Hot posts in thread: Doomstacks

ChrisKonstantine, I like your examples, and i think i see something underlying them, one of which is logistics. The ancient Greeks didn't wage war constantly, after a battle they would go home and tend to their fields, and come back the next year to wage more war. Logistics also plays in to the USN in WW2, it would have been difficult to support with food and fuel the entire US navy all sitting in 1 spot. The other thing i would surmise is that it would be rather difficult for all the ships in a hypothetical WW2 doom stack to bring their guns to bear in a single mega battle. Only the ships on the front line would be in combat, with the ships in back waiting for the ships in front to die (sink) before they could enter the battle. That wouldn't really make much sense. Fleets are a certain size because they have a limited practicality, guns can only shoot so far, and ships have to be spread out. Even the D-day fleet was spread out over a hugely vast area, and it only attacked land targets.

Having a single mega fleet in orbit could be a tremendous drain on the local resources. Moo2 combat is also not realistic (and I dont think it should be entirely, its a game after all), because the ships are too close together, which allows for a doom stack to be effective in battle because all the ships in the stack can actually be used.

In Moo2, if the enemy (lets assume both players are human, and both are totally equal) divided his fleet in half and attacked on 2 fronts, and you countered 1 of his fleets with your doom stack. Your first battle you'd outnumber him 2 to 1 and would decimate his fleet. You would then attack his 2nd fleet, again decimating it. You now still have a decent fleet left and he has none, the game is over for him, even if he did manage to capture/destroy a few of your worlds.

In real life, battles take a long time such as invading and capturing an island, and it also takes time to move fleets around and re-supply them (logistics). If you spread out your attack and hit the enemy at many locations all at once you could do a lot of damage as you would cut off their supply lines and it would take time for them to mount a response. This is why there were usually several simultaneous battles going on the pacific and in Europe.

I agree with the above poster about area effect weapons. Civ4 had catapults/artillery to do damage to many units at a time, allowing you to quickly decimate a doom stack. In Civ4 multiplayer you couldn't build a single doom stack or you would get it quickly destroyed. You needed several stacks moving together to a create a doom army.

 

This would solve the problem, no need for other measures. Putting all eggs in one basket is intrinsically a risk and in my opinion sufficient remedy would be to give other side means to make that risk backfire. In RTS games area of effect attack can seriously punish fielding large army in one place (remember psi storm in Starcraft 1?) and in Civilization series a single unit succeeding an attack roll would kill all units in a tile. In MoO 2 you can simply pass over doom stack, attack now lightly defended staging colony, reduce attackers range and force them to retreat.

BTW, what kind of doom stacks are we talking about, 5 battleships in a mid-game or 50+ titans in end-game?

 

No worries V,
This thread is more focused and just the tittle alone will draw more members into the discussion.

I am glad you created it,

 

Hello Vivisector 9999,

I also feel strongly about doomstacks, more than that, I hate the propensity of the AI stacking all its ships in a single stack throughout the game, regardless if it qualifies as a doomstack or not. Wipe out their sole fleet and they are done. It leads to single battle wars.

The below is an excerpt of a post in Command Issues some months ago, I am re-posting it here both for entertainment purposes and because it is relevant.

Two issues suffered by most (TBS space) 4x games are the number of ships one hopes to effectively control in battle and the "Doom Stack"

As we have not actually had any conflicts in space (yet), I will use naval warfare as an analogy of to illustrate the problems of these two issues in todays games.

2,500 years ago there raged a war in the eastern Mediterranean between Athens and Sparta. This war was fought on land and at sea as that part of the world is dotted with islands and offers tremendous coastlines to defend or attack. Deep into the war the Athenians suffered a catastrophic defeat at the bay of Syracuse and their navy was decimated. Had this been a 4x game the war would have ended shortly thereafter. The war did not end there however as the Athenians fought on for years after this event.

Fast forward to roughly 75 years ago where the IJN was soundly defeated at Midway by the USN. Again, had this been a 4x game the war would have ended quickly after that, instead not only did the war continue for years but the IJN actually retained quite a lot of offensive capability as well.

For me, it is fairly obvious that the reason real life did not imitate a 4x game is the absence of the "doom stack"! Let's face it, if you are here reading this and participating in this effort you know exactly what I am talking about. Moo2 and my personal favorite IG2, both suffered from AI factions that would lump every single ship they had into a single stack. Defeat the doom stack and the game was pretty much over as all you needed to do was mop up the faction that was suddenly completely and totally without a fleet.

In the analogies I use above this did not happen, why?

The Athenians had 100 ships in reserve that were released after the defeat at Syracuse, this allowed them to continue the contest and be effective. In other words there was no "doom stack" for the Spartans to defeat at Syracuse bay and end the war, just a sizable portion of the Athenian fleet

The Japanese were also able to continue the fight as there was no "doom stack" for the Americans to defeat at midway, just a sizable portion of the IJN with the rest scattered all over the pacific.

Personally, I would love to see this game avoid the "doom stacks" as it is a strategy that is usually only employed by a much weaker force attempting to isolate and defeat a portion of a larger force, otherwise no sane commander would amass his nation's entire navy (or army) into a single unit, if they did, then wars could be a single battle affair. (In space 4x games, where one end of your nation is many turns away from the other end, it is strategic madness to concentrate everything you have at one point, barring late game "star gate" technology of course)


ChrisKonstantine, Nov 4, 2016