonably manage an armada without stress and burden upon his command structure and communications. Think about it, us players and Paradox doesn't want players unable to overwhelm an opponent, but we also don't want gameplay that is unintentionally pigeon-holed into decisively crippling victories. As far as I'm concerned, I want gameplay that emulates both the Spanish Armada heading for England at the same time underscoring the countless small sea engagements between one or multiple vessels on both sides in the Atlantic.

Before I dwell upon the machinations of the FLL concept a loophole currently exists; every ship in a system adds to the soft-cap mathematically meaning whether you spread your ships into one-man units, cobble them together into one armada, or they're in-between with random ships tailing a single fleet, they all matter to the systems soft cap. Thus if the single fleet has an Admiral that's great, the soft cap of the navy itself is exponentially increased; nobody can exploit the idea that just by disseminating your Doomstack from an armada, into several moderately-sized fleets, with admirals, and deploying them together into one system is it acceptable and achievable (the naval-cap becoming a non-issue for stragglers), because the system-cap is essentially counting ALL ships as one "large fleet". Working as intended and intended rationally.

The Fleet Logistics Limit incorporates a large majority of bonuses that occur from sources external to the fleet but where it came from. FLL also incorporates a large majority of penalties that occur from sources internal to the fleet from origins of ship necessity and burden. Below this I will make an example of many bulletined ideas.

Bonuses:
+5% Damage, Speed, & Evasion for Fleet that is designated as a Directly-Controlled-Planets force, when present within the system and for a short period of time after leaving the system. Artificial abstraction for the preparation of logistics and improved morale. (Bonus only active when Admiral is busy commanding; bonus is reset if Admiral is unavailable or replaced).

-15% Reduction in ship upgrading costs when DCP's Fleet is present within the system AND orbiting the planet/space station (leaning towards space station specification) for an entire month.

+5% Increase in Damage and Speed for multiple-ship fleets initiating combat against an opposing fleet as an abstraction of "flanking" so to speak.

Penalties:
-25% Start reduction in Admiral abilities when fleet(s) present in system are exceeding Empire's system-cap. This steadily increases to a maximum of 50% if the system-cap is being increasingly exceeded.

-20% Damage for single-ship fleets operating within a system where the system-cap has been exceeded. (To prevent any unusual, if petty, exploitation of the soft caps).


Other Ideas: I thought about "what-if" Paradox introduced a morale system for ships individually, operating from a base-set value that's increased substantially within a fleet and by a command Admiral. I'm not sure upon this concept and it'd be approached, but I'd think it would actually do the current system good. Thus instead of the "Fleet" routing which should also be simulated by breaking, it would also be incredible gameplay-wise to see damaged vessels break-off from an engagement due to the idea of their "ship captains" reading their local situation as untenable instead of the larger picture present and not sacrificing themselves. This wouldn't prevent large-scale massacres, but its point

 

[Ventessel]

I think that rather than trying to arbitrarily limit the number of ships which can fight in a fleet, giving the player more things to defend at once (i.e. trade routes) would discourage them from lumping all their fleets together, all the time.

 

[Azuraal]

Not really, that would only force spreading out defence, while attacking fleet would still be a doomstack.
That would make wars even more annoying

I think better and much simpler resolution than what OP proposes would be a soft cap on number of ships (counting by naval capacity) in combat (make naval doctrine tech useful?).
Main reason behind doomstacks is that they are more efficent, they kill faster and lose less ships.
But if my size 200 fleet fought like size 150 fleet due to soft cap then i would rather split it in half and have less decisive battles but be more efficent.

 

[Naga Niome]

The reason why I made this suggestion is to deal with the fundamental issue of Doomstacks, something "Civilization 4" had too. As well as other Paradox titles suffer from to an extent, although they have been remedied. Numerous players complained upon release that Stellaris suffered from the issue of Doomstacks, and wars would last shortly, and be all-or-nothing confrontations. I want to steer away from that, broaden the scope of galactic warfare, don't become bored when you annihilate an entire opposing Doomstack and you slowly encroach on the rest of the worlds, or watch as you're crushed and lose all ability to come back after one brief encounter.

Trade routes are an application we can invest in, but that doesn't solve the Doomstack issue. You annihilate the opposing Doomstack in one-go, and that's that, what trade route will you have to worry about then?

I suggested a soft-cap in my post, and the moderate penalties creeping upon the Doomstack that goes over their naval limit globally. In retrospect my post could've been more detailed, and the second suggestion of the High Command Structure become its own thread, but figured wouldn't be an issue here.

