Hot posts in thread: Doomstacks

For ISG, the suggestions are this:

First, consider how fleets could be locked in a system to make it risky to have one big doomstack. Maybe it's through a cool-down period after being engaged, creating a window to get pinned in another engagement afterwards. Technology wise, maybe there are special snares or EMP bombs that can be shot at a fleet to disable their FTL ability for some period of time, affecting the whole fleet. This could also tie into invasion mechanics, where fleets would need to remain in-system until the invasion is over and/or stability established.

Second, consider how stealth and detection could work in this game. Armada 2526 had a slick arms race between detection level of your sensors and the stealth value of certain ships. Basically, you could make entire fleets of stealth warships that could avoid detection and allow you get within strike range of your opponent while avoiding their doomstacks. This possibility requires rethinking your defense.

Third, consider how adding additional engines/drives on your ships could result in different ship movement speeds. Ultracorps did this. And Amarada 2526 did this. Both made strategic-level combat far more interesting. Big huge doomstacks could would move at the speed of the slowest ship and/or have additional mobilization penalties due to their size. This would allow multiple smaller, faster fleets to run circles around the doomstack.

Finally, think about tactical-combat level counters for the doomstack. If, over a certain size, ships were grouped in some manner, perhaps area of effect weapons could be researched as a strategy to counter doomstacking at the tactical level. Something to think about!

 

I'm going to reference Starbase Orion (yes, again) because it had a rather clever solution to the doomstack problem that no other game I've seen has used.

With the turn-based structure of the game, a fleet that is engaged in a battle will be stuck that turn (it takes a full turn for the combat to play out) and unable to move until the next turn. However, if another enemy fleet attacks on the next turn, the fleet will be "engaged" again and be unable to move until the following turn.

Essentially, the "risk" of having a big fleet is that your opponent can keep it locked in battle in a system so long as they can send a supply of ships (at least 10% of the larger fleet's command point cost) to keep the bigger fleet locked in combat. This can allow the remainder of that players forces to zip around the galaxy and attack / harass their opponent and engage in other tactics. Also, battles can last multiple turns even without reinforcements arriving to prolong the fight based on the evasion characteristics of ships.

Another game that deals with this issue exceedingly well is a very old browser-based space 4X called UltraCorps. The key in ultracorps has to do with strategic movement speed and stealth/detection factors.

One of the contributing factors in favor of doomstacks in most games (not ultracorps) is that visual coverage of your opponent is too easy and forgiving. If your opponent were to divide up their forces into a bunch of smaller fleets to launch a multi-pronged attack, you'd see them all coming with plenty of time to organize your defenses (i.e. splitting apart your own doomstack to defend multiple locations). But what if you couldn't always see it coming?

This is what UltraCorps does in the way that radar coverage and detection works. Briefly, your systems/planets can ONLY detect enemy fleets coming towards them and within (the often limited) range of the systems sensors (note: you can always see enemy fleets when parked at a star system - the following all has to do with fleets in transit). Moreover, if you do detect an enemy fleet, you only see the single "fleet" as an object coming towards you. It could be 1 ship or 1,000 ships. Coupled with very different movement speeds (even ones that allow you to close distance from outside of sensor range in a single turn) suddenly there is an amazing strategic space to explore.

The above is relevant for Doomstacks, because essentially if you opponent has a doomstack parked at a station, you can see exactly where it is and what's in the fleet. Then you can use your various strategic movement speeds coupled with how detection works to avoid the doomstack, or bait it out of position with a decoy fleet while your real forces penetrate deeply into enemy territory.

Defense and offense shifts from a doomstack vs. doomstack cat & mouse chase into a "zones of prioritization" strategy (for lack of a better term). In this zones of prioritization situation, defense is organized to protect your most critical systems while providing regional response forces to counter-attack enemy incursions. On offense, it's almost always a planned multi-staged approach intended to bait defenses away from high value targets in balance with raiding and disruption to hit their economy where it hurts.

