Wow defensive platforms are just gone once destroyed?

[SeekingEtermity]

How about this:

All stations generate a defensive barrier. While this barrier is active, hostile ships cannot enter the interior of the system. The bareiers can be reduced at a rate based on the bombardment strength of the attacking fleet. Upgrading your starbase and reseachung techs can improve the strength of the barrier.

That's an interesting idea, but totally changes the way system combat works right now and is better suited to its own thread, probably in the "Suggestions" sub-forum.

Also, bombardment strength is kind of nebulous and hard to control right now, so if they want to make it a more central feature of the game (as in, requiring it for attacking systems in general), they'll need to make it a lot more legible and ideally possible to optimize for.

 

[Sinister2202]

Defense platforms are not worth my finger getting arthritis and my eyes getting puffed up.

 

[BlaveSkelly]

Stations in general right now are awful for defense. I've had stations with tier 1 weaponry mixed in with tier 2, but I have tier 3/5 that they refuse to upgrade to. I dont think the rare resources matterd either because I always kept a large stockpile.

It would make the micro awful, but I still would rather have the option to directly control my station loadout.

 

[exi123]

DP should not be self repairing like stations. If they were, then they would indeed become useless since by the time you got a fleet to the system they would now belong to the enemy.

They are fine as is. I use them and they are useful for what they do.

If they were cheaper or stronger (instead of self repairing), this would also be bad. It would make most wars as static as WWI.

The purpose of DPs it to force the enemy to use a real fleet instead of only a small contingent to take the system. They also serve as a good fallback position for your fleets if the enemy has you outgunned.

They are not meant to be some grand citadel that holds off an entire armada single handedly. If you want the fortress to hold the choke point, support it with at least a secondary fleet.

True. Its sometimes hard enough to recap the system with the bastion you build there. And with the stations... My problem is that the whole management of all those starbases is terrible. Its the same fiddely #### fleetmanagemt was before 2.0.

But when you enter the lategame those expensive starbases on your frontiers are mostly useless. Their 30k fleetpower is tough but they get stomped by real fleets to fast. Its okay that thay can not hold the point but they have to give the defender much more time to react. They get destroyed way to fast imo.

 

[exi123]

DP should not be self repairing like stations. If they were, then they would indeed become useless since by the time you got a fleet to the system they would now belong to the enemy.

They are fine as is. I use them and they are useful for what they do.

If they were cheaper or stronger (instead of self repairing), this would also be bad. It would make most wars as static as WWI.

The purpose of DPs it to force the enemy to use a real fleet instead of only a small contingent to take the system. They also serve as a good fallback position for your fleets if the enemy has you outgunned.

They are not meant to be some grand citadel that holds off an entire armada single handedly. If you want the fortress to hold the choke point, support it with at least a secondary fleet.

True. Its sometimes hard enough to recap the system with the bastion you build there. And with the stations... My problem is that the whole management of all those starbases is terrible. Its the same fiddely #### fleetmanagemt was before 2.0.

But when you enter the lategame those expensive starbases on your frontiers are mostly useless. Their 30k fleetpower is tough but they get stomped by real fleets to fast. Its okay that thay can not hold the point but they have to give the defender much more time to react. They get destroyed way to fast imo.

 

[methegrate]

I don't think managing stations is that big of a hassle. Then again, I tend to disagree with most cries of micromanagement. A quick scroll through the forum and it seems like people have generally lumped 90 percent of Stellaris' gameplay as "micromanagement." If we gave players all the automation they seem to want, the game would just be a giant cutscene with the occasional button to push.

But! I do agree, defensive platforms aren't great for their cost. I feel like the trouble is that they kind of have to be, right? If cost-for-cost they were as good as ships, then it would be almost impossible to wage an offensive war. Players could just build an equal and opposite defense backed by the advantages of a station's buildings.

Personally the three things I would think about are:

- Make evasion MUCH less powerful. It's such a freaking huge deal! It's why you can never, ever, ever kill fleets of corvettes, and having no evasion does kind of cripple platforms.

- Let players design at least station modules. Apparently there's some technical reason why players can't design the stations themselves, but at least let me design the gun modules I install so they're not all low-tier mass drivers.

