Stellaris Dev Diary #380 - Defenders in the Stars

[FleetingRain]

A citadel has a default platform cap of 15. (15 battleships = 120 naval cap). Add to that Unyelding tradition tree, Eternal vigilance AP and maybe a Strategic command center, and suddenly you can park over 50 defense platforms per starbase (50 battleships = 400 naval cap). Since one ion cannon takes 8 def platform cap, lets say you use 26 defense platforms with 3 ion cannons for a nice, round 50 platform cap. That is 3 titan lances, along with... lets say 42 hangar bays/L slots/ and 40 pd slots. You can obliterate most things before they even start getting close to your starbase.

Now, let's add an orbital ring to this equation. Their platform cap is a bit lower, but still gets affected by all the platform cap modifiers, so you end 1 ion cannon less than the central starbase... In systems with 3 planets, they take out a 1M fleet power doom stack in seconds, suffering a loss of a single defense platform if the attacker got lucky.

Also fyi you don't need a starbase to build defense platforms, outposts can do them too. No doomstack can continousuly push through static ranged weapon installations on this cale. Yeah, the micro is insane, but that is allegedly changing for the better soon™.

The most defense platform cap I got on an Iron man run was over 90, because I had 4 Strategic Coordination Centers (1 was mine, 1 was ruined in the galaxy, 2 were captured from AI empires). The fleet power of a single starbase was around 700k iirc.

Defense platforms are just fine

Now getting the FE defense platform design when taking Cosmogenesis AP... that would be ever so neat-o

Yeah ok, I'll keep building those Battleships.

 

[Imp0815]

Yeah, but the same limits aren't always suitable across different situations.

Personally I'm hopeful for the doomstack trade combat tax that was teased in a dev diary a good while back.

We will see, but I'm not holding my breath. This will have the same impact as the Fleet Command limit, which is also a hard cap, by the way. So basically none — we’ll just shift our industrial complex to support our fleets and only stretch the game longer before we still stack 3 to 5 fleets into a 15 million fleet power stack.

 

[Ajacoba]

We will see, but I'm not holding my breath. This will have the same impact as the Fleet Command limit, which is also a hard cap, by the way. So basically none — we’ll just shift our industrial complex to support our fleets and only stretch the game longer before we still stack 3 to 5 fleets into a 15 million fleet power stack.

To be fair, fleet command limit encourages you to split your fleets, they're after all already split so you might as well send them towards different targets

If they were all literally just one fleet it would be a lot trickier to split them in opportune moments

It also encourages fleet variety, like having a fleet of brawlers run around with a fleet of long range weapons

 

[Critical Ethics]

We will see, but I'm not holding my breath. This will have the same impact as the Fleet Command limit, which is also a hard cap, by the way. So basically none — we’ll just shift our industrial complex to support our fleets and only stretch the game longer before we still stack 3 to 5 fleets into a 15 million fleet power stack.

Putting a hard system or combat limit on the number of ships in a fight doesn't work in Stellaris because ships move and, unlike SotS, Stellaris doesn't have a distinct battle map. "You can't build that here" is straightforward and only comes up once, but you're either preventing ships moving into a system or having a bunch of ships that are visibly "there" but not fighting, both of which would be irritating. "GUI" is not a real solution to either of those, unless we're talking removing in-system views from the game except during combat and working from there which I'd be fine with tbh but I'm probably in a minority.

I would be absolutely fine with a soft cap where your "combat" fleet cap is (base fleet size) + (a bit per extra admiral present) + a bit more depending on the size of the enemy fleet) and every ship after that doesn't get admiral bonuses and such, though it would be hard to implement that transparently with the current setup.

To be fair, fleet command limit encourages you to split your fleets, they're after all already split so you might as well send them towards different targets

If they were all literally just one fleet it would be a lot trickier to split them in opportune moments

It also encourages fleet variety, like having a fleet of brawlers run around with a fleet of long range weapons

Yep. Doomfleets are appealing in general and in Stellaris in particular because:
1) Using a big pile of ships to obliterate a smaller pile of ships is fun.
2) Managing one big pile of ships is easier than managing several small piles of ships.
3) Using a big pile of ships to obliterate a smaller pile of ships loses you less ships than using a small or medium pile of ships to fight a small pile of ships.
4) Using a small pile of ships to fight a medium or big pile of ships or a medium pile of ships to fight a big pile of ships just doesn't work.

