Feedback Requested: War and War Resolution

[Masked Ermine]

It becomes a nightmare though when you have allies, because there is no easy way to find out WHERE the random planet that is keeping the war from ending is when its not your claim

It is and it isn't. But the UI for claims is not great. The text UI is often incomplete in large wars (it'll list like the first 5 and then say '47 others' or something) the alternative is to click claims, and look for X's that indicate systems your war partner has claimed, and then is the tedious game of checking each of those systems for planets. There maybe needs to be a subfolder on the war display that is just listing all claims, planets attached to claims (like Udara system, Inana System (one planet), Irax system (three planets). But give it enough space and a scroll bar so it can display all claims.

 

[cecla]

6: Reevaluate fleet command limit. It's a failed experiment since you never have enough Admiral cap and why would you ever use a general. Either that or rework fleets so there are just no nearly so many end game. Make fleet cap a hard limit if you have to. Combine it with the pop rework and you can get fleet sizes really back under control.

This reminds me--I think there should at least be more ways to either unlock larger fleet command limits or improve combat strength per naval cap as the game goes forward (I understand cosmogenesis does the latter but haven't tried it) or ideally both. If you're at war with a fallen empire, their fleets have 0.5M - 1M strength. I've found late game fleet limit is ~220 with a strength of ~0.1M, which means that in a war against an FE, my "fleet" is actually 10 stacked fleets, which becomes a headache to manage in fleet manager.

 

[diagrapher]

Miscellaneous thoughts on war:

- Warfare being less about the biggest doomstack bulldozing the other side would probably be good.
- What if it were possible to host governments-in-exile for your allies and help them get their countries back?
- What if there could be temporary refugee populations that would return home once it were safe, possibly gradually abandoning that over time if it took long enough?
- What if countries could actively evacuate allied civilians rather than just accepting refugees?
- What if sending lots of troops to war meant you had less population for other stuff and if letting them die in war actually left you with a damaged population? Not jut population loss, also a way to represent stuff like war orphans?
- What if armies sometimes massacred populations they don't like, desecrated temples, etc. on temporarily-occupied planets? Either on orders from the government or because the commander turned out to be a loose cannon?
- I think it would make sense for having lots of war exhaustion to sometimes push a population towards pacifism. You probably know more about this than me but my impression is that over the course of World War I pacifism got a lot more popular because of how horrible the war was?
- What if there were different sorts of armies specialized for fighting on different sorts of planet? E.g. water navies that are good on ocean and bad on dry and cold, desert troop that are good on desert and bad on cold or wet, etc?
- What if there were ways to hide ground troops to catch planetary invaders by surprise?
- What if factions besides the militarist and pacifist ones sometimes had opinions on which particular wars you ought to fight?
- How about stuff around civilian resistance against occupying forces?
- What if some types of rebellions had some of your fleets, armies, or leaders join them?

 

[eklu65]

I have an idea that everyone might hate to have to deal with, but would still be amazing. I want to make people hate Barbaric Despoilers the same way we all hate Criminal Syndicates. Barbaric Despoilers currently comes with so many restrictions and downsides, with very few upsides. I think we should change that.

Barbaric Despoilers should be able to cloak army transport ships, and land on planets of neighbors even during peace time if undetected to steal pops/resources. The player being invaded should be notified something is happening immediately the moment boots hit the ground, and have a chance to send an army over there. However, it should be that, if you don't have detection on your borders, you are absolutely susceptible to being raided. Barbaric Despoiler comes with a diplomacy penalty for a reason, make it worth it. I want to be hated by my neighbors!

 

[Toby-wan_Strife]

War goals as they are in Stellaris feel way too "all or nothing". It's either you take everything, lose everything, or freeze the front line as is. Wars in real life are rarely this black and white. I've made a post in the past all about this and I'm glad that Paradox is listening to our demands. But I just think that wars have no real long term impact and are way too black and white.

If you go back in time to the early days of Stellaris, wars were actually far more vibrant. You could enforce multiple war goals on multiple empires, enforce reparations, and more. Nowadays Stellaris wars feel like a very dumbed down version of that old system

I also think that it would be interesting to see a more Hoi4 or Eu4 like system where systems and planets represent victory points and as the empire loses victory points they are more likely to give in to your demands. As an AI empire loses more and more territory, they will be more likely to offer a conditional surrender where they recognize some of your claims and take some reparations, but not all. After they go beyond 50% occupation (not war exhaustion although that is a contributing factor) they will have a random chance every month to surrender and capitulate. Such chance can be lowered by ethics, civics, technologies, and some traditions, but it can never be eliminated entirely. This should hopefully remove the problem of "forever wars" where two empires fight a perpetual war or one empire fights multiple wars and they drag on forever.

