Warscore Bug wastes 25 years of my time on a pointless war

[Omegador]

For your reference: Here is my United Nations of Earth, along with my federation - Interstellar Union. This is an Ironman game.

Now look at this. I am fighting a war against this unholy alliance. My goal is to vassalize the Drull'Perfen Kingdom in order to obtain access to my federation members down to the southwest (he's blocking the way!)

I am getting -26% warscore (mostly from -220 due to "wargoals"), despite fighting a brutal war of attrition, and winning most space battles. Although the first years were tough, and the enemy alliance was going on a full offensive, eventually my federation and I managed to occupy many enemy worlds.

Now look at this:

The Drull'Perfen are COMPLETELY occupied by us.
Additionally, the wargoal to give back a planet to my vassal is ALSO occupied.

Although we are winning hard, the game decided that we are losing and eventually auto-surrenders on my behalf. None of my wargoals were fulfilled and the war ended in status quo.
I call BS, and a serious warscore bug that needs to be fixed.

Edit: NOTE! It looks like when the war ended my energy income spiked from -37 to +66, with no explanation to that whatsoever. Apparently this also affects minerals, as it jumped from +290 to +384, again without explanation. I think energy is drained by all the occupations I have made, perhaps even paying for buildings + stations the enemy still controls. And I was desperately trying to increase my energy production to compensate, but after the game auto-surrendered, it ended up being overkill.

I hope these bugs get fixed soon... PLEASE. I'm going to stop playing until this is fixed. As it has ruined my game so far.

Otherwise, thanks Paradox for making an overall good game!

 

[CarlClausewitz]

I find the wargoals thing very annoying.

Is it possible to change them during the war?

 

[Omegador]

I find the wargoals thing very annoying.

Is it possible to change them during the war?

Nope. Which means if the enemy loses their planets you want due to rebellions, I think you're pretty much screwed on that.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I understand your frustration, but if you haven't done it already you should file a bug report in proper forum. Venting in public can be liberating, but a bug report is usually more productive.

 

[Omegador]

I understand your frustration, but if you haven't done it already you should filie a bug report in proper forum. Venting in public can be liberating, but a bug report is usually more productive.

Good point. I'll repost it there.
Edit: I found another post about the same bug, so I just posted a link from there to here.

 

[hoprlessNewb]

What's worst about this bug is that it also occurs when they attack you, in my instance when attacked by a federation demanding I free some of my vassals.

If you are fighting a defensive war, and you have won more battles, and you occupy their territory with them not occupying any of yours, they should not have a ticking warscore. I should have the ticking warscore for not having my capital occupied, if anyone gets one. It's essentially a "coalition" war.

Clearly a bug. I think most of us understand how the mechanic is supposed to work, from their other games.

 

[Akka le Vil]

I understand your frustration, but if you haven't done it already you should filie a bug report in proper forum. Venting in public can be liberating, but a bug report is usually more productive.

Do you mean we should report the entire war goal system as a bug ?

 

[Omegador]

What's worst about this bug is that it also occurs when they attack you, in my instance when attacked by a federation demanding I free some of my vassals.

If you are fighting a defensive war, and you have won more battles, and you occupy their territory with them not occupying any of yours, they should not have a ticking warscore. I should have the ticking warscore for not having my capital occupied, if anyone gets one. It's essentially a "coalition" war.

Clearly a bug. I think most of us understand how the mechanic is supposed to work, from their other games.

Not only that, but the game ended up giving me an auto-defeat notification without my explicit permission. It forced me to lose the war, when I was tremendously winning.

 

[Omegador]

Do you mean we should report the entire war goal system as a bug ?

Yes! The war goal system is completely bugged. It appears to be rigged against the player, even in a defensive war!

The game wants you to either:

• Completely occupy EVERYONE on the enemy alliance (which is almost impossible, especially if access cannot be obtained).
• OR it's not counting the worlds occupied by my allies...
• OR it's being really dumb and not resetting ticking warscore when it should have done so as I have occupied everything.

Also, the magical energy disappearing and then reappearing at the end of the war is even more troubling. Look at the top of my screenshots and compare them to the last.
Energy changed by +103 as soon as the war ended 8 days later.
Edit: The minerals income also changed by +96.

 

[hoprlessNewb]

Not only that, but the game ended up giving me an auto-defeat notification without my explicit permission. It forced me to lose the war, when I was tremendously winning.

I quit before I reached that point, so I respect your tenacity to see it through to the bitter end.

But what's interesting to me is that not everyone seems to get this bug, and I don't understand why, since it isn't an error. It's a malfunctioning system.

In my case, I had another war going and had to ignore this one for several years, before I could send assets to beat them back. So I'm wondering if most people never see it because, generally speaking, wars are over as soon as they start, good or bad. Very few players are probably dragging out wars for decades, and would never notice the problem build up, even if it is happening in everyone's games.

 

[Omegador]

I quit before I reached that point, so I respect your tenacity to see it through to the bitter end.

But what's interesting to me is that not everyone seems to get this bug, and I don't understand why, since it isn't an error. It's a malfunctioning system.