It'd be nice to fix everything with a single magic bullet but sometimes you need to nibble away at a problem pieces by piece. It's fine to come at each of these one by one as long as the end result is a coherent whole.

Point 1 isn't a problem except that any solution would ideally allow for point 1 to still be an option.

Fleet limits help with point 2 without getting in the way of point 1, and that they don't solve points 3 to 4 doesn't take away from that.

Good doomfleet mitigation for points 3 and 4 (and rewards for putting the extra effort into point 2) include rewarding the player for bringing a knife to a knife fight, a gun to a gun fight, and a nuke to a nuke fight (and yes we're all picturing the same starship troopers scene but let's leave that for now). I like the trade cost concept for part of this because it mitigates the economic incentive to always bring the nuke. You may more decisively win the knife vs gun fight but you had to pay out extra for bullets, and you're not actively (or effectively) prevented from bringing the gun or nuke if that's what you'd have more fun with. Numbers will be tricky though - finishing a fight faster due to bringing more ships could end up resulting in savings anyway.

It could be neat for if debris scaled inversely with the relative size of your opponent, since unloading a few dozen battleships onto a half a dozen cruisers will result in fewer intact cruisers than a fairer fight. Or is that already a thing?

 

[Ajacoba]

It could be neat for if debris scaled inversely with the relative size of your opponent, since unloading a few dozen battleships onto a half a dozen cruisers will result in fewer intact cruisers than a fairer fight. Or is that already a thing?

There's a kind of underutilized mechanic that gives the smaller side additional ship fire rate

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

There's a kind of underutilized mechanic that gives the smaller side additional ship fire rate

"Target-rich environments" could be made a thing when the targets are unable to coordinate effectively, i.e. are split into multiple different fleets.

The simplest implementation could be to track fire rate separately for each target fleet in combat, i.e. if 1 fleet is fighting 2 fleets, the single fleet would effectively fire twice as often. If all fleets are perfectly equal, this would mean that both sides inflict equal amounts of total damage on each other. The advantages for the 2-fleet side are that it can finish the battle twice as fast as otherwise (if that is strategically important), and can inflict damage on the single fleet twice as fast as it inflicts damage on each of the two hostile fleets. The latter could translate into fewer ships being completely worn down and destroyed.

Basically, a reduced numerical advantage from the current situation, where stacked fleets get advantage from both dealing damage from multiple fleets and having the received damage be spread out across all fleets. With a "target rich environment" mechanic as described above, stacked fleets could still enjoy a numerical advantage, but would be less capable of exploiting it than if all ships were organised as a single, cohesive fleet.

 

[LogicMage]

I'd like to see all megas be able to be built and torn down. Especially Habitats and Ring Worlds.

 

[r3xm0rt1s]

Sounds like a fully optimized build in the endgame will have at least 4 capacity per system (assuming each thing listed only gives +1)
That's gonna be A LOT of defense platforms

"The sky was full of stars that day. And each star was an exploding defence platform. One of ours." - commander of a turtle player.

 

[Fulgrymm]

"The sky was full of stars that day. And each star was an exploding defence platform. One of ours." - commander of a turtle player.

Only an issue for the MP types, of which there are very few.

 

[Ajacoba]

"The sky was full of stars that day. And each star was an exploding defence platform. One of ours." - commander of a turtle player.

They will take down just as many enemy battleships

 

[Critical Ethics]

"Target-rich environments" could be made a thing when the targets are unable to coordinate effectively, i.e. are split into multiple different fleets.

The simplest implementation could be to track fire rate separately for each target fleet in combat, i.e. if 1 fleet is fighting 2 fleets, the single fleet would effectively fire twice as often. If all fleets are perfectly equal, this would mean that both sides inflict equal amounts of total damage on each other. The advantages for the 2-fleet side are that it can finish the battle twice as fast as otherwise (if that is strategically important), and can inflict damage on the single fleet twice as fast as it inflicts damage on each of the two hostile fleets. The latter could translate into fewer ships being completely worn down and destroyed.