- Others have suggested that defensive platforms get a repair cost instead of having to be rebuilt. I think that's a pretty great idea.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

But! I do agree, defensive platforms aren't great for their cost. I feel like the trouble is that they kind of have to be, right? If cost-for-cost they were as good as ships, then it would be almost impossible to wage an offensive war. Players could just build an equal and opposite defense backed by the advantages of a station's buildings.

There are at least three reasons that wouldn't be the case:

1. Platform count is capped, and at a far lower level than fleet cap (plus, the attacker could always jump in multiple fleets in parallel). There's a pretty hard limit (ignoring repeatable techs, which both sides can get) on how strong any one starbase can be, even a citadel + a full array of platforms (even if you count ion cannon, the starbase building for extra platform slots, and the relevant ascension perk). At any point in the game it should be less than a player's mobile fleet (especially a militarist player) can get. Defense platforms could be outright free and still not make it "almost impossible to wage an offensive war"; you'd just have to hit the enemy where/when they didn't expect you so their mobile fleet was elsewhere (and it would certainly be a lot harder to attack effectively, which is why nobody is suggesting something so extreme).
2. Defense platform range is limited, and they can't even get artillery computers or spinal-mount weapons. By the time an fleet has spinal-mount battleships, it can sweep away most platforms (which have mediocre defenses and no evasion, which is the best protection against spinal mounts) before they even get a chance to fire. Because ships of any size above Destroyers will almost always have the advantage in alpha strike, the defender must consider some portion of their platforms to be essentially just ablative armor, and again, platforms have a hard (and fairly low) cap.
3. Platforms are dispersed and cannot concentrate! Suppose you have three choke points to defend (including wormholes, etc. and for now assume the enemy lacks jump drives). If you spend X alloys at each choke point building Y strength of defense platforms (and build no ships) and I spend 2X alloys building 2Y strength of ships, I have only spent 2/3 as much as you but can throw 2Y strength at your defended systems one at a time, and defeat them in detail.

The lack of mobility, evasion, or range, and the hard cap on the number you can have per system, means that platforms should honestly be *more* cost-effective than ships. Why the heck does mounting thrusters and a hyperdrive on a hull make it, in effect, cheaper than an equally-strong stationary platform? That's just bizarre.

 

[methegrate]

There are at least three reasons that wouldn't be the case:

1. Platform count is capped, and at a far lower level than fleet cap (plus, the attacker could always jump in multiple fleets in parallel). There's a pretty hard limit (ignoring repeatable techs, which both sides can get) on how strong any one starbase can be, even a citadel + a full array of platforms (even if you count ion cannon, the starbase building for extra platform slots, and the relevant ascension perk). At any point in the game it should be less than a player's mobile fleet (especially a militarist player) can get. Defense platforms could be outright free and still not make it "almost impossible to wage an offensive war"; you'd just have to hit the enemy where/when they didn't expect you so their mobile fleet was elsewhere (and it would certainly be a lot harder to attack effectively, which is why nobody is suggesting something so extreme).
2. Defense platform range is limited, and they can't even get artillery computers or spinal-mount weapons. By the time an fleet has spinal-mount battleships, it can sweep away most platforms (which have mediocre defenses and no evasion, which is the best protection against spinal mounts) before they even get a chance to fire. Because ships of any size above Destroyers will almost always have the advantage in alpha strike, the defender must consider some portion of their platforms to be essentially just ablative armor, and again, platforms have a hard (and fairly low) cap.
3. Platforms are dispersed and cannot concentrate! Suppose you have three choke points to defend (including wormholes, etc. and for now assume the enemy lacks jump drives). If you spend X alloys at each choke point building Y strength of defense platforms (and build no ships) and I spend 2X alloys building 2Y strength of ships, I have only spent 2/3 as much as you but can throw 2Y strength at your defended systems one at a time, and defeat them in detail.

The lack of mobility, evasion, or range, and the hard cap on the number you can have per system, means that platforms should honestly be *more* cost-effective than ships. Why the heck does mounting thrusters and a hyperdrive on a hull make it, in effect, cheaper than an equally-strong stationary platform? That's just bizarre.

Very fair points.