Quite frankly, it's the most thrilling and strategic-level space combat game I've ever played - and if anyone has been thrilled by hard sci-fi military campaign books, this is the closest to capturing some of those strategic situations.

 

So long as the player and AI are forced to distribute, this becomes less of an issue.

One option might be command limits. Total War for example restricts to 20 units. Gal Civ 3 has logistics points limits. I'm sure there are other examples.

Yet another is "splash" damage, where a special type of weapon will do damage to all units in a doomstack.

 

No need to apologize and certainly worth the read, actually I read it a few times before responding to be honest.
I think that once you play the game you will see that many of the valid points you bring up regarding logistics have been elegantly abstracted in ISG to achieve the same results you suggest. It would be beneficial to have your further opinion on the matter once you have a better understanding of those as you could point out any perceived deficiencies.
You may also note, that Doom Stacks are not really an issue in ISG and it comes off fairly naturally which really helps with the immersion. On harder levels at least, I find both the AI and myself wisely distributing forces to protect valuable assets.
I only bring this up because you state that you haven't actually played it. As your post is very well thought out I would love to hear your custom views on ISG after you have become familiarized with it.

 

Greetings all!

I thought I would put my two cents in regarding possibilities to reduce the effect of doom stacks. My apologies if these thoughts and ideas are simply not feasible to implement in the game as I have yet to actually play it but perhaps it still sparks some ideas that would work. Said ideas would also most likely require at least one extra mechanic be implemented which at the current point in development may simply not be possible. All that said, my ideas are as follows:

Firstly, we need to take a look at what the pros and cons of a doom stack are. The pros have already been discussed, being that a doom stack against two or more separate forces of the same strength would generally end with the separate forces being defeated while leaving the stack with several fully functional ships left. So what are the cons? This has also been discussed in this thread, but in broad terms it would be the fact that they would require significant resources in terms of logistics and that they would be unwieldy and slow to respond to quick threats on many fronts, particularly in a defensive manner. So what I would suggest is the addition of one mechanic to make a particular strategy a lot more appealing and sound. Let's for simplicity's sake call the mechanic Logistics. Logistics would mean that planets (or star systems) each provide your fleets with goods (munitions, food, etc) required to keep the fleet functioning at full capacity. However, should that supply line be cut, the fleet would suffer from receiving fewer of said goods and hence be operating at a reduced efficiency. I would suggest that said efficiency loss should max out at about 50% but it could be set to practically any hard number or a reversed exponential curve. Now, how would you cut off said logistics? By simply blockading (not sure if blockading is in the game, may be a second required mechanic) the planet/planets that provide them. This would give the incentive to invest in smaller fleets to send out to planets to simply blockade and would make it very difficult for a doom stack to take care of all of them in a timely manner all while being in a severely hampered state. Played right, you could send small enough forces to the different logistics sources to even make the remainder of your forces equal to or surpass the power of said doom stack. It would also give you an incentive to actually build planetary defenses so that larger fleets would be required to blockade. Some cons of this system that I can think of is that it will speed up the destruction of a race that has fallen behind or is losing a war and that the mechanic could be hard to introduce to the AI system.

I shall also provide 3 examples of how said mechanic could be implemented. Feel free to criticize any of these as well as the main concept to find flaws in logic or ways to improve. Or just for the heck it of.

Example 1:

Simple percentage of percentage system. Max reduced efficiency percentage would be determined by how many of your total planets are blockaded. One of two planets, 50% of the max percentage, one of four, 25% and so on. Easy to implement but feels a bit silly logically as there is no reason as to why a planet suddenly produces less just because you got a second planet.

Example 2:

Fleets tied to planets (or systems) for logistics. When creating a fleet said fleet must be tied to a specific logistics source that is displayed in either the fleets name or somewhere else in the UI. If the planet is blockaded, any fleet that gets its logistics from it gets the full reduced efficiency straight away. Several fleets could be tied to same planet/system (would not be beneficial though) or several different planets/systems to spread out the risks of blockades. This example would put a bit more emphasis on early expansion. It also makes a bit more sense logically but may be somewhat convoluted and hard to grasp for players.

