Feedback Requested: War and War Resolution

[kawakaze1]

Like 'Victoria 3', I would like AI to actively intervene in the war, and if the war fatigue becomes severe or the resource situation becomes bad, it would give up the war goal and withdraw from the war.

Also, war goals should be more diverse, some civics and ethics or origins could be reworked to require unique war goals, for example (Slaver Guilds, Barbaric Despoilers = pops, Distinguished Admiralty = ships (like hoi4), Technocracy = scientists, Materialist = resources or resource mining rights)
community will have more ideas for war goals.

And if something "absolutely unacceptable" happens during the war, such as planetary destruction or mass genocide, the war will change to the current "total war" and it will become difficult to escape from the war. Please also consider changing the conditions of "absolutely unacceptable" based on civics, ethics, and origins.

I dare you, please consider changes to ground combat as well

 

[Karlb]

My biggest immersion breaker is that when you take a bunch of territory, specifically territory with occupied planets. The pops there have no real reaction.
If you now suddenly have a lot of pops from your bitter rival, they should not exactly be easy to placate. Should have more options to deport or manage how the pops are treated. I get that slavers gonna slave but for everyone else the relationship should be contentious.

I would also like to see some kind of insurgency mechanic where you actually need to leave troops on planets to occupy them, giving you more reason to actually build armies.

On the flip side to this, if you go to war to liberate planets or free slaves or whatever, they should be happy about it and actively support you (maybe an espionage operation to incite revolts or support resistance or whatever.)

I would like to also see a rework of the peace and claim system, EU IV had a great way of doing this with the peace deals and AE.. but while I think AE could be useful in Stellaris, should be somewhat tamped down and more nuanced (ie lots of AE for attacking pacifists, but no AE for taking out DE's)

War reparations/relics/ etc should also be on the table for a peace deal, maybe even pops as 'tribute'

Government types and ethics should also come into play, Democratic egalitarians should at least have a somewhat harder time declaring wars of conquest than Imperial authoritarians for example.

Speaking of Espionage, its a vital part of warfare and woefully underutilized. I would like to see more ops focused on things like crippling economic buildings, leader assassinations, coups, false flags, damaging megastructures, starting wars amongst rivals, stealing unique tech, destroying mining stations, hurling asteroids, spreading plagues or even detecting plans to attack you and preventing it somehow.

The last thing I would like to see is some way of designating systems as a neutral zone. where ships can traverse but nobody can claim it without sparking a war.

 

[StellarWolf]

I think the main issues for War Resolution for me is probably two-fold.

First all goals are essentially Offensive, even when you are the person being attacked. A war goal of "Retain Territory" for example would be a nice defensive war goal. It would also be nice if we could end Wars diplomatically rather than it be purely a War Score thing.

Secondly and perhaps the biggest issue for me is War Score in general, for example say I claim three systems off my neighbour that is my goal, just those three systems because I need to have a high enough War Score to end a conflict either via capitulation or surrender I almost ALWAYS have to take practically the whole of the enemies empire to get those three systems because I need War Score and War Score largely only majoritively comes from Inhabited worlds, not held systems.

So I have to do lots of unnecessary invasions etc and field far larger fleets just to get those three systems. Not every conflict needs to be an empire-spanning conflict, there needs to be room for skirmishes and neighbouring system annexations that are far smaller conflicts with far smaller war goals.

 

[Oimes]

This will most likely be an unpopular opinion but... I think the fundamental problem of fleet combat is that the weapons ranges and targets of attacks are linked to the actual location of 3D models of ships. I think Stellaris would gain more strategic depth and stop allowing fleets of 1 ship type if the battles were more abstract mechanically. HoI4 naval battles could be a good example here.

 

[Dr. B]

I just want to invade the Shroud.

 

[Ojodeaguila]

The game requires a supply system that forces your ships to resupply and maintain supply lines; the naval limit points will generate supply capacity, which can be pushed like trade, so if someone cuts off your supply lines, your ships will start to degrade.

This will increase the strategic possibilities in warfare, with a much deeper warfare system, and will also open up the possibilities for trade/supply interdiction ships like submarines, which cannot cut off all of your supplies, but can reduce the supplies passing from one star station to the next.

They will have an attack range from their naval bases, they will not move like normal ships, and their attack efficiency will reduce with the distance between their bases and the attack targets, and you will need destroyers to chase them and escorts to reduce their effect.

All of these changes shouldn't be too difficult to implement into the game and will completely change the way naval warfare works.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

In addition to things already written by others...

