Feedback Requested: War and War Resolution

[seperamos]

Curious observer here, is the space and ground combat represented in 3d graphic elements or text based?

 

[Bane97]

One thing I think should be reworked is the fact that fleets act as a currency. Basically I can hoard which ever resource I want but in the end its usually better to invest into ships even if I dont really use them. The fact that a corvette I build 300 years prior can be updated to be top of the line relatively quickly seems a bit weird and reinforces them being the end all be all.

Currently both player and AI just build as many ships as possible since its a win button essentially. I also think that fleets got a bit to big with the powercreep of modifiers over the years, not necesarrily because new ones are to strong (which some of them are) but also because you can get so many of them now.

I also think some of the modifiers should be time limited instead of being permanent, e.g. why does the flagella modifier from space amoebas (if i remember right) give my empire +10% evasion for ever. It shouldnt be impossible to come up with smth engineering wise to simulate it for other empires. On a side node the alternative of +2000ish energy credits per killed amoeba seems super weak compared to this buff.

One thing I really liked about the Star Trek game done by paradox was the whole officiers "resource" where your ships need to actually have people inside them, which were needed to be refilled post battle. (in my opinion a clear improvement over simply passive upkeep). Something else could potentially be done for ammunition? Or more general simply supply (showing amunition, fuel and crew). Ships could consume supply in battles (maybe a prolonged battle is bad for you quick strike task force but good for a artillery focused group of battleships) so basically a normal upkeep but also a increased consumption in certain cases. Ideally tied with a reduce in ship counts since currently there are so many of them that individual ships are meaningless.

so tldr:
- less ships during the end game
- tackle modifier creep potentially with timed modifiers
- supply for ships (crew, amunition, fuel)
- prevent ships from being a stock resource (early game fleets hanging around until endgame just to quickly upgrade them to make them perfectly up to date)

 

[RhysTheT00n]

If you're enough of a threat the galactic community can declare you a crisis

And just because someone is winning a war doesn't mean they can indefinitely keep up the supply lines, war exhaustion is all the stuff that gets off-screened, be it hippy movements, supply lines, your soldiers getting homesick and exhausted or other such things

That must be a new PC feature, because I've declared war on every single empire as a Determined Exterminator, had 10+ fleets full to the brim with Battleships, Titans and a Juggernaut (because 10 is already overkill, let alone 25) with an immoveable economy no matter how many of them you destroy and had double the Technology points of the empire in second place technologically, all while actively going through the galaxy and conquering everyone's Megastructures and destroying planets. If being completely unstoppable and hell-bent on complete galactic annihilation isn't enough for people to decide you're a threat, but basically keeping to yourself and being discovered to have an Aetherophasic Engine that's barely started construction and is decades away from completion starts a literal Galactic Emergency, that system's gonna need a rework. I've never once had the galactic community declare my Determined Exterminator empire as I've described it a Crisis, but the moment I complete the Nemesis Tier 5 Reseach Project, they'll immediately declare that emergency

Also, if supply lines are supposed to be important, it shouldn't be off-screened, and unfortunately as I'll explain in a moment, that system is gonna create incredible imbalance. Mentioning stuff like "soldiers getting homesick" makes no sense for Hivemind empires or Fanatic Militarist empires, and in addition to the invisible supply lines, Machine Empires specifically would be made to be basically unstoppable if that mechanic actually existed. By making it invisible, you're removing the player's (and the AI's) ability to actually deal with a potential problem and you're also removing everyone's ability to actually *exploit* that potential weakness in an enemy. In other words, it's not invisible, it just doesn't exist. And if they did implement that mechanic, it would cause a ridiculous lack of balance for empires such as machines which barely need any supplies to begin with and machine drones wouldn't even get homesick anyway, so if this mechanic were put in place, machines and even organic hive minds would basically be able to war indefinitely while any of their opponents are on a time limit.

Also with Galactic Nemesis, you're basically guaranteed to reach -100% War Exhaustion Gain, which means you actually CAN just war indefinitely, meaning the hidden supply lines and homesick soldiers idea really can't stick at all.

