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turn off the TV posted:I was thinking something along the lines of being able to tell a fleet to intercept enemy forces in my space, and if they're all dead, then go kill enemy fleets in their space, and if they're all dead go bomb starbases, etc. Especially by the end of the game I kind of stop caring about random tiny enemy fleets in my space, but it would be cool if I could just automate a response force to kill them for me. A vassal can do the last one in the current game.
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Nov 30, 2017 18:46
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I'm glad to see that Stellaris is going to implement a couple of the ideas I suggested.  But seriously, I think they're a good change to the combat system, and it should help reduce the doomstacking issue. I'm not a fan of the fleet disparity bonus though, the fact that you need to watch your fleet to make sure the enemy doesnt get a larger bonus seems like extra busywork. Similarly if you want to try and abuse it yourself, you need to split your stacks and send them in one at a time. This seems especially tedious if the hyperlanes don't work in your favor and you basically have to slowly funnel through single choke paths.
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Nov 30, 2017 18:50
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OGS-Remix posted:I'm glad to see that Stellaris is going to implement a couple of the ideas I suggested. It won't work like this. It'll still be more efficient to just engage with all your fleets at once, it's just that you *can* engage a larger fleet without it being pure suicidal madness.
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Nov 30, 2017 18:52
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I'm not 100% sold on the new solutions for doom stacks, but I do really like the idea that damaged ships actually fight worse. That's a problem in so many games, it's like in D&D where a monster at 100% health fights exactly the same as a monster at 1% health, they're not slowed or injured or weaker in any way so there's literally no reason not to focus-fire on one target at a time until they are dead. Games where damage actually effects things means that spreading out damage isn't always a bad idea. In Stellaris, I think this will solve a lot of the targetting min/maxing bullshit where weapons that seem good on paper are actually lovely in-game because they spread their damage out too much.
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Nov 30, 2017 18:52
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I think with the encouragement for multiple fleets it would be good if you could mothball them to. Just have a mothballed fleet have like 25% Hull, armour, and shields, meaning they need to be repaired. It does mean of course that someone could sucker punch your mothballed fleet, but if I have like three 40K strength fleets with their own admirals, I won't need all of them in peacetime to kill space whales or whatever. It also means if I need the leader slots for some reason (?) I can mothball fleets without an admiral.
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Nov 30, 2017 18:52
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Shadowlyger posted:Translation: Everyone will continue to doomstack but it's more of a fiddly pain in the rear end now. Followers jump simultaneously so it's just right clicking secondary fleets to a primary which seems fine. Can't just have one god emperor admiral five star leading everything forever. Hopefully they make admirals more interesting than stat sticks to place on for +X% bonus. At least trickster sounds like it will be useful to pick and stick on a raider fleet. I do wish that war policy was settable at a fleet level (maybe require presence of an admiral? Or you just get "this is a shamecube fleet with no bonus to anything, maybe with a malus due to not having an admiral") But yeah, I don't see how the changes put together eliminate doom stacks though. If I want to win vs a powerful foe, I will combine everything into one blob and slam it into the enemy. With the fire rate thing they may hurt me more but I don't see any impetus to split things up. Also the fire rate thing bonus thing to a smaller fleet feels weird and a penalty to the attackers for the same instead due to having a ton of things trying to shoot at a smaller number of things (like a cludgy combat width) would make more sense. The end result is the same though so whatever. I assume this bonus will be based on fleet size not literal ship #s. The bigger things that would make me not want to doomstack are the already mentioned changes. Having hyperlane only without jump drives obsoleting them and having to travel through systems to get places means committing a fleet to someplace is more of a commitment. If I send my entire stack into a single front and someone starts messing with me on the other side of my empire it will take more time to pull my poo poo back and respond. If they just take stuff from you on the other side of your empire it matters more because they also steal resources now from occupied stuff. Ceding functional control of a bunch of systems while still paying your fleet sounds like it'd be real bad for you while also making them stronger at the same time. If it also ends up possible to occupy fortified stations and turn their guns on enemies it's even worse because dislodging them from your own stuff will either be A) very easy because you didn't fortify. However you will lose stuff fast. or B) Losing a fortress is Very Bad because they can now defend the fort they stole with their own fleet when you come back to fight them. Basically if you are the big guy on the block it sound's like there's going to be more impetus to split forces instead to keep other guys out instead of just flying ye olde jump drive doomstack around to quickly blow up their fleets followed by boring rapid fire planet invasions until you hit 100 war score. Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Nov 30, 2017 |
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Nov 30, 2017 18:53
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turn off the TV posted:I was thinking something along the lines of being able to tell a fleet to intercept enemy forces in my space, and if they're all dead, then go kill enemy fleets in their space, and if they're all dead go bomb starbases, etc. Especially by the end of the game I kind of stop caring about random tiny enemy fleets in my space, but it would be cool if I could just automate a response force to kill them for me. If fortified starbases are as powerful as the numbers we're seeing suggests, then I would guess proper strategic placing of such starbases along with FTL inhibitors would prevent small fleets from being much more than an annoyance. They might raid your fringe systems but hopefully not be able to get very far into your borders.