System changes:

• Intelligence on other empires should offer bonuses against them. In the case of Military Intelligence, the bonuses could concern Tracking, Evasion, Damage, Combat width, Bombardment damage, or similar. The basic idea is that if you know where the enemy is, and where the enemy is weak, you have an advantage over an opponent who lacks the same knowledge about you. Even if they enjoy a numerical or technological superiority, they can still be at a disadvantage. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-should-provide-bonuses-against-them.1609406/
• Using excessive fleets in combat should incur penalties, or other kinds of efficiency problems (such as there being a combat width limit, which would mean that excess fleets in "standby" are going unused). https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ets-in-combat-should-incur-penalties.1520715/
• We should be able to train crews and armies over time. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-able-to-train-ship-crews-and-armies.1533871/
• War exhaustion should be a single per-empire value, that does not reset to 0 when a war ends, with appropriate penalties. Perhaps penalties in non-friendly territory, slower building speeds for ships and armies, slower repairs, more crime from pops, or other effects that could reflect a reduced willingness and/or capacity for warfare (especially in foreign territory where logistics are more difficult).
• "Defensive Wars" should be better at defensive wars than the other War Philosophy choices, rather than being a strictly inferior choice. This could involve cheaper defensive pacts, defensive bonuses, or cheaper or Influence-awarding guarantees of independence (while rivalries no longer grant Influence bonuses), or rivalries offering you the ability to join the defense of anyone attacked by the target rival. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ngage-in-defensive-warfare-diplomacy.1511995/
  • Alternatively, "Defensive Wars" could be reworked to "Restricted Wars" that is less restrictive on gameplay. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ng-defensive-wars-to-restricted-wars.1536246/
  • Alternatively, the war philosophies could be merged with the diplomatic stances.
• (The Galactic Community should have resolutions for resolving territorial disputes diplomatically.)

Tweaks:

• Warrior Culture and Barbaric Despoiler rulers should be allowed to hold martial field positions. A respectable warrior king is not too fat for his armour. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...d-be-allowed-to-hold-field-positions.1580217/
• Colossi should be more worthwhile. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ssi-be-changed-to-be-more-worthwhile.1579432/
• The Unyielding tradition tree should get the War Doctrine "Defense in Depth" from Supremacy, and probably also "Hit and Run" (while "No Retreat" from Supremacy no longer has special requirements, to compensate; the ethic restriction should have been removed when the Supremacy tradition tree ceased being mandatory/guaranteed, upon the introduction of more tradition tree choices). The Unyielding tradition tree should also be given a proper, noun-based name, perhaps "Vigilance" (which would pair nicely with the ascension perk "Eternal Vigilance"). A -10% Starbase Influence cost could also make this tradition tree a more worthwhile first pick. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/unyielding-tradition-tree-improvements.1527360/

Simple tweaks:

• Strike Craft technologies should be moved from Voidcraft (Engineering) to Military Theory (Society). The repeatables are already in the latter category, it would improve the content balance between the three research areas, and it kind of also makes sense thematically. Strike Craft do not really represent new capabilities in engineering, any more than Planetary Defense or Global Defense Grid do, and the connection to military tactics is hopefully self-evident.
• The militarist ethic should take the war exhaustion reduction from Nationalistic Zeal, in exchange for the claim cost reduction. All militarists should be good at handling war exhaustion, but not all of them should be aggressive conquerors, and Nationalistic Zeal offering -35% claim cost would make it a top-tier pick for aggressive conquerors. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...th-made-better-by-swapping-modifiers.1488871/
• War doctrine policies should apply to ground warfare as well. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...should-apply-to-army-warfare-as-well.1534213/
• War doctrine policies should affect damage rather than fire rate. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ip-weapons-damage-not-ship-fire-rate.1534221/

DLC material?

• There should be an "Iconoclast" civic granting a total war casus belli against machine empires, and a casus belli forcing a ban of AI and robots. It should normally be a permanent, starting civic, but could perhaps also be gained from an AI uprising.

Edit:
I unfortunately have no idea how to enter the above thoughts into the form, and too little free time to figure out a good way to do it.

 

[TrueWolves]

I wonder how many people here know that taking major planets already has a larger economic, fatigue, and war score impact than taking less important ones? At least 2 people suggested adding something that already exists, though I suppose Stellaris really lacks in transparency.

Minor changes I would like to ground combat that don't involve overhauling the system:
- A troop planner like ships have, so we could select species+troop type and maybe bring back troop equipment this way since it would be a lot less micro overall. Defense armies could be pre defined or automated like starbases are. This would help immensely when my xenophile empire has 30+ species and 4+ troop types for each of them...
- Habitability affecting troop effectiveness could be an interesting homeground advantage as well, or just simplify it to wet/hot/cold.
- Scaling non job based defensive armies to pops instead of capitals. Why does a 200 pop world have the same default militia as a 50 pop world? This could be affected by ethics, but the idea is more pops at least means more militia actors.