Like I said, it'd be way simpler to just get rid of the Exhaustion system

 

[Znikii]

COMPILATION OF MY SUGESTIONS:
Maybe diminishing accuracy & evasions and scaling upkeep costs for every ship in a fleet with +60% full fleet size used. Further modifed by all the other +60% full sized fleets you or your allies has in the same system.
ofc further modified by all the other million modifiers we can use and abuse.
Faster war exhaustion gain. War exhuastion should increase unhappines on your world.
Each ship could be pinged to a specific planet, and if you lose it, you get a temporary scaling pop growth malues.
Rework war goals and how peace deals work.
Rework how certain ideologies and empire builds interact with warfare and war economy. For example militaristic empire should maybe instead of a shit fire rate bonus get less war exhau. gain from ship lost; or trade corporationts would gain severae trade incomne penatlies while in a war, but their war enemies would lost galatic opinion and respect really fast.
Maybe it should be just to expansive to mentian your fleet in peacetime at full stranggth. There should be some kind of mothball mechanics making you decomission smallers ships like curveetes or destroyers.
Rewok how space and galatic travel work. Having different types of hyperlanes. Some could have cooldown when can it be traveled, other would have upper fleet size that can feet. Some would be faster, other slowers, some would need special tehnology or even special ship component equipied in order to travel it, some would cost a enery or rare resourcces for traveling other would only work in single direction, others are open half a year to one system, other half year to another......
Any every ship lost would subtract it's naval ship size x 20 unity from your monthly income. Obviously further modified by things like empire size & being over naval cap....

Maybe having too many (near)full fleets in the same system could just increase the energy upkeep and slow down things like repair and shield regen...

Going over Ship Capacity should also increase the Empire Size! As well as lower Birtrh Rates.... having so much populations packed on ship in deep space can t really support happy big families with kids playing hide and seek from Battleships command center all the way down to its Reactor core...
Ships, and stations as well, should alongside their usual maintanance, also require some consumer goods and food to maintain, After all people are livig there, doing everyday stuff and onboard daily maintenance.

Maybe put really huge upkeep costs on all alpha strike weapon slots, simmilar to how are/were xor was it t deefnsive platform expanisve for space stations?

new ship slots and components for battleships that would offer em a more defensive, support & siege role instead of main workhorse of the doomstack. Changing Titans from retardins into true paladins
maybe A shots (x slots and big G) should instead of shot and reload.... first load and then shot....
over long battle it should somewhat equal out, but it would limit their dominating first few seconds......

I think it would be interesting to explore doing to naval cap what was done to admin cap. Don’t have a limit that can be raised, under which costs scale linearly. Have it be a value that steadily makes larger militaries exponentially expensive to upkeep.

The alloy and tech reworks are good but the game is still in a place where anything above casual results in more fleets than the outliner can comfortably sort (not that it sorts in any logical way: Dev’s please fix!).

I think if this is done both on quantitative (number of ships) level, as well on qualitative level (top tier ship components (flat&mothly) costs exponentially more) is a great start and a minimum of what could and should be done....

What about a pool of "skilled personnel" or such? The idea would be, these are needed as researchers, fleet officer, civilian mangers... and bureaucrats to manage your empire. If you recklessly expand, you will loose more of these to the later job than you get from developed colonies, leaving less researchers, officers and managers. So, you CAN build a vast empire, but it will be much less technological advanced and efficient, so you will actually need your superior resources. Thinking about the trope of vat, but cumbersome if not outright moribund empires there.

Was thinking of something simmilar.
Specifically all the fleet personal needed to run your massive doomstacks! And while for sure you can train up those few fresh recruit to handle curvetees. But from where do we pool thousands and thousands of of skilled personal when start to mass produce and spit out fleets and fleets of battleships....?

So i thought, if you dont have enough pop employed as solders relative to your empire size / naval capacity, then the construction of ships slooooows down.

Open up diplomatic option and new gameplay (coordination, signaling, making deals,... ) during the war (with subjects, allies, galactic community,...) and during the peace talks.

Internal politic (factions) should be mroe engaged in making you pick ccetain war gaols,...

Implement Espionage gameplay in War decleration, active war effort and in peace talks.