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Nov 30, 2017 18:58
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I think ground combat should be replaced with an in depth procedurally generated game of Battletech.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:04
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OGS-Remix posted:I'm glad to see that Stellaris is going to implement a couple of the ideas I suggested.  OGS-Remix posted:But seriously, I think they're a good change to the combat system, and it should help reduce the doomstacking issue. It's not really abusable in the way you're describing; Unless they utterly wreck the maths it should only shove the advantage from greater numbers to a more linear benefit. More ships is still better than, but twice as many ships will be closer to twice as good rather than the current four times as good.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:06
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Baronjutter posted:I think ground combat should be replaced with an in depth procedurally generated game of Battletech. Unironically this.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:07
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Wait, what the gently caress. I'm in a late game engagement and I've got a fleet bombarding a planet. But because of the slowdown caused by the massive fleets moving around, the fortifications are ticking down at 6 damage a tick instead of 80 from limited bombardment, meaning my army wasn't doing nearly as much damage as it should have been and nearly lost to a militia despite being a horde of xenomorphs.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:12
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The new combat looks rad. I already split my fleets up so I could handle multiple engagements at once, especially when the AI would send in small attack fleets to bombard a planet in my territory that I forgot to build a defense station around. Also bombing multiple planets at once is the best. I like the look of the new changes. I only vaguely dislike the combat disparity bonus because it seems more ad hoc than anything else, but that's fine if it results in guerilla hit-and-run tactics being some what viable. This seems like it'll be the hardest to finagle into a proper balance. Also: quote:As a part of this (and the FTL changes) we have also made it so that fleets that are following other fleets will now jump into FTL together, making it possible to have fleets following each other without becoming 'decoupled' as they travel across multiple systems. loving yes. It was super aggravating to be in a federation without leading it and fighting a war. My fleets always took the brunt of the damage and made me hate federations. Wiz: Are there any plans to have edicts/ships/mechanics representing supply and supply lines, if that's what upkeep is? Something that always seemed odd was that I could send my starting 3 corvettes around the galaxy with no impact to their effectiveness/supply cost despite me ostensibly supplying them through empires that closed their borders to me or the ships being very far away from my empire.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:15
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I like the new combat changes but the most immediate standout to me is that it begs for a "refill fleet to plan" function.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:17
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OwlFancier posted:I like the new combat changes but the most immediate standout to me is that it begs for a "refill fleet to plan" function. I want this so desperately in both Stellaris and Hearts of Iron 4.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:18
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OwlFancier posted:I like the new combat changes but the most immediate standout to me is that it begs for a "refill fleet to plan" function. Extremely this. If you have a bunch of fleets to micro as it currently works it will suck. I need to be able to order ships built for an existing fleet or a planner + refill button.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:21
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Man I am super excited about these changes, especially the whole dropping out of combat if too damaged thing. Replacing dozens of ships every battle didn't feel very realistic.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:30
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Especially if we've got greater emphasis on multiple fleets, different behaviours, and different rock paper scissors mechanisms, it's going to be pretty important to keep fleets of specialized ships. A fleet planner would be helpful now but with the proposed changes might arguably be one of the most important considerations for making combat manageable.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:34
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Dick Trauma posted:With garlic butter... 
