Why not add some attrition ?

[Valyrian_Knight]

Well , pretty much the title. Why doomstack or ground troops doomstack does not suffer from attrition ? Supplying hundreds of ships in food and water during a campaign in an ennemy territory far away is a nightmare . Convois would be raided if the fleet is too big , and transporting months of food and water in a ship take a lot of space and reduce the size of other things (troops , ordonnance etc ). So , both as a logical thing and a solution to doomstack, why not adding attrition ?

 

[krios41]

Why would you?
Who's not to say they have enormormous cardboard boxes filled with nutritional paste on their ships with food for a decade?
Who's to say people are even in those ships and not doing some wireless wizardry?

and let's assume they would put in atrition, how would it work? what would happen?

 

[Premu]

Attrition makes sense if you send ground troops into hostile areas - vehicles break down, soldiers get sick or wounded, and as you're far away from your supply base, you can't simply replace these losses. And if you have too many troops close by things get worse - more people close by means worse hygiene for the soldiers, crowded supply routes mean it takes longer to send in spare parts or replacements.

It doesn't make much sense in space. Of course you will also have some kind of "attrition" - but this attrition would be independent from the actual size of the fleet. Space is vast, and every space ship will hopefully have enough facilities on board for repairs or medical care. Small "invisible" supply ships will have no problem to make deliveries, too, as it's basically impossible to "overcrowd" space itself. So in the end it would be rather pointless to include it, and it suffices to include it as abstraction by the double supply cost for fleets in space.

 

[Oscot]

I agree with OP. Attrition is an excellent solution to the doomstack problem and why it hasn't already been implemented I do not know.

"But there's no attrition in space!" you cry.
Well it's a little late to start whining about realism in a game were you can travel faster than light by getting really, really high, sentient venus fly traps, and literal space dragons.
If you need a pseudoscience rationalisation, just handwave something about the exotic matter used for all varieties of FTL engines weakens the fabric of space-time, and if there are too many FTL engines in too close proximity, the subtle changes which they exert on the curveature of spacetime start to add up and weaken ships' delicate nanoelectronics

 

[Moonshadow101]

I'm pretty much done with doomstack "solutions" that are basically just "Apply a direct penalty to big fleets." It's short-sighted. The workarounds are obvious and the core tactical issues aren't being addressed.

 

[Mitroll]

Well it's a little late to start whining about realism in a game were you can travel faster than light by getting really, really high

Welp, time to make a happy spiritualist faction and name it 420 blazeit.

 

[Valyrian_Knight]

Well, stacking enough food for everyone in a ship (which likely possess thousand of crew, plus transporting ground troups) for a year campaign is a bit hard : it will take too much place on a ship , can you imagine a several month-stock of food and water for tens of thousand of people and soldiers ? Plus you have the attrition in term of ammo, fuel, etc . Even in maintenance and reparation. I personnaly doubt people will stack all of that in each ship, I think they would prefer supply lines.
From what I remember, in the Foundation serie of Asimov, Bel Riose is establishing supply lines. They don't stack up tons of food in each vessels. And generally speaking, I think that in most sci fi universes, fleets are split up both for defensive purposes and for supply problems. Smaller fleet are easier to supply and can just pillage cargos and planets.
Honestly, it isn't totally unbelievable to have some kind of "attrition" (decrease in combat effectiveness ? Massive increase in cost ? I dunno ) , which will be realistic while partly resolving the problem.