I don't think I agree with #1, but mostly because I'm against anything that pushes for more concentration of forces in Stellaris. I'm all for letting players fortify the crap out of their most essential systems. Earth should be bristling with weaponry. I'm just leery about saying "technically you can overwhelm any position with enough ships." Seems like it reinforces the idea of select all-right click-#strategy!

And on #3, you make a very good point in theory. But the game seems to have developed pretty hard-core toward choke points. I may have five different ways into my empire, but in any given war I probably only have one or two that actually face the enemy. Again, I love the idea of dispersed defenses in theory. Platforms seem perfect for when you have to pick and choose your critical systems... but has that been your experience? Mine has been that since 2.0 every war is more about the one big fight, not less.

It's the issue on these forums that I legitimately can't understand. Everyone cheers chokepoints as adding strategy and depth to the game, but it does the exact opposite. There is no strategy to chokepoints. There's just the obvious, only, and dominant solution: This is my chokepoint. There are many others like it, but this one is mine. I will build all my defenses and station all my ships here because otherwise the enemy will hit my X/Y defenses with X/1 offense and then run amok inside my undefended empire.

Again... select all-right click-#strategy!

But you're completely right on #2. Artillery does do a good job. And I do want to think you're more right than me on #3, I just don't think I've seen it (personally).

 

[Starcomet]

I have a mod that lets you pick traits that greatly increase defense platform and starbases damage and health, at the cost of having virtually no naval capacity in the beginning.

 

[nomeensno]

Defense platforms could certainly use a change/buff. The idea that they may be disabled (as opposed to destroyed) and repaired once the system fully switches control (after war) is a good one. Allowing a defender to retake there system and begin repairs, without giving the assaulting party too much reward for soft capturing a system. At present they do have some limited benefit, specifically in early game, and even as mid game begins to take shape, if only to offset potentially limited fleet capacity. Working sort of like a force multiplier, providing an additional layer of defense to be used WITH standing fleets, not instead of.

I have on a few occasions managed to capture starbases that still had defense platforms left, but whether or not they made a difference in being able to hold those systems after soft capturing is debatable. Also, perhaps this is a bug I'm not really sure, I have noticed that you can actually build new defense platforms in these soft captured systems (while still being at war.) I don't think this was always the case (I could be wrong,) but at least as of 2.2 (not sure of 2.2.3) you could do this. Particularly useful if you are waging war across the galaxy and not able to rapidly reinforce your fleets with new ships. Again, used in addition to standing fleets, not instead of.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Very fair points.

I don't think I agree with #1, but mostly because I'm against anything that pushes for more concentration of forces in Stellaris. I'm all for letting players fortify the crap out of their most essential systems. Earth should be bristling with weaponry. I'm just leery about saying "technically you can overwhelm any position with enough ships." Seems like it reinforces the idea of select all-right click-#strategy!

And on #3, you make a very good point in theory. But the game seems to have developed pretty hard-core toward choke points. I may have five different ways into my empire, but in any given war I probably only have one or two that actually face the enemy. Again, I love the idea of dispersed defenses in theory. Platforms seem perfect for when you have to pick and choose your critical systems... but has that been your experience? Mine has been that since 2.0 every war is more about the one big fight, not less.

It's the issue on these forums that I legitimately can't understand. Everyone cheers chokepoints as adding strategy and depth to the game, but it does the exact opposite. There is no strategy to chokepoints. There's just the obvious, only, and dominant solution: This is my chokepoint. There are many others like it, but this one is mine. I will build all my defenses and station all my ships here because otherwise the enemy will hit my X/Y defenses with X/1 offense and then run amok inside my undefended empire.

Again... select all-right click-#strategy!

But you're completely right on #2. Artillery does do a good job. And I do want to think you're more right than me on #3, I just don't think I've seen it (personally).

That's a good point. You can alter the number of choke points (basically, remove them entirely) by altering the galaxy generation parameters, and in mid- to late-game you can do things like use Gateways, L-Gates, and (especially) Jump Drives to bypass well-defended choke points (ah, that lovely feeling when somebody's (L-)gateway comes online and they discover a brand new border to their empire...), but overall it's true that usually I only have a few paths to an enemy, especially in the early game.

The whole "doomstack is how you win" thing *is* unfortunate, and making static defenses viable would probably reinforce that. There are ways you could mitigate the doomstack issue (which arguably needs mitigating already, without any changes to defenses) but it would then be necessary to consider platform balance in light of those changes.