Doom stacking is an oft seen complaint that is not easily solved, but this suggestion might help reduce how often they happen:
- Give each system a supply limit. Not per ship, but per fleet. It could be a default of 1 in systems with normal stars, +2 for owned outposts, +1 for allied/controlled outposts, +1 for owned starbases, colonies, and some megastructures. When there are too many fleets in a system, they use up their own supply, which could limit their fire rate, sublight speed, and repair. This would encourage fleets to split up at least into neighboring systems and make fleet cap more important since it also means fitting more ships in a system. While still allowing massive battles when fleets need to converge to attack if close enough to do so.
- Another small more QoL change would be to let fleets go over cap, but limit admiral bonuses to only ships up to the cap or reducing benefits by the amount over. This would help when we end up with admirals changing the cap (and could even bring back cap per level) since fleets wouldn't suddenly split, their commanders just wouldn't be able to control the whole fleet effectively. If combined with a supply limit, overstuffed fleets could simply count as multiple fleets or always count as under-supplied until within cap.

 

[Koopatin]

just my first, spontaneous ramblings

slightly related, peace options—my playstyle right now, with xenophobes and xenophiles alike, is to vassalage neighboring empires, integrate them, and repeat. Even hives and machines can be integrated this way, even if it means they will be purged. That could make sense when my vassal is some kind of occupation force and not the same state as before, but for RP, some flavor should be in.

to war itself. It still is doomstack. I do not mind that so much, but it still is the case.

ground invasion should be in in some form, even if only because there are tropes I just want to have in game. Clone soldiers without soldiers and xenomorphs without ground combat are weird (btw. in the long long time ago time, WIz said he thought about a midgame crisis for xenomorphs; that never happened; maybe you could dig for the old ideas?^^)

What i want to change are stations.

First, platforms should not be destroyed but only deactivated and damaged, and as an idea, if the defender's encryption is higher than yours, only the defender can reactivate and repair them in the same war. would make it easier for the defender to retake the system.

Second, a station should be more than a roadblock in the first 20 years of a game. So buff them somehow.

 

[3ishop]

Well most of my top tier wants have been covered. Warfare is just so static in the options, not joining or leaving once it's started.

It'd also be nice if other wars are going on that other factions might allow access to their systems. Had a rebel AI form in a WiH but it blocked my access to their systems, end result I had to sit there and let the rebellion get crushed so I could then go in to defeat the overlords forces. I know historically we have had similar happen, and that would be part of the role play options it could open. Do I help out or wait to take it myself? Right now I didn't get a choice, even trying to improve relations as quick as I could didn't work.

One part not covered, would really like to see Starbases be customizable! We need to be able to choose the defences and weapon systems of the base it's self. Would help keep them relevant for longer and could make the choices to boost them more worth while as well.

Still not a fan of any supply systems, they still don't solve the core issue of needing to doomstack and mean the WiH, crisis and federation fleets become insanely broken OP systems.

For war exhaustion my casual thoughts on it is that it should be an overall empire stat rather than war specific. It doesn't make sense to me that an empire can be in a series of wars one after the other with less problem than one war of the same total length. It should be something that your empire has which cools off when you're at peace, and different wars contribute to the uptick differently.

Secondly maxing out war exhaustion or going high with it seems like a great opportunity to start situations. No magic "in two years your society quits". Instead have events popping up that we can respond to representing the various peoples in our empire protesting, or in the case of gestalts the mental toll and possible fragmentation.

Could also tie it to other internal elements like resistance groups from recently conquered worlds. If that also got more depth to it then you'd get less instant payoff from new conquests and it could help slow down the snowball.

Maybe that is too much, but 1) what if we could have some sort of army planner like we have for the ship building templates?

Clipped the rest, unless we get a HoI style army invasion system it really makes no sense. It's already going to be a nightmare to design with the range of army types, a standard army would have very different equipment to a robotic one and they would be very different to a xenomorph for example.

It also runs the issue that it's an entire army, it can have ALL the things as it is. It's not a single regiment but thousands of vehicles and tens of thousands of individuals. They can have all the type of vehicle, they can easily switch the crew between different weapon systems.

It also lastly runs the other side, that it's not needed without making the attack like HoI. As we don't get to choose where the army attack in the current system choosing perks to buff attack vs X and resist damage from Y isn't any use when we can't choose to fight enemy unit defended by X and equipped with Y. And do people really want to see the research tree cluttered with more army techs? Then the micro of changing all the units and then having to choose where they get deployed?