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Nov 30, 2017 19:40
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Nuclearmonkee posted:But yeah, I don't see how the changes put together eliminate doom stacks though. If I want to win vs a powerful foe, I will combine everything into one blob and slam it into the enemy. With the fire rate thing they may hurt me more but I don't see any impetus to split things up. Also the fire rate thing bonus thing to a smaller fleet feels weird and a penalty to the attackers for the same instead due to having a ton of things trying to shoot at a smaller number of things (like a cludgy combat width) would make more sense. The end result is the same though so whatever. I assume this bonus will be based on fleet size not literal ship #s.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:07
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Holy moly is there a way to get rid of this slowdown. I tried lowering the graphics but that didn't seem to do anything. Seems like the actual processes are bugging out due to the slowdown, like the aforementioned bombardment issue. Like, I HAVE to have a fleet with a firepower of at least million because the enemy federation doomstack of doomstacks has a combined fleet strength of 1.6 million, so that means lots o' ships.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:14
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You could install a mod that gives you the ability to build bigger ships, that would mean your fleet could be composed of fewer, bigger ships.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:18
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I really hope Wiz considers scaling down the total ship numbers in the game because a lot of people have said when you use mods that do that a ton of slowdown is fixed. I also find combat a lot more meaningful and interesting when it's a handful of ships rather than hundreds or thousands.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:21
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Captain Invictus posted:Holy moly is there a way to get rid of this slowdown. I tried lowering the graphics but that didn't seem to do anything. Seems like the actual processes are bugging out due to the slowdown, like the aforementioned bombardment issue. Like, I HAVE to have a fleet with a firepower of at least million because the enemy federation doomstack of doomstacks has a combined fleet strength of 1.6 million, so that means lots o' ships. What settings did you start your game with? Late game I'm usually running a pair of fleets with 200K-300K each. Turning up the galaxy size & crisis strength to 11 probably isn't doable on all machines.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:24
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I mean, this is a powerful machine I have. But with combined fleet strengths of 4ish million now, like 2-3k ships going at it at once, with untold numbers of fighters flitting about, it's doing a number to even my rig.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:30
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Well yeah it will do, I don't think honestly the game is really supposed to go over a million fleet power in any engagement and if you're at that point you could probably do with some different settings, turn habitable worlds down a lot or make your galaxy smaller.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:33
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Baronjutter posted:I really hope Wiz considers scaling down the total ship numbers in the game because a lot of people have said when you use mods that do that a ton of slowdown is fixed. I also find combat a lot more meaningful and interesting when it's a handful of ships rather than hundreds or thousands.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:36
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I guess I'm in the camp that I never really saw doomstacks as a problem, and feel that having to manage multiple fleets engaged in different systems at once is still an unpleasant mess. Looking forward to the 2.0 update, I'll reserve judgement on the combat changes until I get a chance to try them.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:44
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Baronjutter posted:I really hope Wiz considers scaling down the total ship numbers in the game because a lot of people have said when you use mods that do that a ton of slowdown is fixed. I also find combat a lot more meaningful and interesting when it's a handful of ships rather than hundreds or thousands. This is one thing I'd also like to see. On top of performance issues, fewer ships also make battles look more interesting because the weapon VFX cap is low enough that in the vanilla game a large number of shots just don't render in larger engagements.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:54
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Extremely this. If you have a bunch of fleets to micro as it currently works it will suck. I need to be able to order ships built for an existing fleet or a planner + refill button. Thirding this. Auto-refill, and maybe auto-refit toggles would be amazing Quality of Life additions for my fleets.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:02
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Good loving changes, pretty much exactly what I've been hoping for since the discussion started. The changes to missiles are nice, having missile heavy empires was flavorful but making them a specific weapon class with specific rules is better for overall playability, I think. Plus, missiles auto-bypassing shields makes Stellaris space combat basically Mass Effect space combat, and that's fine by me 
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Nov 30, 2017 21:05
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Aethernet posted:Wiz is right, but only if the sum of the changes don't mean that the most 'tactical' approach involves unnecessary micro in the form of additional clicks. If the 'best' strategy for a single fleet action is to send all fleets into action at once, then clicks are minimised. If the sum of the changes mean something like the former EUIV system of holding armies in reserve to exploit the effect this had on morale - in this case, holding fleets in reserve to avoid the outnumbering bonus while actually outnumbering the opponent - then it'll be annoying. There's the danger of going too far in the other direction - "crashing a bunch of small fleets one at a time into a superior force, wearing it down through manually-inflicted attrition" is absolutely micromanagey, especially if the fundamental nature of warfare in Stellaris doesn't change much (although given that there's still an army revamp coming, I'm pretty sure it will). I mean, look at what's in the dev diary - a straight-up buff to the smaller fleet in a combat to allow it to inflict disproportionate damage relative to its size, making hull damage weaken ships even when they aren't destroyed, and giving the weaker fleet the ability to autoretreat before it's destroyed. I'm content to wait to see it in action and see how everything actually shakes out, since there's a ton of change coming all at once and the numbers will need a lot of tweaking, but I don't really blame people for being concerned. At the very least, it sounds like wars will slow down significantly and (non-AI) defenders will get a big buff.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:08