 

[3ishop]

Good points my strategy gaming enthusiast friend!

Maybe if we forget about the whole army design system (let go point 1). But just get rid of army ships and needing to build armies(keep point 2)?

So instead of a an army planner you'd pick your standard army among the ones you have available to you and the army cap of your battleships would transport them and they would be replenished by soldier pops and the army cap. Do you see any flaws here?

Would need to be for all ships otherwise you can only invade once you have battleships. Does come up quite often, would need to be a unique slot rather than taking any other slot as that would just mean a different type of army transport. e.g. if you have to choose between a weapon or an army you naturally don't want to send those with armies in to naval combat.

Tying the armies to pops also doesn't fully work when you have clones, robots, xenomorphs and so on.

It would also be in effect a different type of planetary bombardment. It's not bad to do it that way and could even help a bit with splitting up doomstacks a bit and gives a use outside of war to fleets if they have to be in orbit to deploy their armies to protect a colony/suppress rebellions.

Currently, taking over planets for me is the most boring aspect of the game (a long time ago we could at least give one modifier to our armies). It's just landing a larger army and waiting for the planet to be conquered. In my case, when the empire is big enough, I wait until I unlock the Colossus to clear or destroy planets of enemy empires, queuing this action. Ground combat currently feels like a punishment, an unwanted necessity. That's why I'd like to present an idea of how it could look like.

This seems designed to make ground combat even worse and a far harsher punishment that makes bombardment/colossus a must have response instead.

Armies are made up of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of entities, they can have all the weapons, all the armour types, all the vehicle types we can build. Why bother choosing just one of each? Why fill up the tech tree with lots of needless research for it? It also runs the issue that we'd now to make it worth while need to either A read up every planet to see what the enemy defenders are using to make a counter army for it, or do like many do with ships and just go for the copy paste build they use in all campaigns.

Well when we can have nukes on ships, they could turn a planet in to a tomb world in a single tick...so yeah a planet not being able to defend against 3 ships is very fitting. If you want defences that's what starbases and fleets are for.

 

[Diputs]

I said this in the feedback, but just wanted to reiterate: Add more 'sci-fi' ways to end war or set wargoals! We lost our planet so we're going to become a wandering fleet, our shroud patron is displeased with our terror bombings so we're white peacing even though we could win, our objective is to force you to accept our genetic modifications, our objective is to destroy your technology/regress you to preFTL civilization. The kind of goals that are used in some sci fi stories that are more complex than taking planets.

 

[Casko]

Here's Hoping also that AI some day builds at least somewhat decent ships.
or that Different Empires have different themes they build around with. like egalitarian carrier fleets. Or cybernetic artillery.

or that Psionic Empires can actually research and USE psionic components. (god I wish AI would surprise me with a shield hardening focused Psi-fleet that jump drives behind my borders and wrecks havoc instead of being generic disruptor battleship with autocanons fleet number 01000001 01001001 00100000 01110100 01110010 01100001 01110011 01101000 00100000 01100110 01101100 01100101 01100101 01110100)

 

[lucasmpereira]

Do you really want to build battleships to transport armies? It's much longer and more expensive. Plus, in this case, the battleships will be engaged in transportation, not war.

Sorry, I didn't mean only battleships, but all the military ships, sorry for the confusion

 

[Casko]

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.

Yeah but even if you occupy 90% of a Federation... the final OPM, or rather OSM at other end of the galaxy isn't sieged, so peace is impossible, as the Federation is just a tick away from winning.... or so the AI thinks.

Very much agreed.

Also, new wargoal idea:
Disband federation.

THIS. So much this. it would make endless forever wars vs Federations more manageable by just shattering them.

It becomes a nightmare though when you have allies, because there is no easy way to find out WHERE the random planet that is keeping the war from ending is when its not your claim

This is probably one of the biggest reasons I hardly ever ally AI or join AI in a war... as sometimes AI just can't seem to figure out to actually invade the planet you the player have no way accessing at the moment...

If you go back in time to the early days of Stellaris, wars were actually far more vibrant. You could enforce multiple war goals on multiple empires, enforce reparations, and more. Nowadays Stellaris wars feel like a very dumbed down version of that old system

Hot take: Stellaris had better peace system in past than what we have right now.

 

[admiralgegsandbacon]

I feel as though war mechanics could be uniquely paired with an internal politics DLC. War feels rather one dimensional at the moment, it is fairly straightforward to obtain a casus belli and wage war. Allowing empires to be involved in war in more ways and also providing limits/opportunities based on the support of domestic political groups would be interesting and would make the war system more alive. Exhaustion could be reworked to something include your faction support.