And lastly while I agree that ground combat should remain basic I do think giving us the option to design our ground units if not at the same level of space ships then at least a very basic pick your gun and the color of unit.

Not really any point in that, an army can have a huge array of weapons and switch between different ones depending on the war with ease. We don't see colour so that's not something to change.

 

[Bentus]

How about just bringing back the old system, I can barely even remember it now but I remember how robust the options where with war goals. We already had a fix to this.

Also bring back split control systems! If at all possible.

 

[BlastFilms_]

guess who accidently made a bunch of feedback about war resolution... before realizing there was an entire section about war exhaustion

 

[MarkDey]

I unfortunately have no idea how to enter the above thoughts into the form, and too little free time to figure out a good way to do it.

The form does have some text box areas. I'd recommend seeing if you can put the content in those fields.

 

[BrokenSky]

So my main feelings about Warfare and Warfare adjacent systems:

• Warfare in general is used too much as a crutch for conflict resolutions which shouldn't be exclusive to wars - such as Megacorp branch office ownership. This hurts Pacifistic gamplay, Espionage and to a lesser extent diplomacy. I have said before and I'll suggest again that the Devs would (IMO) really benefit from doing a 'summer experiment' type thing where they remove warfare entirely just to highlight how many systems become frustrating or broken without it (and in particular when it feels like their ought to be non-warfare options).
  
• I really enjoy the customisation element of ship design - I would honestly prefer reverting to the long-lost days when ship sections had different number of Utility and Weapon slots, allowing for trade off between more Defences/Auxilliary items and more Weapons - and additionally when Aux and Utility slots took up the same options (allowing for different builds, such as regen-heavy shield designs, large pool shield designs, ships which had almost no defenses at all in order to have more guns and relied on evasion and cheapness). The more customisation in ship design - IMO - the more fun.
  I appreciate that this comes with a downside when it comes to the AI, but honestly I don't really care - wars are won with economics and positioning anyway, but ship design is the fun part.
  
• I would really like a logisitics system (this dovetails with economy, if it also includes trade routes between planets) which would both allow for better rebound from losses (as a victorious fleet would need to return to friendly space to resupply, giving the defeated fleet more time to regroup) and more asymetric warfare (as raiding trade-lanes between planets would weaken economic bases and also limit ships abilities to resupply away from the actual production centres). All of this would, IMO, lead to better wargaming experience IMO.
  
• Warfare resolution has never been particularly good in Stellaris and frankly that applies to most PDX games - really this is an extension of the fact that it's just really difficult to make an AI who can do diplomacy, but it still feels very nessesary to have IMO?

(Yes I've filled out the form, but this focuses on what I care about most).

 

[Scyobi_Empire]

i'd be more then pleased if you implement the HOI4 and Vic3 peace system into the game

 

[Wagner Joy Division]

Stellaris wars are...bad. Dangerously close to mobile strategy trash like Victoria 3
Warfare General
Total dependance on META builds, you often never build destroyers and go stright to Cruisers and then to Battleships.
Total AI inability to counter META designs.
Inability of AI to concentrate their forces after initial defeat, tendency to suicide chunks of fleets.
War Resolution
This is a pure garbage with no redeeming features. UI that omits chunks of war demands, inability to add war goals, inabilityfor allies to join already ongoing wars, inabilityto select war goals like in EUIV - a game that made war resolution awesome and manageable.
Lack of separate peace concept, leading alllate game wars to be a huge coalition wars with mandatory carpet sieging of half the galaxy.
Warscore management is beyond awful.

 

[Lorenerd11]

I will get around to filing the feedback form, but some thoughts off the top of my head:

1. Definitely some way to leave or join ongoing wars. If you feel trapped in someone else's war, you should have a way to leave, and you should likewise be able to join an ally's defensive war even if you didn't guarantee independence beforehand.

2. A way to stay in a war even when the main attacker/defender surrenders. Other empires should never get to give up your territory without you having some say in it.

3. Combined war goals. You should be able to simultaneously subjugate, seize branch offices, and change the government of a rival Megacorp with a single war, instead of having to wage 3 separate wars.

Secret fealty should likewise factor in with other war goals. Why do they only join with the secret fealty war goal? Why wouldn't they join when I want to subjugate their overlord instead, even though the final outcome for them would be the same?

4. One thing I think I saw in a HOI4 playthrough that I liked is a sort of post-war screen where you can use war score points to make different demands, like annexation, subjugation, etc. Something like that could work really well for wars involving multiple parties.