Basically, a reduced numerical advantage from the current situation, where stacked fleets get advantage from both dealing damage from multiple fleets and having the received damage be spread out across all fleets. With a "target rich environment" mechanic as described above, stacked fleets could still enjoy a numerical advantage, but would be less capable of exploiting it than if all ships were organised as a single, cohesive fleet.

I'm usually for making mechanics work off bigger things but making boosts work off the number of fleets would be a huge boost to the +naval cap techs, and one of the main reasons to "legitimately" make a doomstack is to pull all your fleets together to fight a numerically superior foe like the crisis. Also weird edge cases like having a big fleet and then pulling in a small fleet leading to your total fleet performing worse than just the big fleet on its own. Total ships seems viable though.

 

[Akkadian]

Great with, there are many fantastic things about this.

However, there is one big problem with it: massive micro management!

Having to build a new DSC for every hyperplane (if they're not close to each other) creates too many extra steps, especially when the player is not lucky enough to capture the best chokepoint systems.

We were hoping the DSC can reduce rather than increase micromanagement.

An even better system would be to make DSC function like a starbase citadel with +1 range to hyperlane FTL inhibitor!

That way, it can give players a way to fortify their space even if they are 1 system away from a chokepoint system.

As for increasing the military power of the DSC, instead of having to build a new one on the same system it should follow a system similar to building defense stations for starbases, only with the full setup and cost.

 

[grommile]

An even better system would be to make DSC function like a starbase citadel with +1 range to hyperlane FTL inhibitor!

That would make your empire literally invulnerable to anyone without Jump Drive, so no.

 

[Imp0815]

To be fair, fleet command limit encourages you to split your fleets, they're after all already split so you might as well send them towards different targets

If they were all literally just one fleet it would be a lot trickier to split them in opportune moments

It also encourages fleet variety, like having a fleet of brawlers run around with a fleet of long range weapons

Well, that’s a noble ideal you're talking about — but the reality is, you build one type of cruiser or maybe battleship and just spam them until your fleet cap is filled. Then you build a new one.

You can easily solve all problems by simply bringing more fleet power to the fight.

The hard limit of Deep Space Citadels is just a stark reminder that they’re not really useful. They only buy you time until the enemy’s military-industrial complex has caught up to your repeatables by building more ships. Then they walz in, and the alpha damage from all their X-slot battleships is enough to wipe it out in one go.

 

[Imp0815]

Putting a hard system or combat limit on the number of ships in a fight doesn't work in Stellaris because ships move and, unlike SotS, Stellaris doesn't have a distinct battle map. "You can't build that here" is straightforward and only comes up once, but you're either preventing ships moving into a system or having a bunch of ships that are visibly "there" but not fighting, both of which would be irritating. "GUI" is not a real solution to either of those, unless we're talking removing in-system views from the game except during combat and working from there which I'd be fine with tbh but I'm probably in a minority.

I would be absolutely fine with a soft cap where your "combat" fleet cap is (base fleet size) + (a bit per extra admiral present) + a bit more depending on the size of the enemy fleet) and every ship after that doesn't get admiral bonuses and such, though it would be hard to implement that transparently with the current setup.
_____________________
"I like the trade cost concept for part of this because it mitigates the economic incentive to always bring the nuke. "

Not what I meant by that. In general, I don’t oppose the idea of using "trade" as a supply resource. It’s just that I predicted what will happen with its implementation in Stellaris: they won’t make the necessary changes to finally plug the giant sinkhole that is the entire military system — and how our gameplay decisions always revolve around it. It will just drag the problem out to the later stages of the game.

This must be a two-part solution:

1. A soft supply limit
2. Enforced per system

Anything else will be a "solution" like the current fleet command caps.

 

[Ajacoba]

Well, that’s a noble ideal you're talking about — but the reality is, you build one type of cruiser or maybe battleship and just spam them until your fleet cap is filled. Then you build a new one.

You can easily solve all problems by simply bringing more fleet power to the fight.

The hard limit of Deep Space Citadels is just a stark reminder that they’re not really useful. They only buy you time until the enemy’s military-industrial complex has caught up to your repeatables by building more ships. Then they walz in, and the alpha damage from all their X-slot battleships is enough to wipe it out in one go.