 

[Nudeldifudel]

In my opinion the biggest issue with warfare isn't so much to do with the fighting proper but rather the diplomacy surrounding it.

The state of being at war is very restrictive in what you can and can't do diplomatically and even internally. On top of being so restrictive, it's extremely difficult to change it outside of the entire war ending. For instance, if you'd like to vassalize someone but they're at war, you not only can't vassalize them but you can't intervene on their side in any way. In a more general sense, joining and leaving wars is virtually impossible, whereas in my opinion it should be much closer to something like EU4, with perhaps a dynamic war leader system like the one in Vic2. You should also be able to help out countries either by joining wars or in other ways, for instance lending out shipyards.

The peace "deals" are the worst aspect of wars by far, as the three possible outcomes feel much too total. This is especially underwhelming considering that prior to the "war update" among other things that 2.0 was it removed peace deals which were much closer to other games. The casus belli are also limited to the default four for the majority of empires, limiting the different notions of "war objective" like in EU4. This contributes to the war exhaustion system being bizarre in its workings and truly feeling arbitrary. This comes to light when one wins a decisive battle but still gets more war exhaustion, which by the game's logic means they're closer to surrendering then they were before. Imperator and EU4 both have great peace deals and I think a lot could be borrowed from them, most notably things like war reps. As others have suggested, implementing things like DMZs would also be great.

Military access is also rather limited. Though this has partly been remedied with cloaking, I don't see why should a 300 system spanning empire not be able to pass through a system controlled by a newly-enlightened primitive state. The best way for access to exist is for all systems to always be open, but the act of going through a system owned by a faction that hasn't given you access would have diplomatic and perhaps military consequences. This would also help to distinguish military and civilian access, as it doesn't seem fitting that a science ship would be treated the same way as the main warfleet on its way to their capital.

Wars should also have a bigger impact on your diplomatic relations with countries other than the ones you're currently at war with, especially once the galactic community forms. This exists to an extent with the anti-war galactic reforms but these take decades to be implemented and countries shouldn't be indifferent to wars on their borders even before galcom. This would go nicely with trade restrictions (if trade were reworked) imposed as sanctions.

Finally I believe ground warfare should largely remain untouched, it is sensible for it to have a secondary role when you can largely bomb planets into submission from orbit. However as habitats or ringworlds could be more fragile than planets, using ground troops should perhaps be encouraged with these. The best addition to ground warfare would be more troop types with bigger differences accessible to all empires. For instance marines which deal more damage when fighting on habitats or troops which have bonuses in certain climate types. Fleets in orbit should be able to aid their side on the ground since precision bombing is a thing.

I think troops types based on planet types could introduce a bit more flavor and strategy to ground combat without reworking anything about it.

 

[Nudeldifudel]

Definitley, more politcal complexity with active wars would be great too, with allies and enemies other than the main attacker/defender able to join and leave midway, the galactic community being able to force an intervention/resolution if all parties involved are members, the ability to bargain for allies to enter on your side, enemies to switch sides etc through bribes or garuntees, or even espeionage to force political shift via assasination, and as for post war things, being able to forcably reduce their naval cap al la treaty of verssailes (and consequences or lack therof for breaking) would make things more interesting!

A treaty to reduce naval cap sounds very cool

 

[Azar]

I have an idea that everyone might hate to have to deal with, but would still be amazing. I want to make people hate Barbaric Despoilers the same way we all hate Criminal Syndicates. Barbaric Despoilers currently comes with so many restrictions and downsides, with very few upsides. I think we should change that.

Im not sure if there are any upsides to being a megacorp in general... Im sure criminal syndicates are the worst, but I think they all suck.

 

[eklu65]

Im not sure if there are any upsides to being a megacorp in general... Im sure criminal syndicates are the worst, but I think they all suck.

My post was about barbaric despoilers, not really megacorps. I don't play megacorps, I just know everyone hates criminal syndicates for being naughty lil rascals, I want barbaric despoilers to be hated the same way.

 

[Nudeldifudel]

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.

Having to leave soldiers on planets is such a genius thing, I can't believe nobody hasn't mentioned it up until now.