 

[MrFreake_PDX]

Appreciate the feedback so far.. I also hope you're all leaving this feedback on the feedback form linked in the OP as well.

 

[librakur]

Tôi suggest to to create the important of target. It like the homeworld or a important planet, starbase, flagship contain some core technology,contain major resources, place where headquarters is located. if that planet or starbase, flagship be take down it can cause lost resources, reduce naval capacity, block some technologies. Besides, a wandering ship of loss empire lead by a Amiral take part in a Guerrilla war after the goverment has been taken over is a good idea in my opinion.

 

[lucasmpereira]

2 suggestions that might be linked.

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?

We could set the standards for the army as a whole, maybe a set of units, the race, the tech they would use, maybe our army will have navy support (think about a ship being dropped to the attacked colony from a spaceship so that it can support ground troops!), maybe helicopters (or something like it since our spaceships can be used as jets?), armored ground support like tanks and atvs, submarines for ocean worlds, big military excavators for underground worlds (go nuts!) blablabla.

Of course, depending on the set, the army would be better at some stuff and worst at others. Like better at types of planets, maybe being able to do more or less devastation, good or worse against armored vehicles, air support blablabla.

And 2) With all that, it would be awesome if we get rid of army ships. Maybe if depending on the battleship class we would have a cap of transportating armies. And then you can transport armies with the battleships themselves. Then you can choose to bomb a planet, land the troops or land the troops with bomb support. If you make your fleet land your armies in the planet, that is it, the percentage you want of the cap of armies you have in your spaceships would be landed and start fighting with the army of the planet (that would be defined by a template too). The armies are defined by the template and it acts as a whole, think about it as a general organization of your army, not exactly it's current state. No need to transport 5 units of tanks, 2 units of helicopters, 10 units of ground combat units, blablabka.

After a planet is occupied by soldiers, I think we don't need the system of leaving the army there to defend it and everything thing, maybe they just disappear from the planet and the value of available armies in yous spaceships can start growing gradually. Think about it as the supply chains of your Frontline redirecting your armies to yours spaceships. The same thing happens for the occupied planet or the planet that managed to defend an invasion. The available army starts growing gradually until it reaches its cap depending on the number of soldiers jobs in the planets.

For defending, it is the same thing, you army is defined in the template as a whole, maybe being able to set different army templates for different sectors would be possible. But each planet would have its cap defined by the soldiers in it. Also, maybe being able to set different army templates by spaceship types would be possible.

That would make stellaris combat focus more on space battles, which I think that is the main theme, while also having the flavor and management of you armies ideas.

That would make wars more dynamic and simple, rather than making me send in the spaceships, then send in the army ship, then if half of my army is dead, creating more armies, waiting, then sending more armies to the other planets in occupied systems by my spaceships.

It also would make me manage how to approach ground combat, so I could use half of my available army in my battleships ocuppying one planet, and half on another one, then start bombing another planet while the armies haven't occupied the planets yet, and so on.

Plus, the defense of the planets would be more simple as well, since you won't need to keep filling them with armies as the soldier jobs and the army templates do all the job.

 

[V-Metamorph]

Dayum that was a long form...

If i could summarise with one picture tho,
we need more... :

... Or atleast more flavorful because everyone knows space stellaris (and its mods!) are very cool. Except it's less fun to see the same "average Ai fleet" fight always the same manner... Every game... (Crisis excluded)


Also please make cruiser less overwhelming compared to the 4 other base hull...

Hope my feedback will be useful

 

[A_Dozen_Lemmings]

The strategic realities of fortress worlds, chokepoint, crossroads and major industrial/trade/logistical hubs would be great. Gaining intel over another empire would feel more tactile, if in gaining it, I see those hubs and trade routes, and plan my campaigns accordingly.

 

[Enero]

I want ground warfare removed

 

[Polinerd]

One thing which would be nice for Secret Fealty would be that any war with the Overlord would result in the vassals with Secret Fealty to you backstabbing him.