In my case, I had another war going and had to ignore this one for several years, before I could send assets to beat them back. So I'm wondering if most people never see it because, generally speaking, wars are over as soon as they start, good or bad. Very few players are probably dragging out wars for decades, and would never notice the problem build up, even if it is happening in everyone's games.

I agree with you. This war is the most interesting one I've had so far in Stellaris, because I've been fighting against a relatively equal alliance that actually had superior war-tech at the beginning of the war. I reverse engineered much of their technology (railguns, X-rays, plasteel and adv. shields) from them, and used it against them when I finally regrouped and rebuilt my fleet.

They also had 3 battleships when I had none, and their combined fleet late in the war was 8K when mine was a mere 5K. We've fought a few dozen battles with smaller (3-5K stacks) that ended up in strong stalemates, and the only reason I started winning so much is because my nation is an industrial powerhouse, and I could completely outproduce them.

I built up a fleet of 15K (4 battleships, some 8-16 cruisers, and lots of escort) and chased their damn fleet using this extremely-gimped warp drive to jump half way across the galaxy until I destroyed every single spaceport the enemy alliance had, and eventually wiping out their whole fleet until there was nothing left of them. The screenshots you saw is a mop-up operation after the 20 years of us mostly ransacking eachother's space until I finally got the upper hand. My federation, on the other hand, has a very pathetic fleet, and mostly served a supporting role throughout this war.

The enemy seems to have accumulated a lot of war score via my inability to take their wargoals early on, as I was at around -40 at some point in the war. At that point, however, I was already winning HARD, but struggling to get my warscore above -20 since their warscore keeps growing from nowhere faster than I can bombard and occupy each of their worlds.

It's too bad it was all a waste of my time.

 

[Cossack8559]

The auto-peace is incredibly frustrating.

 

[Omegador]

The auto-peace is incredibly frustrating.

I wasn't even warned about the potential to have auto-peace. Considering I was at only -26 warscore at that point, and the fact that I just took the last wargoal, seems like that 220 malus should have went away completely and my warscore should be around 100 instead.

 

[Strager]

Yeah.... wargoals are currently FUBAR.

You aren't supposed to be able to change them mid-war (a questionable design decision, but WAD), but there are a lot of bugs like the aforementioned loss of planets to rebellions. Similar stuff occurs when they are at war with another empire at the same time as you. I think they are aware of all this and will address in the May or June patch (see today's dev diary).

 

[Foxador]

I had a bug like this myself but in another way. I was WINNING very hard. I had about 50% warscore with just myself and my vassal in the war against a enemy that had about 3 vassals. The problem was that I was integrating my vassal at the time and during the middle of the war they were fully integrated. Once that happened my warscore went from 50% to ZERO!!! Even though I had 80% of the entire enemy nation under my direct control via assaults on their colonies and their homeworld I lost all the warscore and was reset to zero!

 

[Omegador]

I had a bug like this myself but in another way. I was WINNING very hard. I had about 50% warscore with just myself and my vassal in the war against a enemy that had about 3 vassals. The problem was that I was integrating my vassal at the time and during the middle of the war they were fully integrated. Once that happened my warscore went from 50% to ZERO!!! Even though I had 80% of the entire enemy nation under my direct control via assaults on their colonies and their homeworld I lost all the warscore and was reset to zero!

Wow, I guess your vassal had a lot of warscore that was erased when they stopped existing...
Thanks for sharing!

 

[Foxador]

Wow, I guess your vassal had a lot of warscore that was erased when they stopped existing...
Thanks for sharing!

Funny enough I won the war by just sitting one my fleets onto their 'rally' points. For whatever reason they had one system that they non stop sent wave after wave of small ships too. I kept a fleet there on aggressive and ignored it and over time I got full warscore just by them winning fights that were 20k military STR against maybe 100-500 at most that they kept sending non stop over the years which each gave me 1% warscore

 

[Dalwin]

Yes! The war goal system is completely bugged. It appears to be rigged against the player, even in a defensive war!

The game wants you to either:

• Completely occupy EVERYONE on the enemy alliance (which is almost impossible, especially if access cannot be obtained).
• OR it's not counting the worlds occupied by my allies...
• OR it's being really dumb and not resetting ticking warscore when it should have done so as I have occupied everything.

Also, the magical energy disappearing and then reappearing at the end of the war is even more troubling. Look at the top of my screenshots and compare them to the last.
Energy changed by +103 as soon as the war ended 8 days later.
Edit: The minerals income also changed by +96.

That is not mysterious at all. Go to government policies and read the different options for war economy and what you have set. Your production changes during the war depending on how it is going. Once the war is over, it suddenly snaps back to its peacetime normal. This is as intended. You have 4 options on how extreme you want this effect to be.

 

[Omegador]

That is not mysterious at all. Go to government policies and read the different options for war economy and what you have set. Your production changes during the war depending on how it is going. Once the war is over, it suddenly snaps back to its peacetime normal. This is as intended. You have 4 options on how extreme you want this effect to be.

The only problem is that I was "losing" the war. I should be getting *bonuses* if it was on Semi-static or Dynamic when losing a war.