 

[Peepijeep]

War is always the same:

- I attack enemy
- Both fleets (mine and the hostile fleet) meet in a specific sector, starting the "main battle"
- I win that battle
- After than battle, the war is practically over
- I just have to conquer planets step by step, but after the "main battle" there is no obstacle for me left
- After the first war, the enemy is either totally conquered by me (TOTAL WIN!) or most part of enemies territory in conquered

So:
- One Single battle decides the war
. One single war desides if I absorb an entire enemy nation

A cheap solution:
MAke defense better, wo that even after the main battle, there are still extremely strong bases left, so I can't easily conquer the entire enemy's nation in one single war.

 

[HyperKnight]

I have a revolutionary idea: loosen or remove strict score rules and let AI decide whether to surrender or settle status quo on it's own.
Adding more options and wargoals and allowing mixing those and changing/adjusting them midwar will also add to the complexity.

 

[Wise Strategist]

> When a fleet is assigned to follow another make please make it possible for the following fleet to:
- get repaired whenever the fleet it's following is docked at star base capable of doing so.

- join in the bombardment of a planet quickening the damage being done.

- Move to flank the leading fleet's target when in battle.

> Espionage, Hacking, and cloaking: I've found that cloaking can be rendered useless once the AI has technology that can decloak your ships, making doing things like striking deep into an enemy's territory more difficult if not impossible with direct manual guidance especially if you don't have jump drives or a quantum catapult. So to solve this and allow for more strategic and tactical game play I have the following suggestions:

- Give ships with cloaking capabilities a new combat stance, Ambush. This stance would have such fleet automatically enable their cloaking, and attack and ambush enemy fleets that get close whenever their following another fleet or just setting by at a station.

- Make it possible to use espionage operations to hack enemy sensors for a time, allowing your cloaked fleets to move through enemy territory without fear of being decloaked, and reveal the types of station a star base is. No longer would your territory be completely impenetrable, if you don't have some measure of defenses around your key stations you could be in a world of trouble. This would make cloaked fleets more valuable and worth investing in as they can now strike deep into an enemy system aiming straight for their shipyard(s) or their home system, reeking havoc on their economy. To balance this a bit please make to where defense stations aren't destroy when their HP hit 0 and instead just get disabled.

- Make it possible for gateways to be hacked allowing your fleets to move through gateways your enemy controls as if they're unlocked L-gates or wormholes. This should also include relays allow your fleets to make use of you enemies own relay networks without needing to control the system. Additionally, building gateways and hyper relays everywhere becomes a risk. Yes having a gateway at your home system makes trade easier, but them being hackable would also risk putting your home system in grave danger.

> Barbaric Despoilers and Raiding fleets: Make barbaric despoiler empires a true threat. One that has to be defended against every once in while without being at full scale war.

- Have barbaric despoilers be on a constant cold war footing with all factions unless they have high relations, a friendly treaty or a vassalship or overloadship with them.

- Give the barbaric despoilers a slight bonus to weapons and army damage.

- Have barbaric despoilers start the game with cloaking technology, and a unique ship type, raiding vassal.

~ A raiding vassal could be a hybrid combat transport and raiding vassal with three potential sizes acquired through reaching cloaking technology: corvette, destroyer and cruiser. Fleets that have raiding ships in them will be designated raiding fleets (Though for programing limitations it may be necessary for them to only be in fleets with other raiding ships). Depending on their size each raiding vassal will have 1-3 raiding armies on them: 1 for corvettes, 2 for destroys, 3 cruisers. With the potential for the number to be expanded on with technology or ship extensions. Raiding fleets will automatically activate their cloaking if not on cooldown.

~ Raiding fleets could be masked as pirate fleets to all but the fleets owner, and only having a mid-high intel level on the despoiler would reveal the truth.

- Raiding Situations: When a raiding fleet attacks a world it could trigger a unique situation for both the raider and the target faction with three phases and two options for the raider. The Phases being, Ground Battle, Acquisition, and Withdrawal each with their own progress bar, while the options are Carry On and Abort.. The target faction will be able to view the situation and its progress, which their job would be to hinder or stop with fleets and armies.

~ Ground Battle: The ground battle phase should be self-explanatory, it’s the raiders eliminating any enemy armies on the planet.

~ Acquisition: When the situation triggers players will be able to pick the target of the raid: basic resources, strategic resources if they have any, technology, or pops. Acquisition, is the raiding fleets acquiring whatever the target of the raid is. If its resources the enemy faction will lose whatever amount of resources the raider obtained. If it’s technology then the raider will get general techpoints or 1 or 2 research options. If it’s pops the raider will get 1-4 pops added to one of the worlds at that end of the situation and the target will lose those pops from the planet. The number of pops taken could also be increased via research. How much of either the raider gets depends on how much of the acquisition the bar is finished. The bar could be sectioned into levels 1, 2, 3, and 4, with the amount of spoils or pops the raider gets depending which sections were completed before withdrawal. Alternatively the number of pops takes could be scale based on the number of ships in the fleet and their sizes or increases via tech.

