I know it's not quite a big of a deal as many other bugs but if we could get a fix to Ctrl+Click queueing up 5 armies in one place, rather than spreading them out, that would be great.
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I know it's not quite a big of a deal as many other bugs but if we could get a fix to Ctrl+Click queueing up 5 armies in one place, rather than spreading them out, that would be great.
I'm curious, if they could make it less tedious would you enjoy it? Do you enjoy those early wars, and it only bothers you after the cognitive overload kicks in from the additional compounded micro and macro management?
This is something I feel pushes a lot of people away from RTS'/MOBAs so it wouldn't surprise me it's a major factor in a game like Stellaris which bridges RTS with a bunch of other things to do; especially in multiplayer or for people who don't play 80% of the time paused like I do. It's a skill you can develop, but considering the most popular RTS games are mostly full of people just smashing blobs together it's understanably not something most people stick through the initial losses to overcome, and those that do tend towards brute forcing the problem and overcoming it with numbers/macro. It's also pretty demoralizing to find where you do stack up even after putting in some effort and a bunch of time.
I've suggested it before, but I feel Stellaris could benefit from something like they added in the Outlaw Sectors DLC for Sins of Solar Empire, or the TEC have in the sequel, where you have a separate portion of your military force controlled by the AI(or the Player with restrictions on these Fleets and some automated aspects) for home defense and border conflicts, leaving the big battles and fleet engagements for the player to enjoy. I find this make the conflicts and your Empire feel a bit more active and lived in, and removes the anticlimatic all-or-nothing doomstack, single battle wars. I'd have these Fleets linked to a Sector, where they would Patrol, and could engage hostiles in neighbouring Systems up to X jumps from that Sector, but otherwise function in a reserve role with only a bit of setup from the Player. This would alleviate a lot of the micro from multi-front Wars and leave you to decide where your big Fleets go, but also not leave one half of your Empire undefended or force you to be in two places at once with your limited Fleet Power. I think it would also solve some problems with the AI after they lose all their Ships in one engagement or war and then immediately get Vassalized or taken over by another Empire since they have a Pathetic Fleet value compared to everyone else after one near peer conflict; at the very least act as a few awnings to hit and slow down their fall.
Would something like that go far enough?
I love RTS games, and I love just about every aspect of Stellaris and the way it combines them all into something bigger than they are individually, but I also have an issue with multi-front conflicts, or being ganged up on by all my neighbours independently since I play Xenophobes, or just late game Galaxy spanning conflicts like WiH and Crises, and I would hate for them to just sweep this one under the Automation rug/toggle key and feel that's solved the problem for everyone. I think this is an issue that needs a deep dive, and not just a surface sweep for those dipping their toes.
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I would love to be able to concentrate on my war plans, instead of chasing million 1k power fleets, roaming and swarming my empire
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Yeah there are some things with this that bother me and I tend to just go back to building them per Planet unless I'm dealing with an early Subterranean with 500AP on all their 2 Pop Colonies and need 100s of vanilla Assault Armies.
-Can't use Ctrl click to build in groups of 5 on Planets, meaning 5x as many inputs to bypass the other issues
-Starbase option builds them in groups of 5 starting with the Sector Capital, then I think it uses the Outliner order? However it decides, it's often many jumps away from where I ordered them built even if there are Planets in that System
-Missing in Action usually takes longer than it would to fly them manually
-Enemy Fleets(even single Corvette reinforcements) will scatter them all or retreat them into the Fleet. Lots of single Transport Fleets to deal with if this happens, and having to micro them, toggle off Evasive, or replace them.
To the point of the OP, these are also similar to issues with Fleet reinforcement, so maybe get two birds with a fix here, as that is also a huge annoyance in the late game.
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If it was less tedious, I would enjoy it for sure. My problem is that early game war is manageable and fun for me, I just have like one small war to focus on, 1-2 battles decide the war then you just invade planets with the army. My problem is when it gets to the mid-late game where you will have multiple fronts, you will have enemy crisis that spawn and guerilla warfare your entire nation and you spend 10 minutes chasing them while enemies will also have ships coming in from different fronts and then you also have to focus on invading planets and not just occupying the starsector. I spend more time doing small things like that and I don't get to spend time enjoying the aspects of the game I actually enjoy which is the macro element of the game. One time, two times It was fine but after the 100th war it gets too much and I don't enjoy the game anymore after early game. I also get tunnel vision a little bit as I like to watch battles unfold while I have a more fleets inside my nation lol.
I'm a bit sad to see that, I hope you guys consider this in the future like ck3 is adding this feature which is the last game I thought would have ai controlled armies option.
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Because if you are strong enough you don't need the computer to be incredibly skilled, they just need to move your ships towards the enemy and get the armies into their planets. Also to keep an eye on any fleets that happen to break into your borders. Just the busywork part of warfare.