5. Allow claims against genocidal empires and similar, even where they are "unnecessary". There are so many weird edge cases, like when you want to take a genocidal empire's system instead of an ally that cannot use the pops, but the ally is closer so they take the system even if they don't want to. Or when a Determined Exterminator declares war on your machine empire, and you cannot make claims against them at all, nor do you get any of their occupied systems because their war goal wasn't a total war.

6. Conquered systems can far too easily mess up your economy, especially if you conquered incompatible pops. Perhaps recently conquered planets could remain in a sort of "occupied" state that will prevent them fully contributing to your economy, but not completely messing it up either.

 

[eklu65]

Raiding is a bad mechanic. It's tedious, it's overly time consuming, and it does not feel rewarding compared to just using influence to claim or getting a total war casus belli. No one wants to sit there for a half hour and only get 3 pops. That's awful.

Raiding feels good when it's done via Gia'Zumon. It's quick, it gives ground combat a rewarding purpose, and it makes more sense than abducting via fleet bombardment. My only critique with it is that if you're going to allow me to hand the system back, reinvade, then steal more pops (and you should), then find a way to make that process less janky.

I would suggest just allowing armies the option to raid the planet after the system has been beaten and after the planet has been invaded. Under the "Land Armies" button when right clicking a planet, add a button that says "Raid the Population." It can work identically to how Gia'Zumon's abduction works, make it take a few rounds.

 

[Liquid Ghost]

I would really like to see some sort of "Space Nuremberg" protocol in place. I once made a suggestion about this. It's a clean-up method to avoid weird situations in the aftermath of a war. I've seen this happen a few times with NPC Xenophile civilizations. Here's a retelling of what first had me thinking about this:

I witnessed a dwarf warrior civilization doing great in an observer game and they were in route to become top dog in the galaxy until the fanatical purifier empire next door declared war while the dwarves were busy fighting another war. The purifiers managed to take the dwarven capital and as purifiers do they began a horrific genocidal campaign on the planet. It took about 2 years for the dwarves to take back their home planet but that was enough time for about 10 pops to get killed and one Purifier pop to grow and take a Ruler job. Upon liberation, the dwarves being Xenophiles allowed the purifier pop to keep their cushy ruler job and gave them full citizenship! Can you imagine the outrage? The very same guys who were organizing the deaths of billions are allowed to stay and at a privileged spot at that! That really broke the illusion for me. There were no consequences for the material authors of this crime.

Even open-minded civilizations have to have a limit and genocide surely is a line in the sand. So:

1. Remnant pops of the genocidal species within the empire face:
   • Expulsion. A one-time displacement is allowed against a species to expel the fiends that attacked the people! Maybe you get a one-year license to displace?
   • Execution. Genocidal pops are executed for their crimes after a legal process. Does not count as genocide for purpose of other empires' opinions.
   • Penal Colony. If the empire owns a penal colony, the culpable pops earn a one-way ticket there.
   • Mix and match. Some expelled, some executed, some sent to the penal planet.
2. If nothing can be done about the pops, then the rest of the populace where they live should get a huge happiness hit and start shifting towards Xenophobe. At the very least, demote the pops to worker status, who in their right mind would leave those pops as part of the ruler stratum?

 

[Archael90]

Hello Stellaris Community!

With the devs off on holidays, and a rare four Thursdays in a row free, we decided we would commandeer your regularly scheduled Thursday dev diary slot to gather some feedback that may help inform development at some point in the future. Here on Stellaris, we work on rather long timelines, the content for 2025 has been in-development for some time already, and while we can't wait to share those things with you, our objective here is to inform potential future development based off the topics discussed in Stellaris Dev Diary #364 - Sights Unseen.

We are going to spend the next four weeks collecting feedback on what the Community likes and dislikes about the current version of Stellaris, and your expectations for certain features that were discussed.

While having an open conversation worked really well for Dev Diary #364, and we thank you for sharing your thoughts there, a more structured approach is required for something that might sit for a year or two before it gets used, if it gets used at all.

It's important to note that this is not a confirmation or guarantee that any topics discussed here will appear in the game at any point.



Without further ado, we present the War and War Resolution feedback form. This form will be available to leave feedback on until next Thursday, at which point we will read through the feedback, and prepare a report for the developers that outlines what the community likes/dislikes, and their expectations for a future rework or expansion.

Thank you for taking the time to offer your feedback, and thank you for playing Stellaris!

What about topics that was already mentioned in a forum? Do You read those and include in Your report, or I have to copy everything into form?