The citadels could cause just as much alpha damage with ion cannon spam

Also if you specialize your ships like that they will be absolutely obliterated by citadels placed directly at the hyperlane and fully equipped with torpedoes

Using the hypothetically strongest design means nothing outside a vacuum, all weapons and defenses have easily exploitable weaknesses, like for example minimum range on most large or X slot weapons

Also, just like so many others, you assume that the enemy won't just have (some?) their own fleets sitting in the targeted system, backed up by the citadels and the bastion

Defense platforms are after all cheaper than battleships and faster to build, despite having similar stats

 

[Critical Ethics]

Not what I meant by that. In general, I don’t oppose the idea of using "trade" as a supply resource. It’s just that I predicted what will happen with its implementation in Stellaris: they won’t make the necessary changes to finally plug the giant sinkhole that is the entire military system — and how our gameplay decisions always revolve around it. It will just drag the problem out to the later stages of the game.

This must be a two-part solution:

1. A soft supply limit
2. Enforced per system

Anything else will be a "solution" like the current fleet command caps.

What do you mean by "enforced per system" if you don't mean either "preventing ships moving into a system [if it's already at cap]" or "having a bunch of ships that are visibly "there" but not fighting"? I legit can't think of a third option that doesn't require a hefty rewrite of many base game assumptions (which I'm not exactly opposed to).

 

[hart30]

Defense platforms are after all cheaper than battleships and faster to build, despite having similar stats

Even more so - with eternal vigilance u can watch ur defense platforms be built automatically. As the perk gives an edict that builds them for free over time.

Leaving the turtle player only with the cost for the DSC itself and upkeep.
Meaning if someone really wants to throw their doomstack against ur fortress system they probably not only will meet the expected defenses - but a sizable defense fleet as well. As thats where the spare resources can be spent on.
That way a smaller empire really can fend of a way bigger empire. As that enemy doomstack would cost a lot more resources to outsize the cheaper defenses. And at that point its time to use tactics for real.

 

[Imp0815]

The citadels could cause just as much alpha damage with ion cannon spam

Also if you specialize your ships like that they will be absolutely obliterated by citadels placed directly at the hyperlane and fully equipped with torpedoes

Using the hypothetically strongest design means nothing outside a vacuum, all weapons and defenses have easily exploitable weaknesses, like for example minimum range on most large or X slot weapons

Also, just like so many others, you assume that the enemy won't just have (some?) their own fleets sitting in the targeted system, backed up by the citadels and the bastion

Defense platforms are after all cheaper than battleships and faster to build, despite having similar stats

Well yes and no, you can spread damage across ships when a doomstack rolls in — but stations really can’t. They’re capped, limited, and stuck with hard platform limits per system. It’s always a numbers game, and stations will never outnumber fleets. So you either dump time and resources into fortifying one system just to slow a doomstack, or you build your own. And sure, once you're deep into soft cap and your economy’s stretched, maybe you start throwing alloys into citadels — but by then, you probably don’t need them. - Oh well, you could just make stations hilariously OP and create the precedent that fleet power numbers aren’t a real metric anymore. But where’s the fun in that?

That’s the problem. If orbital rings or stations were actually viable, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. This Deep Space Citadel feature is just another patch on top of a broken foundation — a way to see if defenses can feel meaningful, without addressing the core issue: the game is built around doomstacks. The mechanics that make it shallow — uncapped fleets, simplified combat, brute-force meta — those are untouched. And yet we’re capping the few things that might actually diversify play. It's not that depth isn’t possible — it’s that this isn’t the way to get there.

 

[Imp0815]

What do you mean by "enforced per system" if you don't mean either "preventing ships moving into a system [if it's already at cap]" or "having a bunch of ships that are visibly "there" but not fighting"? I legit can't think of a third option that doesn't require a hefty rewrite of many base game assumptions (which I'm not exactly opposed to).

Bad choice of words on my part. I meant a system where fleet presence is measured/supported per system. I don’t know what the game designers wanted to come up with — I’d guess a hard cap (lol). If it were me, I’d just have a soft cap that, if overstepped, ramps up costs and decreases effectiveness.