Example 3:

Logistics mechanic tied to resource. Each planet/system produces a certain amount of a logistics resource that can be expanded through research or buildings. The total or this resource tells you how many ships you can supply without getting a reduced efficiency penalty. By having a planet/system blockaded its logistics resource will be removed (temporarily) from your total and may end up increasing or giving you a penalty in efficiency. This example could also be a way to discourage too many ships late game. This would be my favorite example but may be the most difficult to implement due to it also requiring a resource to be included in the game.

Apologies for the long-winded post but I hope it was worth the read. I shall be keeping my eyes on the progress of this game as it certainly has a lot of potential.

 

I think this issue comes a lot from just static A.I that is not opportunist that doesn't see an empty sector ripe for the taking when you're at war with someone else.I also think traval is too fast in all these games so you can reinforce very quickly.Third point is losing planets should be big deal so just mopping up lost planets after you destroy their fleet like in most of these games in just very easy to defending planets is not a big deal.

Moo3 while crap had the best ground combat system I have played.An indepth almost wargaming system with no fiddly micromanagement.

 

There should be bonuses for small fleets - maybe make them good at raiding?

 

Here's my point to the story.
I'm gonna use the game Stellaris to illustrate my opinion:

In Stellaris you are encouraged to doomstack if you can win against the other fleet (i.e. you have more fleet power than them) but you are discouraged to do it if you can't and thus have to break apart your fleets and try to lure their main fleet away by attacking their mining and research outposts.
I'm not a huge fan of space combat in Stellaris. It's a very binary strategy to adopt and an unexciting one.
The main problem is that there is no way you can win if you don't have enough fleet power to rival your enemy. BUT ALSO there is no way you will inflict significant damage to the other fleet if your fleet power is too low. To the point where you might not even destroy a single ship if your fleet power is twice as low as your enemy's making it pointless to make a stand to defend your assets. MOREOVER, if one of your fleets gets engaged into combat, you cannot retreat until a certain amount of time has passed and thus most of the time your fleet gets destroyed or suffer too much damage to be of any use later on.

Thus to come back to PSS, in order to prevent doomstack strategy from happening you would need:
1/ To make smaller fleets more efficient and able to avoid and evade overwhelming forces.
2/ To make smaller fleets being able to dish out some damage if caught by overwhelming forces (Space Monsters i'm looking at you).
3/ To ensure that there is some cost in managing doomstacked fleets (increased maintenance, less speed, requires an admiral, etc).
4/ Reduce the micromanagement of smaller fleets (auto-fleet building, AI lieutenants to whom you can give tasks like raiding or patrolling, etc).

 

A doomstack is only a valid tactics if your fleet has no other use than fighting main battles. In history we find both types. Doomstack (spanish armada - which destruction ended the spanish superpower) and dispersed fleet (english fleet which protects colonies and trade routes overseas etc.) As long as a 4x game is so simple that it does not provide any other use for your fleet than just wait till the invasion begins it makes no sense to divide it into subfleets.

What I want to say is that it is the job of the devs to provide for more uses of a fleet than just big battles if they want to avoid doom stacks.

 

Have to interject here,

This is the approach that I'm favoring myself though for slightly different reasons. Let's keep the Doomstacks, yes I think the AI will handle itself better as well. But let's go further.

You can have a game where the AI chooses to doomstack but you are free not to and you can have a game where the loss of a doomstack can be recovered from.

Quickly released strategic reserves will help. It would also address some of the concerns possibility has raised.

 

I personally am in favor of training the AI to aggressively build doomstacks.

The reason why is because the alternative, as demonstrated in Civ 5 is a "carpet of doom", something the AI is even less prepared to fight back against. The only real solution is to have the AI build doom stacks in response to the human player.