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Agreed, it's a feature I would like due to how war is now. Most wars in stellaris are won in about the same length of time, where "winning" here means doing enough damage to their fleets that they can't recover from your snowballing through their territory. But due to how surrender mechanics work you end up having to continue fighting years, playing wack-a-mole on their surviving fleets and laboriously invading planets. This isn't too bad in the early game but by the midgame it gets longer, and by the end game there are so many federations/vassal blocs/defence pacts that the slog becomes galactic.
If fleets had an automation button like science ships where you could toggle options like leave home territory, attack fleets, bombard planets etc then at least we could walk away when the drudgery begins.
But at the risk of summoning @Imp0815 by saying the D-word automation like this is a patch on a bigger problem. Which is that wars in stellaris are still largely just a case of hitting doomstack into doomstack followed by a slow grinding down of the loser.
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I laughed at the OP ("just play fan pacifist!"), but this post convinced me we need fleet automation.
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I don't think we need automated fleets, but rather a rework of how wars end could fix this. The problem is early on wars end shortly after the opponent has no real way to fight back, and the later it goes the more time between "the war is over" and "the literal war has ended" there is.
A good model is the CK war system, which is both capable of indefinite wars when they're going back and forth instead of war exhaustion arbitrarily ending a war that absolutely isn't over, and tremendously reduces the time spent whacking moles because if the catastrophic loss that frequently happens to one side or the other in Stellaris happens in CK the war tends to end almost immediately because, in exchange for war exhaustion not forcing wars to end, factors can run up war SCORE (the equivalent) much faster due to it being possible to have it go down OR up.
A good model is the CK war system, which is both capable of indefinite wars when they're going back and forth instead of war exhaustion arbitrarily ending a war that absolutely isn't over, and tremendously reduces the time spent whacking moles because if the catastrophic loss that frequently happens to one side or the other in Stellaris happens in CK the war tends to end almost immediately because, in exchange for war exhaustion not forcing wars to end, factors can run up war SCORE (the equivalent) much faster due to it being possible to have it go down OR up.
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Personally I quite enjoy the little planet bonsai game, tinkering with pop templates and the council and whatnot, and have quite limited patience for the war side of things (aside from ship designing, which I do like doing). I occasionally enjoy it for a limited time regardless of what phase of the game it's in but more often I'm annoyed about having to pay attention to it instead of tinkering with how many mining districts to build where and that sort of thing.
I think it was part of the reason I liked habitats so much, but I digress. A little bot I can tell to go play whack-a-mole for me that I can generally trust not to completely bungle it would be nice, whether warfare was less tedious for others or not.
But then I was always an oddball who would play Starcraft just to use protoss dark archons to capture an SCV and a drone and go build little zerg zoos with complex imagined ecosystems and metamorphosis chains for my terran medics, marines and firebats to go look at.
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Well you would be surprised there is more to the game then just moving ships around the map
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I think the point is more that it's the biggest non-automated thing in the game at this point.
Your entire economy on a planet level and in stations can be automated (badly at the moment for planets)
Surveys, anomalies ETC can all be automated entirely
The galcom is essentially automated, the AI using your vote too wouldn't make much difference from just ignoring it
Research can be automated
That's not really a reason not to do it, because people can just not do it (especially if it does it badly, like planets right now) but I do kinda see the point, if wars were automated and you turned on automation for all of that you're probably better off watching someone stream it instead.
If people don't want something automated they have the option to turn it off, there is no harm in adding automation since it is an optional feature and no one should be against it
I have a wild, never-before-heard point of view on this matter.
The problem isn’t about having automation or not, but, as somebody already pointed out, we should look at why we currently need it. Fix that mysterious problem, and afterwards see what we have then as a warfare and combat system, and maybe just outright design the new system with some sort of automation in mind.
If you look at HoI IV, they have such a great system—the best system of all PDX wargames—with automation. You can relax, leave the war for some time to manage your country and production, and read funny little notes about history without outright losing the war in mere seconds.
But if you really are the armchair general you claim to be, you can directly micromanage individual units on the frontline to push openings, make tactical decisions, and get rewarded for taking that risk. It’s a good and fun system that always makes me want to come back and try something new—maybe even completely new unit compositions, tactics, and avenues of engagement. Really a great game.
Stellaris, on the other hand… oh well.
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If someone paid money for the game and they want to watch the ai play, there is nothing wrong with that. There's not much to be said, people play the game the way they want to play. If someone doesn't like automation or science research, they can turn it on or off and no one was complaining then, why would military be the same way? Paradox gamers have to let go of the past, microing 100s of units is a thing of the past and as time goes on you will see more of this sentiment. I assume more people don't ask for this because of reasons like this where you have people saying "why even play at all if you can automate things". It's a single player game so people should play how they want to play.
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You didn't see final paragraph. You're arguing to me that implementing automation is fine because people can just not use it, which... I said, in the post you replied to.
I can enjoy microing some of my military but if I need to micro all of it to win I generally consider that a gameplay flaw.
I'd like the actual gameplay problem fixed so that NOT automating it is an option, but I don't care at all whether automating it is an option because I just won't use it, much like planetary and research automation.