With all that said, I don't think making platforms 25%-50% cheaper would make the game appreciably worse. They were cheaper (in "real cost") in 2.1 than they are in 2.2 (ships cost a lot fewer alloys than they did minerals, platforms don't), and I don't see a good reason for Paradox to have effectively *raised* their price so much. If there's a lot of concern about preventing impenetrable fortress systems, limit platforms a bit more (lower their cap, lower their base HP, whatever) in addition to lowering their cost, but I don't actually think that's a problem. The cap is already low enough. As for the impacts on strategic play, I think there's a *lot* to be said for making defensive fortification viable (I know some people hate the very idea; I'm definitely not one of them), especially as a pacifist empire, and requiring attackers to be clever about cracking that nut (how often do you actually see people use jump drives to bypass choke points? Practically never, in my experience, and that seems like a shame; the jump recharge penalty should not strictly outweigh the usefulness of bypassing static defenses).

 

[Masoz]

It seriously needs to be emphasized that they are too darn expensive. Their cost in alloys is equivalent to their mineral cost pre-2.2. That was fine when the only economy was the mineral economy, but now it's so prohibitively expensive it's a joke. You only buy them when you don't know what to do with your alloys late game. It's like buying CaravanCoinz, except that was supposed to be a joke.

 

[Chthon]

Even with the cost reduction, they die before they have any effect due to their defenses. Personally I think they should be scrapped for a different imagining. It makes no sense that you have anything stationary in space.

 

[Wildwiredweasel]

SeekingEternity putting nails in the coffin over here. I only have a few issues.

There are at least three reasons that wouldn't be the case:

1. ... Defense platforms could be outright free and still not make it "almost impossible to wage an offensive war"; you'd just have to hit the enemy where/when they didn't expect you so their mobile fleet was elsewhere (and it would certainly be a lot harder to attack effectively, which is why nobody is suggesting something so extreme)

I feel like if they were free, or practically free, you could actually clog up all enemy intrusions by slowing them down tremendously. I don't think they'd do too much damage, but they could slow the enemy fleet down much more easily, letting your fleet more easily chase them down. That would encourage fleet stacking so you could melt through the wall more easily, and would reduce the value of flanking enemies. I don't think it'd make an offense war impossible- just a lot less interesting. Kinda like LoL but without the jungling.

2. Defense platform range is limited, and they can't even get artillery computers or spinal-mount weapons. By the time an fleet has spinal-mount battleships, it can sweep away most platforms (which have mediocre defenses and no evasion, which is the best protection against spinal mounts) before they even get a chance to fire. Because ships of any size above Destroyers will almost always have the advantage in alpha strike, the defender must consider some portion of their platforms to be essentially just ablative armor, and again, platforms have a hard (and fairly low) cap.

Do you think the cap should be removed, or would that just be worse? I feel like that'd just be worse.

3. Platforms are dispersed and cannot concentrate! Suppose you have three choke points to defend (including wormholes, etc. and for now assume the enemy lacks jump drives). If you spend X alloys at each choke point building Y strength of defense platforms (and build no ships) and I spend 2X alloys building 2Y strength of ships, I have only spent 2/3 as much as you but can throw 2Y strength at your defended systems one at a time, and defeat them in detail.

Hm. Do you think a return of actual defense platforms as buildable objects would help?

The lack of mobility, evasion, or range, and the hard cap on the number you can have per system, means that platforms should honestly be *more* cost-effective than ships. Why the heck does mounting thrusters and a hyperdrive on a hull make it, in effect, cheaper than an equally-strong stationary platform? That's just bizarre.

honestly the only thing that even needs to be said.