Currently you need to specifically make a war with the Secret Fealty objective, if you make any other war with (or get a war declared on you by) the overlord the Secret Fealty does not trigger.
It should be handled just like claims, which can be achieved in any (or at least most) war goals

I really wish vassals worked like potential allies in this regard.

As an example if I am attacking an empire and all of it's vassals hate it. I should be able to invite them into a war. Yes I am now promising to help free them but that should be a thing. I think you could balance this by making extra war goals that create ticking war exhaustion or something similar. But several times in game I have had a few powerful vassals and it didn't matter how much they hated me. I could just keep declaring war and they couldn't do anything about it.

 

[Imp0815]

Thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback that will be checked in a systematic way.

Before I proceed with the survey, I want to mention that war and the system are both rooted in the fleet stacking system and the endless snowball of the military-industrial complex we always play as, no matter what empire type we pick.

People should consider using this form to reflect on how we play Stellaris in terms of military gameplay before we address how wars start and are concluded in both a mechanical and metaphysical way.

 

[emattosalves]

For ground warfare, i will be happy to just add option to recruit more armies with less clicks; A filter that only show certain types of armies (instead of 5 types per species) and a way, to xenophilic empires, to make armies of multispecies instead of individual races, that would help alot in quality of live.

To lower the number of transport ships, perhaps when armie fleets merge, only 10 ships appear, but, for example, they may contain 50 or 100 armies.

Any way, thanks for aways listen to the players, i love stellaris!

 

[MarkDey]

Curious observer here, is the space and ground combat represented in 3d graphic elements or text based?

Graphics

 

[pacja]

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!

I appreciate the way Stellaris team communicates and this initiative, albeit I guess it makes it harder for users to brainstorm around each other's ideas.
Hope my form will give some useful feedback

 

[Calvax]

One thing which would be nice for Secret Fealty would be that any war with the Overlord would result in the vassals with Secret Fealty to you backstabbing him.

Currently you need to specifically make a war with the Secret Fealty objective, if you make any other war with (or get a war declared on you by) the overlord the Secret Fealty does not trigger.
It should be handled just like claims, which can be achieved in any (or at least most) war goals.

I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it a thousand more: The AI needs tweaking to not value vassalisation so much and for disloyalty to actually mean something.

Disloyal vassals are coded to try and fight their overlord, but only if their overlord is weaker. Problem is that very rarely happens since thanks to vassal taxes the gap between overlord and vassal tends to grow wider over time. If every -1 disloyalty gave -0.8% taxes (numbers not final) then not only would overlords have more of an incentive to care about disloyalty but vassals would have a greater chance to keep up with their overlord, and thus a greater chance of declaring liberation war.

 

[Komrad Truck]

1. Fix the disengage bug.
2. More hull type variety. Hull components (weapon slots) have not been changed like forever, needs refining. More ship hull types linked to some technologies, probably (full hangar on cruisers after researching specific techs as an example, etc).
3. Make ship types other than cruiser stronger. Atm batgtlecruisers are just a big target for torpedoes/neutrons, which makes them useless.
4. Please make disengage mechanic more transparent/add info on how it works now.

 

[Psykhes]

I also hope you're all leaving this feedback on the feedback form linked in the OP as well.

I totally missed that one.

Maybe make it BIG, BOLD, RED and BLINKING.

 

[V-Metamorph]

1. Fix the disengage bug.
2. More hull type variety. Hull components (weapon slots) have not been changed like forever, needs refining. More ship hull types linked to some technologies, probably (full hangar on cruisers after researching specific techs as an example, etc).
3. Make ship types other than cruiser stronger. Atm batgtlecruisers are just a big target for torpedoes/neutrons, which makes them useless.
4. Please make disengage mechanic more transparent/add info on how it works now.

Oh hey i reload and who do I see ! The man himself!

Also yeah fix disengage bug...

 

[Musicislif31997]

Biggest things for me is in regard to fleet combat. One of the reasons NSC does so well is because in my opinion the dedicated carrier and flagship roles these are so important in any Sci-Fi fleet and not having them in Vanilla is a sorely missed feature. Secondly is the ability to develop battle lines or Strategems I'd love to do nothing more than design Thrawns Pincer, IYKYK, or any other plan like that.
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.