The 'crackpot' war system from V3 would work great in Stellaris 2

[Arcvalons]

For those that are not aware of it, it seems V3 will have a combat system that is completely new and different than any previous PDX game, which will involve no units on the map. Instead it will be about the economic and logistical management of fronts, which sounds like something that would work terrifyingly well for a space game like this one. I've always found it odd that in a game with a massive scale such as this one, where your Empire spans hundreds of billions of aliens across hundreds of star systems, you still need to command individual spaceships or fleets individually. Here it seems like the combat system from V3 would be an improvement. And maybe we can finally have real space battles with thousands of ships on each side like in some classical sci-fi works.

 

[ImaTomato]

We haven't even seen how it will really work and having the AI manage things with the player being relegated to logistics sounds like a terrible idea.It completely removes all tactics and strategy from the war system.

 

[Ryika]

Funnily enough, I think almost everything i read in that Vic3 Dev Diary (#22) would be great for Stellaris, except for the mostly "hands off" combat system.
It would be great if we could achieve more things through diplomacy, without having to resort to war as the Swiss Army Knife of problem solving, and I would love for wars to be more costly than they are right now.

But that "mostly automated"-thing? It seems like a bold move even for a game like Victoria 3, and I don't think it fits Stellaris at all, at least not the way I see the game. Stellaris is a lot more 4x than other Paradox titles, and I think that having some amount of direct control our navies is a big part of that - for me, being able to send fleets into battle is a large part of what makes the game fun.

Might just be status quo bias on my part, but I feel like Stellaris currently has a good balance at the moment, with active "tactical" movement on the side of having control, and automated combat so we don't need to micromanage individual ships. The actual combat system needs work, but the balance between control and automation seems pretty good to me.

 

[Incompetent]

I'm kind of torn on this.

On the one hand, war as it exists in Stellaris is not very fun. Almost every battle is predictable in outcome, and predictably lopsided in who takes casualties, so the logic is basically "fight wherever you outmatch the enemy, otherwise evade them". In theory there is some nuance around ship types/outfits, galactic terrain such as nebulae, starbases and so on, but in practice it just doesn't matter for most of the game, as apart from a brief interlude for carrier cruisers, it's either swarms of whatever basic ships you can muster (early game) or artillery battleship doomstacks that render bastions obsolete (the rest of the game). The end result is that most wars are actually decided at the macro level, by who has the best combination of tech level and alloy output; but even if your opponent is vastly inferior, defeating them still involves a lot of shift-clicking your fleets over their territory and hopping armies from one colony to the next. As things stand, not much would be lost by abstracting some of this away.

On the other hand, I don't think "crackpot" warfare would be very satisfying either for Stellaris, because many of the strategic elements present on an Earth-based game don't exist here. There is no continuous terrain over which to have a front, only discrete star systems. There is no "ocean" over which rival armies could be resupplied, either you are connected to your industrial core or you are cut off. The decisions on building a peacetime versus wartime economy have already been abstracted down to the minimum, i.e. how much do you invest in alloys+shipyards+naval cap versus everything else. (OK, tech is a bit more complicated, but since tech is the answer to pretty much everything in Stellaris, it's not really a decision.) There are also situations in Stellaris where a single large battle is unavoidable, such as versus a Leviathan.

Overall, I'm more hopeful about reforming the existing system than creating a radically new one, but either way, it would take a lot of work to make warfare strategically interesting.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Not with how Stellaris currently works.

Stellaris right now is a wargame where you explore and expand in preparation for war and continue expansion through conquest, occasionally stopping to deal with a crisis. While you can play peacefully, the expectation for most playthroughs is that you grow large and smash the end-game crisis to bits with your ginormous fleets.

Victoria 3, on the other hand, is about industrialization and demographic shifts, and I assume the decision to automate war was made so that you wouldn't have to turn your attention away from what should be the focal point of the game.

