Weighted supply range to limit doomstacks

[EvilKnievel82]

My suggestion is to implement a supply range for military ships to address the doomstack issue. The idea would be to have a certain tech-dependent supply value and range around any Planet / Habitat / Ringworld / Military Station / Frontier Outpost you or your allies own. If several "supply sources" overlap they stack:

For each empire a supply value is then allocated to any given star system (of course one would need a specific map-mode for that). In the above example the two stars overlapping the red and blue circles both have 150 supply value.

If your military fleetsize exceeds that number all of your ships in the system take damage over time dependent on the amount the supply limit is exceeded. Note that this system does not care if you have one fleet of size 100 or ten fleets of size 10 in the starsystem. So if you have 100 supply and a fleet of 150 size in the system you take (150-100) * X % percent damage each month. For any fleet in Orbit at a space port / supply station the "lack-of-supply-damage" should stop or be reduced.

If you move any fleet completely out of your supply range you take damage according to (fleetsize in system - 0) * X % each month.

Technology / civics / perks could then improve both the range and the level of supply. An alternative to military stations giving supply could be a new type of "supply station" with a larger range but a hefty cost in upkeep. This would make attack runs against superior empires much more effective to cripple their supply lines and force them to split the fleets. At the same time you would need to build up a supply system before any mayor invasion.

Of course for this system to work the numbers of the self repair abilities would need to be adjusted so the system cannot be circumvented completely by having enough self repair on your ships.

At the same time you could then introduce "organic ships" that have a reduced supply requirement but have some other disadvantage (available through perk, less slots for weapons/equipment etc.)

I know there have been suggestions of "attrition in space" before but I think this system could work in practice with the right numbers.

 

[Airowird]

2 questions:
* Why is that giant food planet that's safely tucked in a corner of my empire not contributing to the supply chain?
* Why did my ships not bring enough supplies themselves, they KNEW their orders of bombing every planet in whatever those xeno filth call their shambles of an empire before they would be allowed to return home, now I have to send in extra ships to aid them?


Alternative/Improvement:
What if rather than the damage thing, fleets simply have their own supply stock?
e.g. Supply on ships generally lasts 6 months (as an example), so the fleet gets a bar with supply that diminishes untill it's empty, then it starts losing power/fire rate/speed/...
Supply is replenished in friendly territory at the rate you suggest, with -50% speed in allied territory (but can't deteriorate) and +50% while being docked on a planet.
Civilian supply ships can carry X amount of supply to a fleet, but can then be scuttled. Merging fleets would simply merge their supply. Doomstacks then have to go back and forth a lot to resupply, losing tons of travel time, while having 3-4 large fleets allows you to rotate, but be susceptible to the enemy doomstack. Thus tactics start to avoid it or draw it out of enemy territory and even if the AI sticks to their doomstack strategies, you'll have more time to reform/strengthen your own fleet.

 

[EvilKnievel82]

2 questions:
* Why is that giant food planet that's safely tucked in a corner of my empire not contributing to the supply chain?
* Why did my ships not bring enough supplies themselves, they KNEW their orders of bombing every planet in whatever those xeno filth call their shambles of an empire before they would be allowed to return home, now I have to send in extra ships to aid them?

Well it is not suppossed to be ultra realistic, but at least it would be more realistic than right now. Clearly a giant fleet that took you empire many years to build should not be able to stay on the other side of the galaxy forever without running out of supplies. For me my suggestions would simulate the amount of supplies that you can transport to any given system.

2 questions:
Alternative/Improvement:
What if rather than the damage thing, fleets simply have their own supply stock?
e.g. Supply on ships generally lasts 6 months (as an example), so the fleet gets a bar with supply that diminishes untill it's empty, then it starts losing power/fire rate/speed/...
Supply is replenished in friendly territory at the rate you suggest, with -50% speed in allied territory (but can't deteriorate) and +50% while being docked on a planet.
Civilian supply ships can carry X amount of supply to a fleet, but can then be scuttled. Merging fleets would simply merge their supply. Doomstacks then have to go back and forth a lot to resupply, losing tons of travel time, while having 3-4 large fleets allows you to rotate, but be susceptible to the enemy doomstack. Thus tactics start to avoid it or draw it out of enemy territory and even if the AI sticks to their doomstack strategies, you'll have more time to reform/strengthen your own fleet.

That would not solve the doomstack issue because
a) you could still doomstack in your own territory without any limit and also for a limited time in other territories.
b) it would be incredibly tedious to keep track of the supply levels in your fleets and have to send you fleets back and forth all the time.

