Why all the hate for static defenses?

[Afrotoaster7]

I don't mean to sound condescending. I'm genuinely asking why, because I feel like I'm missing something. Anytime somebody brings up static defenses there always seems to be several people saying "Static defenses are only meant to buy time for your fleet to arrive."
I just don't understand that mindset. Why do we only want them to have one viable strategic use? Wouldn't it add more depth to the game by giving them multiple possible uses?
Also, this one I kinda get, but really disagree with. I also see a lot of people saying "I'm not saying defenses should be able to take out an entire fleet." and again I'm left wondering why? I mean, if someone put in an obscene amount of resources into a stations defenses (so much so that it prevents them from having much of an offensive fleet) why shouldn't it be able to go toe to toe with a fleet of similar resource cost? Why does the combat have to be fleet v fleet?
I'm new to this community, so maybe somebody could help me understand the hesitation for powerful defenses?

 

[Barnham]

I am among the players who think static defenses should have more viable strategies; should be more than a vanguard of doomed souls and forgotten scrap. So I can't offer a response to your question.

Instead, I will suggest something that I know the pdox community enjoys. Write up a proposal for how you think defenses ought to work, why you think it, and how it would improve the game. And then prepare for the respectful counter points that come your way and defend your position. People around here love that stuff, and you might catch the eye of a like-minded dev

 

[Afrotoaster7]

I am among the players who think static defenses should have more viable strategies; should be more than a vanguard of doomed souls and forgotten scrap. So I can't offer a response to your question.

Instead, I will suggest something that I know the pdox community enjoys. Write up a proposal for how you think defenses ought to work, why you think it, and how it would improve the game. And then prepare for the respectful counter points that come your way and defend your position. People around here love that stuff, and you might catch the eye of a like-minded dev

Thanks for the reply. I've seen plenty of suggestion posts for static defenses, and didn't want to make another thread. The question was more so because often people would make those statements while making their counter argument without explaining that specific point. I did not want to derail within the thread.
I totally agree though, static defenses should have more strategic options.

 

[OBRkenobi]

Why do we only want them to have one viable strategic use? Wouldn't it add more depth to the game by giving them multiple possible uses?

We don't want them to only have one use. They just do. because of how weak they are, It's simply impractical to attempt to use them for anything else. Why do you think we're complaining in the first place?

 

[Kat Tsun]

We don't want them to only have one use. They just do. because of how weak they are, It's just plain impractical to attempt to use them for anything but delaying. Why do you think we're complaining in the first place?

What other use is an immobile space bunker supposed to have? There's at least two in Stellaris. You can delay attacks long enough for your ships to arrive, or you can make someone avoid a system by spamming loads of forts with FTL snares, shield inhibitors, and minefields.

 

[OBRkenobi]

What other use is an immobile space bunker supposed to have? There's at least two in Stellaris. You can delay attacks long enough for your ships to arrive, or you can make someone avoid a system by spamming loads of forts with FTL snares, shield inhibitors, and minefields.

It should be able to shoot the crap out of smaller enemy fleets that get caught in it's range to prevent whack-a-mole situations. For a decent price of course.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I've been using a mod that makes station health slowly scale as the game progresses- it's been very useful. My first game with it enabled was a very military-weighted one, and I more-or-less rushed the station techs; a Fortress wound up being a 1.5-2k force and seemed capable of holding its own. The AI seemed a lot more cautious about fielding fleets in areas I'd set up stations, too.

(My current campaign has the same mod, but I'm still only using the basic stations 100+ years in because it's more an economic build and I have a HUGE federation backing me up.)

 

[Seryss]

Statics just lead to stalled out gameplay. If you fortify your worlds to the point they can handle fleets than the opposing player not only has to counter that, they also have to counter your fleet that you bring to the fight, which means nothing but eco for years, and years, until they out fleet/tech you, which if you focus on defense they will 100% always beat someone turtling, and building defenses. Anti structure ships are in my experience almost always passed up for the next best thing that's also good against killing ships so they don't balance them.

For those complaining about doomstacks - strong statics make it even more necessary to concentrate all of your fleet on one point.

 

[gdj]

It is the nature of warfare that static defenses are at an disadvantage, as the attacker can (at least theoretically) always bring reinforcements, and always has the initiative of the attacker. No matter how strong fortresses get buffed, it is always possible to build stronger fleets. Thus, delaying attacks is pretty much the only thing fortresses could possibly do under any configuration.

 

[Wyrm]

I think they should reinforce borders. Not expand borders, but prevent your borders from being pushed by another empire's colonies and frontier outposts.


They would be more viable if fleets were smaller. Large 50k+ Doomstacks barely notice the presence of a Fortress.

I wouldn't mind being able to build them closer together.

 

[8igualdos0s]

I don´t hate them, but in my present campaign I am winning the game absolutely ignoring them (war in heaven, no end-crisis, hard). I have used "The Flower Formation" several times in the past to stop/speed down awaken empires and/or the scourge, but takes too much time and resources.

I really don´t think Paradox have to change their actual state buffing them. However we´ll gonna have Orbitals in Banks, so maybe static defenses get some love...

But if you miss more powerfulll station/fortress, there are some good mods doing that job in the steam´s workshop. I tried one of them back in the day and it made my game really interesting, that´s true, but maybe also because I was playing an hyperlane-only game.

 

[General Retreat]

In my opinion fortress should use fleet cap and be 1.25 - 1.5x more effective than the equivalent cap/cost in ships, with reduced comparative maintenance. There should also be tiers above fortress, the research for which could be weighted based on the galaxy's median maximum fleet cap. So once everyone has more or less got to 1000 cap, 'citadels' are much more likely to roll. This ensures more powerful defences approximately scale with the fleet size arms race, instead of being totally irrelevant or insurmountable obstacles.