 

[Jman5]

There are at least three reasons that wouldn't be the case:

1. Platform count is capped, and at a far lower level than fleet cap (plus, the attacker could always jump in multiple fleets in parallel). There's a pretty hard limit (ignoring repeatable techs, which both sides can get) on how strong any one starbase can be, even a citadel + a full array of platforms (even if you count ion cannon, the starbase building for extra platform slots, and the relevant ascension perk). At any point in the game it should be less than a player's mobile fleet (especially a militarist player) can get. Defense platforms could be outright free and still not make it "almost impossible to wage an offensive war"; you'd just have to hit the enemy where/when they didn't expect you so their mobile fleet was elsewhere (and it would certainly be a lot harder to attack effectively, which is why nobody is suggesting something so extreme).
2. Defense platform range is limited, and they can't even get artillery computers or spinal-mount weapons. By the time an fleet has spinal-mount battleships, it can sweep away most platforms (which have mediocre defenses and no evasion, which is the best protection against spinal mounts) before they even get a chance to fire. Because ships of any size above Destroyers will almost always have the advantage in alpha strike, the defender must consider some portion of their platforms to be essentially just ablative armor, and again, platforms have a hard (and fairly low) cap.
3. Platforms are dispersed and cannot concentrate! Suppose you have three choke points to defend (including wormholes, etc. and for now assume the enemy lacks jump drives). If you spend X alloys at each choke point building Y strength of defense platforms (and build no ships) and I spend 2X alloys building 2Y strength of ships, I have only spent 2/3 as much as you but can throw 2Y strength at your defended systems one at a time, and defeat them in detail.

The lack of mobility, evasion, or range, and the hard cap on the number you can have per system, means that platforms should honestly be *more* cost-effective than ships. Why the heck does mounting thrusters and a hyperdrive on a hull make it, in effect, cheaper than an equally-strong stationary platform? That's just bizarre.

All great points. I'll add one more which is chokepoints become little more than inconvenient in the late game when you have unlocked jump drives. So at best a super fortress system is an impediment and can protect one of your worlds from invasion.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

SeekingEternity putting nails in the coffin over here. I only have a few issues.

I feel like if they were free, or practically free, you could actually clog up all enemy intrusions by slowing them down tremendously. I don't think they'd do too much damage, but they could slow the enemy fleet down much more easily, letting your fleet more easily chase them down. That would encourage fleet stacking so you could melt through the wall more easily, and would reduce the value of flanking enemies. I don't think it'd make an offense war impossible- just a lot less interesting. Kinda like LoL but without the jungling.

Do you think the cap should be removed, or would that just be worse? I feel like that'd just be worse.
Hm. Do you think a return of actual defense platforms as buildable objects would help?
honestly the only thing that even needs to be said.

I love how everybody reads my typo'ed name correctly anyway. I can't find a way to change it.

Platforms could have a lower up-front cost but a higher maintenance cost, making it impractical to maintain a lot of them during peace but possible to spam then when war is on the horizon (or already started). That would encourage strategic blitzes more than the current system.

I don't think the cap should be removed, but it could stand to be changed. One possibility would be making it a soft cap, with massively scaling costs for going over (could be a small upkeep cost on all platforms, allowing a few very strong systems as a trade off against building almost any elsewhere; it could be a large upkeep cost on platforms for that starbase alone, so that fortifying any one system too much is extremely pricey; it could be a sharply-rising increase in manufacturing cost in that system reflecting the need to further upgrade the starbase management system sort of like the existing coordination computer building; it could be a combination or something else entirely).

 

[Wildwiredweasel]

hm........ alternatively...... hm.......

a mobile battlestation that has to stick to trade routes to sustain itself; otherwise has enormous penalties, and it can't benefit from enemy territory trade routes.

 

[The Dadinator]

What would you say to a mod that made defense platforms behave like starbases, meaning at the end of failed combat they disabled like starbases and came back to life like them?

 

[methegrate]

What would you say to a mod that made defense platforms behave like starbases, meaning at the end of failed combat they disabled like starbases and came back to life like them?

Personally, I like the idea of repairable platforms more. Otherwise, I think it might make wars harder to fight. Part of the doomstack problem is that it's pretty hard to ever come back from losing a single fight. If the enemy could automatically get a system's full defenses online (for free no less) after taking it, that would probably just compound the problem.

 

[The Dadinator]

Personally, I like the idea of repairable platforms more. Otherwise, I think it might make wars harder to fight. Part of the doomstack problem is that it's pretty hard to ever come back from losing a single fight. If the enemy could automatically get a system's full defenses online (for free no less) after taking it, that would probably just compound the problem.

So you would want to make it a special project for the enemy to have to send a construction ship to "fix" them before they come online?