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Are people worried that, for example, a 10 ship fleet will be able to take down 20 ships of a 40 ship fleet in a straight up fight? Because that's not going to happen.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:22
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As a guy who tended to lose battles even when I have 3-4K superiority in fleet power to my opponents, I am not really sure about these changes, but so much in the basic combat formula is going to change that I suspect my reservations will be totally obsolete by the time the new patch rolls out.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:26
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Splicer posted:Are people worried that, for example, a 10 ship fleet will be able to take down 20 ships of a 40 ship fleet in a straight up fight? Because that's not going to happen. Idk. Maybe a graph showing how the power curve changes with the modifiers vs the status quo would help people get it. Being bigger is still always better.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:27
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Splicer posted:Are people worried that, for example, a 10 ship fleet will be able to take down 20 ships of a 40 ship fleet in a straight up fight? Because that's not going to happen. I just wonder what the intended way to conquer stuff will be. So you already have naval cap which means that a lot of the time both your fleet and your enemy's fleet will be roughly equivalent. If you try to make your navies stronger by having more ships, it's counter productive since the AI will get an "outnumbered bonus" that offsets your advantage - meanwhile you are paying for the resource cost of those ships as well as the upkeep cost. And you need more admirals if you hit a breakpoint where one doesn't do it, which is a higher influence cost. So when the fight arrives you are roughly on tech parity (because of the progression of the research system and minor weapon differentiation) and roughly on fleet parity (because of the fleet caps) and even when you do manage a numerical advantage the AI gets a combat bonus, then I'm not sure what's there for the player to do, combat wise. Superior tech seems like the only thing, I'll be looking at ways to maximize research + ship combat effectiveness I suppose.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:29
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Presumably if the modifiers are strong enough, the ideal way to win would be to send slightly better fleets at all your enemy's fleets and then have a bigger reserve at the end and enough impetus to take out their construction facilities. Which doesn't sound too bad really. Or hell even actual strategic objectives like tying up their fleets and beelining for their shipyards to stop them being able to repair and reinforce.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:32
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Idk. Maybe a graph showing how the power curve changes with the modifiers vs the status quo would help people get it. Being bigger is still always better. What I'm getting of the small fleet buffs is that in a similar fight-to-the-disengaging situation under the new system, if I send my 20 ships against your 40 ships I will still lose 20 ships, but in return I will damage a number higher than 10, but still no greater than 20 of your ships. So hitting you with 40 ships is still better than hitting you with 20 and then another 20, but it will be significantly less bad. Now, if I'm deliberately doing hit-and-run tactics, swiping you and then disengaging to repair, it might be worth splitting up my fleets to keep up the continuous pressure given the penalty to do so will be much lower than present. But that 's wouldn't be due to an innate superiority of small fleets, it would be due to the advantage of continuous pressure no longer being utterly outclassed by the now reduced, but still negative, disadvantage of having a smaller fleet.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:36
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I'm not sure how they'd do smaller fleets when the endgame scale of planets and spaceports gets so big. Maybe...uh...have ship parts that you build at individual spaceports and bring together and voltron into a single ship??? Dedicated warship-building spaceports you upgrade normal ones from alongside a fleet cap, so that you can't do what I did minutes ago and pause the game, hit "build battleship" 80 times across my empire, unpause and out pops a quarter million firepower fleet in 120 seconds?
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Nov 30, 2017 21:48
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Splicer posted:Are people worried that, for example, a 10 ship fleet will be able to take down 20 ships of a 40 ship fleet in a straight up fight? Because that's not going to happen. If anything I'm worried this is going to swing the meta towards ultra-tall science-only builds, now that fleet size is both capped and increased by tech; the small fleet bonus would be another small compounding on that. Though so far there isn't anything stopping you from just pushing all your fleets into a system together, so maybe it won't be too bad. Paradox's history of balancing based on office multiplayer games is also probably a brake on that.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:57
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Splicer posted:At present, if you have twice the ships as me then, all else being equal, you will take half my losses. That is, my 20 ships vs your 40 ships will only cost you 10 losses vs my 20 losses. It's one of the big doomstack incentives. They even linked Lanchester's Laws which are extremely applicable in a game like this. Lanchester's square law applies here. If I have 40 vs your 20 and I lose 10 in that scenario, were I to have 80 vs your 20 I would not lose 5, more like 1, if that. This will smooth the curve but the advantage will remain with the larger side.
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Nov 30, 2017 22:05
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