 

[PirateJack]

I'd go for a simpler option.

Each Admiral has a certain number of ships he can command personally. If he tries to command more than that, the fleet takes combat penalties. He can, however, delegate a number of ships to another Admiral, who operates under the former's command (maybe being renamed to a Captain). This gets around the combat penalties, but has its own soft limit because you can only ever have so many leaders.

 

[Ventessel]

The reason why I made this suggestion is to deal with the fundamental issue of Doomstacks, something "Civilization 4" had too. As well as other Paradox titles suffer from to an extent, although they have been remedied. Numerous players complained upon release that Stellaris suffered from the issue of Doomstacks, and wars would last shortly, and be all-or-nothing confrontations. I want to steer away from that, broaden the scope of galactic warfare, don't become bored when you annihilate an entire opposing Doomstack and you slowly encroach on the rest of the worlds, or watch as you're crushed and lose all ability to come back after one brief encounter.

Trade routes are an application we can invest in, but that doesn't solve the Doomstack issue. You annihilate the opposing Doomstack in one-go, and that's that, what trade route will you have to worry about then?

I suggested a soft-cap in my post, and the moderate penalties creeping upon the Doomstack that goes over their naval limit globally. In retrospect my post could've been more detailed, and the second suggestion of the High Command Structure become its own thread, but figured wouldn't be an issue here.

Civ 4 worked around this issue quite nicely via collateral damage (from artillery, bombing, etc. or in the case of the greatest mod ever made, Fall from Heaven, fireballs).

Collateral damage forced you to carefully weigh the benefit of splitting your forces to strike at multiple targets vs. grouping them together and sacrificing flexibility while exposing yourself to greater damage from support weapons.

Using admirals as a sort of soft fleet cap might work, but that would frustrate players who wanted to command vast interstellar empires and found themselves gimped by having the same fleet cap as a pathetic rump state in the outer rim.

I would argue that admirals should provide bonuses, but that those bonuses are slowly eroded the more ships they command (diminishing logarithmically as a percentage bonus). Combine this with different fleet formations to allow for a choice between tighter formations that maximize firepower across a small front, but restrict your ships' evasion versus looser formations that provide greater evasion but spread your firepower out more and could potentially result in ships not being in range with certain weapons.

As a general design principle, I hate to simply tell a player "no, you can't do that" but rather to impose certain natural feeling consequences on each choice/tradeoff that is available.

What do you think?

 

[Naga Niome]

Civ 4 worked around this issue quite nicely via collateral damage (from artillery, bombing, etc. or in the case of the greatest mod ever made, Fall from Heaven, fireballs).

Collateral damage forced you to carefully weigh the benefit of splitting your forces to strike at multiple targets vs. grouping them together and sacrificing flexibility while exposing yourself to greater damage from support weapons.

Using admirals as a sort of soft fleet cap might work, but that would frustrate players who wanted to command vast interstellar empires and found themselves gimped by having the same fleet cap as a pathetic rump state in the outer rim.

I would argue that admirals should provide bonuses, but that those bonuses are slowly eroded the more ships they command (diminishing logarithmically as a percentage bonus). Combine this with different fleet formations to allow for a choice between tighter formations that maximize firepower across a small front, but restrict your ships' evasion versus looser formations that provide greater evasion but spread your firepower out more and could potentially result in ships not being in range with certain weapons.

As a general design principle, I hate to simply tell a player "no, you can't do that" but rather to impose certain natural feeling consequences on each choice/tradeoff that is available.

What do you think?

You're right I remember that feature distinctly, and yes Fall from Heaven was an amazing mod, next to something like Forgotten Hope too. Kyle later works for Stardock now.

Admirals should have an influence in my opinion too only if their trait(s) intentionally improve it. Otherwise, the naval soft cap should be fleet that emphasizes balanced fleets instead of Doomstacks. They would still be viable, but you'll surely run into many enlarging penalties along the way if you continue to grow your single armada. The fleet soft-cap is relative to the naval soft-cap, to push several fleets instead of one single armada.

I agree with you, I'm totally against hard-caps, definite limits are frankly to begin with feel to imposed artificially, players should be given a choice in my idea whether they can surpass their fleet cap. If we were to really sit down to it, many players would enjoy a fleet-cap that was at most, 2/4 of their naval-cap to simulate some broad conflict within the scope of their campaign.