 

But you can generalize freely. 2 frigates vs 1 frigate on turn 50 is nowhere near comparable to 10 destroyers vs 5 on turn 100. You can't just postulate numerically bigger fleet would suffer less casualties either. It's quite possible that both fleets would get obliterated due to ship explosions and sheer number of nukes going off. And the larger context is important. If opponent attacks you with half fleet and defends with other half then you have ever right to gain advantage unless MAD happens. If attacker splits fleet to strike multiple targets then you may end up with Pyrrhic vicotry.

That reminds me of Deadlock, a clunky ground based TBS. There a map was divided in regions and you would build a separate base in each. If one base lacked some goods it could import them from other regions but the transportation costs would raise by a square of moved quantity. It worked quite well there.

 

I really agree this, and its why i've always said conquering a planet should take many turns, as should colonizing a planet. In Stars in Shadow, i never bothered to conquer, i would just glass and colonize the same turn. It was far faster and more effective to just build colony ships and bring them with the fleet instead of a hundred military transports. That way i could hop from planet to planet every turn. But this tactic should not be allowed either, maybe by making it take many turns to wipe out a planet by bombing, and then the planet is uninhabitable for several turns so it cant be immediately colonized. And after colonizing it should take some time before that planet extends your range (it takes time for the infrastructure to be built).

One way to counter doom stacks would be to have increasing support costs per ship based based on fleet size. This cost representing fleet logistics would increase exponentially, because of the larger burden a huge fleet places on local infrastructure (think fuel production, food/agriculture production ect... needed to support a large fleet). As the fleet gets larger, it puts more strain (more demand) on the local supplies, and with supply and demand economics, with high demand and static supply, costs are going greatly increase. With local supplies exhausted, resources have to be shipped in from further away, which again will increase their costs.

Like the 3 million man Persian army, it would quickly exhaust all the food in the area, and thus food would have to be shipped in from further away, which would just be unrealistic in 500 BC without refrigeration. Many smaller armies spread out would have easier access to food and clean water.

Lets consider exponential support costs per fleet size, for example:
A ship of hull size 1 (a fighter) would be 1 hull point.
A ship of hull size 5 (battle ship) would be 5 hull points.
For every 5 hull points contained in a fleet, the fleet has an extra support cost of $1 per 5 hull points then squared.

A fleet consisting of 10 fighters would have 10 hull points in it, so it would cost ((10*1)/5)^2=$4 per turn
A fleet consisting of 7 battle ships would cost ((7*5)/5)^2= $49 per turn.
A fleet consisting of 10 fighters and 7 battle ships would cost ((10*1+7*5)/5)^2= $81 per turn.
The 5 divider could be increased with technology advancements that would make larger fleets a little cheaper as the game progresses.

 

In my generic scenario, I was referring to the fact that if you have numerical advantage in a single battle (because he has half his fleet and you have the whole fleet), you will destroy more of his ships then he will of yours, regardless of whether or not they retreat. Then any damaged ships you may have will be instantly repaired the next turn. Since you took less losses and are now fully repaired, your fleet will still be larger then their second fleet (or if they retreated, your combined total fleet will be larger then their combined total fleet) and now you will have numerical advantage for all remaining battles, where as at the start of the war, you were both equal. How you play out from there, separating your own fleet and going on the attack, or separating your fleet and hunting down his fleet is irrelevant, you have the numerical advantage so all else being equal, you should win. Thus the attacker would have been better off with 1 mega fleet and hoping he wins, or can catch a few planets and glass them before the defender gets his fleet to you.

 

One last post then,
No penalties are needed on doomstacks
No bonuses needed for spreading ships out.

I'm just saying that an alternative approach to trying to "cure" them is to live with them.

Just minimise their impact through the use of reserves and how quickly range is extended once a planet is conquered. They would still exist in this case but losing a doomstack or facing one would no longer result in a single battle war. If doomstacks are so difficult to remove in a natural manner then one could look at reducing their impact instead as an alternative solution.

These two approaches are not all that can be done either but even by themselves they could be very effective.

 

But placing penalties on doom stacks or giving bonuses for spreading forces without improving AI would only create more issues and not solve this particular problem.