The effect of the above is that you can focus on defensive works at the cost of less capacity being available for maintaining a large offensive fleet. Put all your eggs in your fortress' basket and you'll find yourself in a better economic situation, but always fighting on home ground.

Even better, restructure stations to work like spaceports. You build a basic structure and then upgrade them through tiers, unlocking modules and abilities as you go. This could give stations a focused military role, or a diversified one that complements peacetime activities. It also stops players building impenetrable doomforts far faster than a comparable fleet could be built. If you want to put that terrifying citadel inside enemy territory, you're going to need to defend the construct site while it's levelling.

 

[permanently_afk]

In my opinion:
Light to medium static defenses should be capable of holding of a raiding fleet (i.e. someone out to blow your stations) but not an assualt fleet on their own. Heavy defenses should require a hard counter (e.g. siege-battleships) or overwhelming force to give smaller empires a leg up against larger ones. Of course, the last one requires that they use fleet cap or the large empire will have the advantage in both offense and defense (maybe scale the cap use by distance from captial?).

The current state of the game makes them suffer, like many other things, from the doomstack problem. I think once this is solved, defences will gain in utility without needing many corrections. Of course, "Fortress systems" (hi, Cadia) would make good DLC material.

 

[artemis667]

There are two basic tactical and strategic issues with static defenses.
1) they are fixed in place
2) they are density-restricted. Fleets have no density restriction.
3) they can be bypassed with jump technology, so you can only defend systems they're actually built in.

So the later you go with the larger empires and the bigger more concentrated doomstacky fleets, the more useless they become. Auras are nice, but you can't *really* fortify your empire.

I would just remove the density restriction altogether (or reduce it to the point where it is minimal), and allow static defenses to be redeployable (or scrappable maybe for 80% of the mineral cost). Those operations would take time of course, maybe six months each step, and if the redeploy option is used, it'd travel as a vulnerable transport ship.

Also worth considering is a defense station option that can, well, destabilise FTL, so you can't warp or jump/wormhole over it. With limits maybe. Not 100% sure how this would work but adding defensive depth as a concept would be awesome strategically.

And yeah this stuff would all change the game, and really weigh things in favour of defending empires. People may or may not be in favour of that.

 

[scaper12123]

The reason static defense are considered useless in this game is primarily because of the dreaded doomstack, those massive fleets of ships with upwards of 50 to 60k power make the small insignificant stations useless really fast. Even the fortresses become useless almost as soon as they become accessable.

I use a mod that adds a fourth level of station to the game. It's called a Citadel and it generally comes with 30k power. Despite that, it lasts a very long time in battle even against a fleet of 100k, and tends to whittle them down. That's what stations should be for in my opinion: whittling down the opposition, slowing them down, and most importantly being able to stand up to an attack for more than a minute.

All that said, the best way to correct this issue is to correct the root of the problem as far as I'm concerned. Doomstacks should be an inadvisable approach to the game, and if they were then we wouldn't have so many issues with static defense.

 

[Pchang]

If you reduce the exclusion zone and decrease the maintenance costs, then static defenses become a viable strategy.

 

[mangalore]

I think they should reinforce borders. Not expand borders, but prevent your borders from being pushed by another empire's colonies and frontier outposts.


T....

I think borders should be much more fuzzy unless you have a credible claim (inhabited planet) in the system. As is the border mechanic is pretty gamey and you cannot trade uninhabited systems in war while the destruction of frontier outposts is also only somewhat credible.

As for defenses. I really don't see snares do anything more than just bring all the static defenses in range of the incoming fleet at once. I intentionally use that to conquer planets faster! "Oh, a snare! Don't have to fly through the system to get to the planet, great!"

 

[DanaDark]

I been working on modding my game in accordance to my tastes. At first I tried other mods but find learning to mod Stellaris (I heavily did CK2 and EU3) allows me a greater level of control over how *I* want to play the game (to each his own after all).

I went ahead and gave all military stations 2X the HP and slightly reduced maintenance costs. Haven't gotten to fiddle to much with them yet beyond that, but I definitely plan to try a few things out with them.

Ideas I have:
1. Cheaper and more durable (Build more, love and embrace them)
2. More expensive, far deadlier (Build fewer, but where they are, they mean something)
3. Mix of the above. Perhaps making small - medium - and large fullfill different purposes. (Medium used to delay enemy, large meant to be able to repel but so expensive only a couple)

Meh, the game is easily modded... so however you like it, you can have it that way!

 

[Kayden_II]

We have Doomstack-Fleets - Why no Doomstack-Stations ? ...
Let Me "connect" Spaceports and Military-Stations with Each Other ! ...
I mean, It isn't that New - Even a Ring-World is a connected Structure of (at Least) 4 (in Principal) equal Parts.

 

[zanaikin]

Paradox's design disdain towards static defenses is simple.

This is a studio whose foundation lay in games like Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, and Crusader Kings.

Notice that static defenses in any of those games will NOT win you wars. They only buy time until your enemy sieges them down, starve them into submission, flank around and isolate, or simply punch a hole through them with superheavy artillery and tanks.

Paradox's design philosophy is well grounded in real-world military theory where turtling is simply not a viable strategy and will only bring a slow death. The only purpose of defense is to buy time for a counterattack.

Stellaris is one of the only titles that opened up to the casual crowd, who are more interested in their own playstyles rather than learning military doctrines that the rest of us HOI or EU veterans already know -- like advance along parallel lines of mutual support; mobility is the key to victory (force march!); and blitz, isolate, and exploit.

(I noticed in other paradox games players tend to ask questions like "How can I blitz like the German Wehrmacht" or "How do I play like Frederick the Great?" where in Stellaris it's "why won't my fortresses work!"... says something about the players ^^' )