The main advantage of my suggestion is that you have a downside (damage) from day one you go over the supply limit. If you make it time dependent (more realistic that's true) you can circumvent it by micromanaging and that's bad game design in my opinion. Sometimes realism is not everything

 

[Airowird]

I was gonna write up a correction to my post but realised I could say it much simpler:

I agree with your proposal, but think you need a reserve built up in fleets so that you don't lose military power the moment you cross your own border.
Because then the default tactic will be to lead the enemy around while the vastness of space kills them. The tactical concept of supply tends to mean that a slow progress forward is not really punished, but striking out into enemy territory or chasing important targets is a risky thing to do. That would also mean that occupying enemy territory would atleast give you partial support from them, so you're pushing the tactics more into a slow conquest moving forward.

 

[EvilKnievel82]

I agree with your proposal, but think you need a reserve built up in fleets so that you don't lose military power the moment you cross your own border.

No you would not necessarily. The supply range should be independent from border range and usually much larger. An example:

So if you move a fleet of 50 points into the enemy star system in the red circle you do not get any attrition damage. Also the damage scales with the amount of "doomstacking" you do in any system. So if you send 10 fleets with 50 strenght in 10 different systems (out of supply range) each fleet will only take (50-0)*X %, e.g. 0,5% damage each month (X being 0,01 here). That is only minor damage that becomes relevant after 1-2 years. But if you send everything in a 500 doomstack in one system out of supply range they take 500 * 0,01% = 5% damage each month. So after 1 year the fleet has lost 60% HP and needs to return home or face annihilation even by smaller fleets.

 

[Airowird]

I still think that you need to either increase the range more on planets/outposts to actually be able to reach the first planet on their side, in your example those 2 planets should be (almost) reach eachother to not chain fleets to your own territory.

As for the damage, I disagree with the attrition being based on the size. Starvation is starvation, it doesn't matter if you're in 10 systems or 1, those 500 ships all don't have supplies coming their way.
But if it would be implemented, I would favour the damage to be X% of CURRENT HP, so you don't lose an entire fleet because the enemy kept sending in transport ships 1 by 1 and you couldn't tell those asshats to ignore them.

 

[grommile]

Before you go suggesting attrition systems, I suggest you go take a look at the state of Paradox's existing attrition systems, and consider that the people behind those are the colleagues of the people who would be implementing whatever attrition system was conceived for Stellaris.

 

[EvilKnievel82]

I still think that you need to either increase the range more on planets/outposts to actually be able to reach the first planet on their side, in your example those 2 planets should be (almost) reach eachother to not chain fleets to your own territory.

As for the damage, I disagree with the attrition being based on the size. Starvation is starvation, it doesn't matter if you're in 10 systems or 1, those 500 ships all don't have supplies coming their way.
But if it would be implemented, I would favour the damage to be X% of CURRENT HP, so you don't lose an entire fleet because the enemy kept sending in transport ships 1 by 1 and you couldn't tell those asshats to ignore them.

It was just an example, where i lazily recycled the old picture As I said the supply range should be larger than border range but you should (at least until lategame) not be able to supply your fleets very far from your borders. One could also imagine a titan extanding some supply around itself.

Again it is not about realism but about giving a disadvantage to doomstacks. Also it would in reality be more difficult to supply a large concentrated fleet compared to many smaller fleets that are spread out because the supply will mostly come from the closest source. For spread out fleets that supply source would be different. Imagine one spaceport having to funnel the supply of the whole fleet as compared to several spaceports of the sharing the logistic burden.

 

[EvilKnievel82]

Before you go suggesting attrition systems, I suggest you go take a look at the state of Paradox's existing attrition systems, and consider that the people behind those are the colleagues of the people who would be implementing whatever attrition system was conceived for Stellaris.

Uhm what is that even supposed to mean? read their minds or shut up?

Paradox has never done any space themed game so naturally their previous attrition systems will not be applicable 1:1 Apart from that Stellaris already has a heal X % per Month mechanic so it should be reasonably easy to incorparate the suggestion or something similar.

 

[grommile]

Uhm what is that even supposed to mean?

It was a snarky comment on the quality - or lack thereof - of Paradox's attrition mechanics.

I mean, EU4 makes the AI flat out immune to naval attrition, and land attrition was nerfed into the carpet for reasons suspected to include "the AI can't cope with it".

 

[EvilKnievel82]

It was a snarky comment on the quality - or lack thereof - of Paradox's attrition mechanics.

I mean, EU4 makes the AI flat out immune to naval attrition, and land attrition was nerfed into the carpet for reasons suspected to include "the AI can't cope with it".