Stellaris would have to be a lot more economy and demographic-focused to automate war, which I'm not sure people would want. I like the idea of a deeper economic system for Stellaris, but I'm not sure people would want to exchange flashy space battles for it.

 

[Bezborg]

Well tbh I'd love a hands-off combat system. I always wanted Stellaris to be a grand strategy of running a galactic empire.

The hands-on system we have now is actually quite hands-off in itself, it's just a stack that gets into range. So it's about fleet composition and ship design, not about being a captain.

Ship design could still be retained, I see no issue with that.

 

[Bezborg]

We haven't even seen how it will really work and having the AI manage things with the player being relegated to logistics sounds like a terrible idea.It completely removes all tactics and strategy from the war system.

Really? YOu have so much tactics now by moving a stack through fixed hyperlanes?

The tactics you speak of is deciding whether to go left or right on a hyperlane crossroads lol.

 

[klopkr]

I don't even like the sound of it in vicky 3... guess we'll wait and see.

Stellaris has really awesome fully animated space combat. It'd be too bad to lose the most significant graphical effect in the game.

 

[Bezborg]

I don't even like the sound of it in vicky 3... guess we'll wait and see.

Stellaris has really awesome fully animated space combat. It'd be too bad to lose the most significant graphical effect in the game.

Where does the assumption of losing the battle visuals come from?

Can't you imagine a system where, just for example, we define a strategic offensive on a big front, and once we starts the system graphics change to a "onging battle" system graphical look? Which could look even more awesome than what we have now.

I mean this is just a quick thought on the subject... why not? Why is our imgination so constantly limited?

 

[hfel]

Funnily enough, I think almost everything i read in that Vic3 Dev Diary (#22) would be great for Stellaris, except for the mostly "hands off" combat system.
It would be great if we could achieve more things through diplomacy, without having to resort to war as the Swiss Army Knife of problem solving, and I would love for wars to be more costly than they are right now.

But that "mostly automated"-thing? It seems like a bold move even for a game like Victoria 3, and I don't think it fits Stellaris at all, at least not the way I see the game. Stellaris is a lot more 4x than other Paradox titles, and I think that having some amount of direct control our navies is a big part of that - for me, being able to send fleets into battle is a large part of what makes the game fun.

Might just be status quo bias on my part, but I feel like Stellaris currently has a good balance at the moment, with active "tactical" movement on the side of having control, and automated combat so we don't need to micromanage individual ships. The actual combat system needs work, but the balance between control and automation seems pretty good to me.

Funny; I think Stellaris combat is the worst of both worlds. No real logiistical constraints to speak of, with one magical empire-wide resource reservoir while the tactical side still comes down to banal doomstack contests.

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

"I made a G today,"
but you made it in a sleazy way.
Sellin' crackpot theory to the kids (Oh-oh),
"I gotta get paid" (Oh)
Well hey,
well that's the way it is.

seriously though, stellaris is not just a political simulation like vicky, it's a 4x

i want to see my battleships striking enemy vessels with thunderbolts. i'm totally fine with not needing to micro them and cheesing around with encirclements, or timing the arrival of reinforcements, but if i don't get to see my beautifully configured ships flying around i'll be very, very sad

 

[Pancakelord]

I see real-time space 4x combat as something on a spectrum like this

From 1 - most emphasis on tactical battle agency, to 5 - least emphasis on tactical battle agency. [Strategic control emphasis varies for all games]. I definite tactical control as actually moving or directing ships in battle, whilst strategic control is anything not directly in battle (e.g. moving between stars).