 

I don't know about anyone else but for me it doesn't really matter if it is a mid game doomstack or late game.

In blunt terms (a little uncharacteristic for me)

AI factions keep their entire fleet concentrated in a single stack throughout most of the game, resulting in single battle wars.
Very exciting (sarcasm)
Very realistic (double sarcasm)

and quite possibly the most annoying aspect in 4X games. Even my favorite IG2 did this but...
that AI knew when it was getting it's ass kicked and withdrew. due to factors that allowed some ships greater speed than others some ships could escape and if they got outside your radar range they were safe. (That game understood how to use strategic depth, Moo2 did not)

If the issue can't be fixed then at least reduce the impact it has. The first is difficult to do, I know that, the second is easy and you do not need to rewrite the game to do it.

But I've said enough on this, time to withdraw from this conversation and observe instead.

 

Again, what kind of doom stack are we talking about? One that gets thrown at you after turtling for 400+ turns or half a dozen battleships on turn 200-. The first case is a degenerate game state where game should have ended long time ago and therefore I wouldn't consider it for further discussion. The other case doesn't sound so menacing but at that point in the game 5+ battleships can pack a lot of fire power, take down any planetary defense and take a lot of beating.

In a normal case he would retreat and wreck a havoc on the other front. It would be quite rare for a warp dissipater be in effect because you'd would either have to skip two very useful techs or be creative (which good players don't pick). If you can wipe him out in 1 turn with mere 2:1 advantage then he is either having poor defense (no ECM or PD if you favors missiles or no inertia stabilizer or augmented engines if it is beam fight), game is in degenerate state or there are very specific circumstances (ion cannon vs unshielded). At that point in game missiles can't reach target in 1 turn and beams are not that powerful, especially if target has some beam defense. At best you'd get him decimated in true meaning of the word which means 10% killed. While you are busy winning a battle you'd be loosing a war, he'd probably attack with 2 fleets simultaneously so while you are handling his first fleet, the second one glasses one of your planets, you try to catch them, they pull Hannibal on you and move to other system, bomb it, in the mean time first fleet returns and gradually your economy starts falling behind and you star loosing fuel range needed to mount offense. No, given 2 equal and skilled players and non-degenerate game doom stacks are not an issue.

 

And I like your analysis, it is very intuitive and quite correct.


Here is another excerpt from Command Issues


In real conflicts you could theoretically mass all your forces together until you consider two issues.


Logistics (makes me laugh to read some ancient claims stating that the Persians brought 3 million men with them for their conquest of Greece, really? how did they feed them? what about the sanitation required to keep them healthy? did they not need to drink water? etc.)


For a space 4x game however, keep logistics light (unless your target audience consists of accountants). Stay in range and you are automatically supplied works fine.


Command and control, same example as above, how did the Persians effectively command 3 million men 2,500 years ago? answer, they didn't. The actual number of Persians involved was about a tenth of the number suggested by some historians.


At the end of the day we could go into greater detail but unless someone actually requests a Naval operations 101 class let's keep it basic.

Some ideas

In port costs versus field costs. These are different in real life, it could be replicated here

Facilities, range could be dependent on additional structures, right now you conquer an alien planet and your range automatically increases. Really? So an alien culture just happens to have all the spare parts, logistical infrastructure and repair facilities for your ships? Doesn’t work like that.

I recall a Norwegian built ship coming into drydock and we were scrambling to find material and parts based on the metric system as we were equipped to handle American ships which didn’t use it.

And of course reserves and mothball fleets. It costs roughly one fifth to upgrade an existing ship versus building from scratch. If reserves exist then the “doomstack” becomes less of an issue as a faction might be able to recover from losing all their ships in a single battle, right now they’re toast.

Basically my friend, I do not have much faith that the doomstack will be cured in my lifetime, therefore another approach may be how to make it less of a factor by introducing other aspects into the game which will limit the impact it has, try and work with it.

In other words when life gives you lemons you may as well make some lemon margaritas.