True, but I suspect there should be ways to "force" the AI not to doomstack (e.g. Fleetsizes stays below a certain treshold dependent he average/maximum support level in the own empire). If the AI had to calculate how to optimally deal with supply then yes I guess that would not work. If at the same time the player also has to deal with the attrition then it at least prevents you from doomstacking too much. In EU4 land combat is often challenging exactly because attrition prevents doomstacking too much. So im principle it works. think it could be a puzzlestone to addressing the problem but not the whole solution...

 

[GuildenSpur]

I've suggested something similar. I would prevent stacks from entering deep into enemy space

 

[Nussor]

I suggested something similar with the addition of supply stations and reduced fleet perfomance instead of attrition. I like your drawings, though.

 

[HAL.9000.1]

I think this idea would tend to create WWI-style warfare, with both sides tied to supply bases and the front lines moving little if at all. Also, it would make it difficult, if not impossible, to engage anomalies and crises that did not spawn right on (or inside) your borders.

In any case, the idea of not operating too far from your bases is already included somewhat, in that a fleet that has been seriously damaged needs to return to spaceport to be repaired and upgraded (unless you have an engineering admiral).

 

[EvilKnievel82]

I think this idea would tend to create WWI-style warfare, with both sides tied to supply bases and the front lines moving little if at all. Also, it would make it difficult, if not impossible, to engage anomalies and crises that did not spawn right on (or inside) your borders.

In any case, the idea of not operating too far from your bases is already included somewhat, in that a fleet that has been seriously damaged needs to return to spaceport to be repaired and upgraded (unless you have an engineering admiral).

Well it is a rather soft mechanic... at some point even a relatively small fleet (~20k fleetpower takes less and less fleetcapacity as the game goes on) can kill a leviathan and those would not take too much damage by attrition until they reach even the other end of the galaxy.

The current repair mechanic is somewhat pointess mid-lategame because you either gain access to living metal or you have access to Regenerative Hull Tissue at some point. I had either one or both in all games i played up to now so I only needed to send very damaged ships home if I had several big battles after another (e.g. against unbidden).

 

[Drowe]

It is a somewhat interesting mechanic, though I would go with decreased offensive capabilities but a very low attrition value. The main thing a fighting force will run out of is ammunition and possibly propellant, so movement speed and rate of fire could drop if a fleet is out of supplies. There also needs to be a buffer, so fleets can operate for a few months out of supply range, unless they get into a fight, which depletes their stored supplies after a few fights completely.

You should be able to build something like supply depots to extend your supply range or increase the supply limit. I think they should work more like wormhole stations, but a bit more expensive, wormhole stations themselves could have a more expensive version that can serve as supply depot as well.

 

[EvilKnievel82]

It is a somewhat interesting mechanic, though I would go with decreased offensive capabilities but a very low attrition value. The main thing a fighting force will run out of is ammunition and possibly propellant, so movement speed and rate of fire could drop if a fleet is out of supplies. There also needs to be a buffer, so fleets can operate for a few months out of supply range, unless they get into a fight, which depletes their stored supplies after a few fights completely.

You should be able to build something like supply depots to extend your supply range or increase the supply limit. I think they should work more like wormhole stations, but a bit more expensive, wormhole stations themselves could have a more expensive version that can serve as supply depot as well.

Of course that would be more realistic and interesting. I also think there are a multitude of effects that the limited supply could have, damage only being one of them.

However, I seriously doubt that the AI would be able to deal with time dependent supply levels or something like that. Moreover, it would be very tedious in larger games to keep track of how much supplies are left in fleet 15 or fleet 23.

 

[Drowe]

Of course that would be more realistic and interesting. I also think there are a multitude of effects that the limited supply could have, damage only being one of them.

However, I seriously doubt that the AI would be able to deal with time dependent supply levels or something like that. Moreover, it would be very tedious in larger games to keep track of how much supplies are left in fleet 15 or fleet 23.

Fleets could get a bar like the health bar, that's visible in the outliner. And the game could alert you to it. Also that same problem applies to the method in general too.

The AI would need to be reworked for your system anyway, so taking into account a supply reservoir is not a huge change compared to that. It might actually make it easier for the AI because it doesn't have to care about being below the supply limit for short spans of time when moving from one planet to another anyway.

The AI is going to be a problem with such a system, because it would need to plan where it wants to attack and prepare for that. An automated system is easier on the AI, that's why I prefer supply lines over area based systems. Basically you have a supply fleet, that consists of an abstracted freighter convoy (gets treated as a single ship, and depending on how much % health it still has when it reaches the fleet that's how effective the resupply mission was) and escorts (a small fleet of regular ships) that moves back and forth along the shortest safe route. That's just a concept mind you, but to me at least it would open up more possibilities to restrict how effective doomstacks are.