1. SINS of a solar empire / Homeworld
   • Micro/tactics heavy & full control of ships at all times between systems, (no real cap on ship stacking, if you can build enough), with homeworld working on full 3 axis combat.
2. Sword of the stars 2
   • Similar to SOTS1 below, but High emphasis placed on combat mechanics (e.g. targeting specific sides of ship armor) + real-time combat battles spanning solar systems
   • Hands-off fleet movement between battles. (Fleets have home stations + you send them on missions, similar to EU4 expeditions to the new world, rather than directly moving them as in Stellaris)
3. Star wars empire at war
   • Tactics heavy but more simple than above /lower skill ceiling
   • Ships directed around on a turn based tactics map (which soft caps how many ships are in a battle at a time).
4. Sword of the stars 1
   • Lower emphasis on battle strategy (the mechanics are there, but battles are mostly straight line battles with limited flanking opportunities or 'terrain' constraints)
   • Ships are given direct orders on a turn based strategy layer by player (softcaps number of ships in battle at once)
5. Stellaris / Endless space 2
   • No tactical control (beyond pre-combat positioning and camping jump points), cards or ship modules modules dictate ship AI tactics.
     • (with no positioning at all in the case of ES2)
   • Full strategic control of fleets

I personally wouldn't want an increase in tactical control in stellaris, I'd rather see a rework of tactical battle computers.

• E.g. cap all fleets to 50 size, and let them set a "tactics stance" for all ships in that fleet, dictating how those ships will move. This also emulates the more dynamic (though still shallow) tactics system in endless space 2.
• Then allow for "Armadas" - led by another admiral - groups of say up to 5 fleets (with all fleets in an armada benefitting from 2 admirals bonuses, one from their fleet, one from their armada).

Sword of the stars 2's approach of forcing you to mechanically issue missions to fleets from, their home starbases, is also an interesting idea, which, I think, was adopted to offset the massive doomstacking issue in SOTS1.

• If anything, when it comes to adjusting how players interact with combat in a Stellaris sequel, I'd imagine paradox (which also published SOTS1/2) would start here.

 

[Wenla]

We haven't even seen how it will really work and having the AI manage things with the player being relegated to logistics sounds like a terrible idea.It completely removes all tactics and strategy from the war system.

Not strategy, just tactics. IMHO of course.

 

[safe-keeper]

I love the idea of a hands-off war system tbh. Never really like Stellaris' combat system, and would love an alternative. I get that 4X space games tend to have space battles like those in Stellaris, but that's no reason it has to be that way.

Honestly, I hope Stellaris 2 is way more about empire-tending in general, like Victoria 3. Right now it tries to be a map painting game like Civ (given that the only thing you can do mid and late game is fight people, otherwise nothing's happening) and fails, while also trying to be an empire management game with all sorts of different systems, only to fail at that also.

 

[st360]

I just want to add that I definitely don't like the current way Stellaris does war. Enemy fleets invade your space and you have to play fleet splitting micro games and watch your systems get screwed because some crappy fleet of 9 corvettes is attacking you from the other side of your empire while you're doing 200 000 fleet power battles.

I find it silly that in Paradox games set in the middle ages I can walk across the map with my army faster than in Stellaris.

 

[苏白@夢璃花]

Before this, I would rather have a Vic / Imperator: Rome style pop system first, and even there is a rework to the combat system, just don’t take away the eye candy aspect that made stellaris from the rest paradox games.

 

[TheGrinningMan]

Obviously this will depend on if V3's bold experiment actually works. That said... if I wanted to be a fleet commander, I'd play Homeworld. The idea of letting my admirals and generals manage my war while I ensure my interstellar domain's economy can keep the war machine fed, instead of hand-managing fleets as they float from star to star, has a lot of appeal.

 

[Fulgrymm]

Obviously this will depend on if V3's bold experiment actually works. That said... if I wanted to be a fleet commander, I'd play Homeworld. The idea of letting my admirals and generals manage my war while I ensure my interstellar domain's economy can keep the war machine fed, instead of hand-managing fleets as they float from star to star, has a lot of appeal.

So like a HoI4 approach, where you assign generals and admirals to fronts and they manage it themselves? That'd be pretty nice, provided the AI can first be improved to handle fleet deployments better.