~ Withdrawal: The final phase, withdrawal, is the raiding fleet charging emergency FTL on world, then activating it the moment it returns to orbit.

~ Carry On and Abort: If the target faction puts a fleet in orbit or lands an army on the world being raided, the despoiler will get an event asking if they want to carry on or abort the raid. Carrying on the raid will have things proceed, and try to complete the situation. If an enemy army has landed it switch back to the ground battle phase. If the despoiler choses to abort, the situation jumps immediately to the to the Withdrawal phase regardless of the state of the Acquisition phase or ground battle phases.

- Defending against a raid: If you’re the target of a barbaric despoiler raid you could have two ways to defend yourself and stop the raid.

~ One is to put a fleet in orbit over the world, and bombard the raiding fleet from orbit slowly destroying the raiding armies and ships, this will add a negative to the situation’s progress, but also inflict devastation on the planet depending on your fleet’s bombardment stance. Barbaric despoilers could lessen this damage with planetary shielding technology that could give their raiding fleets a defense bonus against bombardment.

~ The second and most effective option could be land an army on the planet and try to destroy the raiding armies. This will freeze the situation’s progress till the ground battle is over. So long as the raiding armies are destroyed before the situation finishes the barbaric despoiler will get nothing from their raid.

 

[dinotanker]

Thank you for the opportunity to write your opinion. I play Stellaris in multiplayer once a week with friends without bots, so everything below applies mainly to playing with real people.
before the war:
1) Eternal claims - this mechanic is very old in the game and does not reflect the reality that exists in the game. They are not dynamic, they do not arise suddenly, they are always of the same price.
2) sudden wars - if in a single-player game the player is warned that a neighbor is preparing for war, then in multiplayer the war is always unexpected. I would introduce the event "military exercises", or "demonstrations of force", or "military parade" (or both), which obligated the empire to bring its forces to the border. Also, after the event, it would be possible to declare war or not. This would create tension between the empires without the war itself and would be a way of putting pressure on the other empire. And for this purpose, with high intelligence, it would be reported that military exercises were being prepared, and without intelligence that they were already underway.
3) The same or similar empires can fight each other in the most inhumane ways. Don't get me wrong, either, I don't mind that two democratic states are trying to figure out which one is more democratic, but I resent the fact that they don't have anything to prevent it. Yes, bots with similar ethics try to get closer, but what if they are two players who don't like each other? I would like to see some kind of mechanics that at least prevented an attack on another empire, if they have similar views.

Mercenaries (they are very broken):
1) the player's empire spends a lot of resources, forces, and the best minds to move from one point of the galaxy to another, while mercenaries who receive a signal that their base has been attacked teleport from anywhere in the blink of an eye. I would cut out this part of the code (we did it for ourselves through the mod), because it doesn't fit into the logic of the game, and the mercenaries who would lose their base would make them pirates. This immediately solves the issue of abuse, when a couple of corvettes attack the base from invisibility, and also forces the player to use mercenaries more deliberately, since he can lose them so easily if he does not defend himself. It would be possible to introduce an improvement in relations from the security of the system where the mercenary base is located. If they didn't build defenses, the mercenaries would give out half of their fleet.
2) Mercenaries are very strong - even if the conditions are equal, the regular fleet is stronger than the mercenary fleet, it usually doesn't come to that, because the empire that makes mercenaries has a stronger economy than the one that makes its own, so there are rare moments in the game where mercenaries can give a fair fight. (for this reason, we ban it on our games).

During the war:
1) it is impossible to support another empire - I cannot join his war on either side, only by declaring my war. I also can't support either side except with mercenaries or resources. Often (since they have their own fleets) they don't have enough money to support my dear mercenaries, so they also have to pay extra. I wish I had provided loans or grants instead of gratuitous aid.

The end of the war:
1) You can't get out of the war - I can't get out of my ally's war until he capitulates or our opponent, which is a big problem, because empires are going into a spiraling spiral of endless wars.
2) no matter what contribution I make to the war - if my ally makes claims to the systems, but I don't (I can fight at all for another reason) - these territories will go to him, even if he did not capture them, or does not participate in the conflict at all.
3) there is no way to resist an aggressively expanding empire - if one player begins to aggressively expand, nothing often prevents him from declaring a crisis, there is not enough weight, different ideologies prevent the federation from being formed, and the aggressor empire itself does not have to conquer and retain new territories within itself.

thank you in advance
(And thank google and Yandex translation)