To be fair to Stellaris, the new MOO screwed this up too. They tried to give the player some illusion of control over complex real time combat but it was fairly pointless. The satisfaction for ship to ship combat in games like this comes from clicking “SHOOT ALL THE GUNS” and then watching enemy ships ASPLODE.
What don’t you guys like about the combat? The last time I played (just after the last expansion) I really enjoyed watching the ships exchange fire and the new roles of the various ship sizes and layouts. I didn’t get super into it at the time as half a dozen other freaking games all came out at the same time, but what I did play was really enjoyable.
In fact, the only reason I haven’t put more time in is they keep announcing all the amazing things that are coming (today’s dairy didn’t help, that stuff sound awesome and I’m picking that expansion up day one just based on today’s diary alone) and I don’t want to get burned out on the game before more new content is out, which will (I’m guessing based on last time we got a major patch + expansion DLC) be about 6 weeks from now. I can wait.
The key word there was “watching” and I think that’s the core issue for folks like me who enjoy everything about Stellaris except the combat.
MOO2 ship combat is exciting, like participating in a MMA bout. Stellaris ship combat is passive, like watching a youtube video of your annoying cousin in a MMA bout.
Yeah, there’s two viewpoints on how and what combat should be in a game like this. I’m in @Scotch_Lufkin’s camp, but I know where you’re coming from.
For me, I’m mostly interested in the strategic decisions and don’t want to be bothered much with the tactical level in a game of this scale, which is why Stellaris’ combat works for me (in general). The combat is designed to give you a visual representation of how your ships are performing. “Oh, crap, all my missiles are being blasted away by the heavy PD this enemy has. I really need to kick up some mass driver research ASAP” or “Oh no, my heavily armored battleships are getting sliced apart by the armor-piercing weaponry the enemy is fielding, I need to get some shields equipped”.
Where the Stellaris combat falls short for me is there’s no espionage or other way to determine what you’re going to go up against until you’re already engaged in a war. There’s not enough strategic-level decisions in terms of what I research or how I construct my fleet yet, but I definitely don’t miss fiddling on a tactical level in a game like this. The most I would want is maybe a triggerable ability on an admiral or battleship or something, I definitely don’t want to be wrangling individual ship positions and issuing attack orders. Definitely just a personal preference thing, though!
What @KevinC said, we seem to be on the same page. I actually loved MOO2 when I was younger, but I don’t really want to slog through big hour long turn based battles (end game battles) that eventually devolve into me steaming rolling the AI anyway. This is faster and more of a spectacle, which I enjoy.
Not to mention the sizes the fleets get in Stellaris, in MOO2 you had a dozen or so ships? It’s been awhile, but I don’t remember having very many ships in a given fight to command. Stellaris’ scope is more appealing to me, but that scope only works if I can just build the best fleet I can and then watch the battles unfold, secure in the knowledge if I lose a battle it was out of my hands; I just got out played. I enjoy that aspect, I think. Makes me feel more like a space emperor.
What’s bad about Stellaris combat is that it seems it’s almost always a 1:1 outcome with fleet combat size. So you will always, always win or lose when a 1.5k fleet fights a 1k fleet since those numbers represent expected value. Maybe some stuff goes funny with missiles, maybe you have Battleships with those super long ranges hammer weapons that kill ships before they get into range. But one generic fleet can another even a tiny difference in combat power almost always leads to a cascade effect as ships get destroyed that lead inevitably to one side winning.
I think that ties into my complaint about the lack of information regarding my enemies when I design my fleet. Since I don’t have a way of knowing what my enemy has, I typically just roll with whatever my best tech is.
I don’t think higher strength always winning is a sure thing, though. I don’t spend much time there, but I’ve seen posts on the Stellaris subreddit where people are showing off how their fleet destroyed a bigger and badder enemy. This is usually in the context of fighting Fallen Empires, though, so perhaps they’re familiar with what weapon and defensive systems they’ll be facing.
In general, though, I think the higher strength fleet should be winning, otherwise the number itself loses its value. If their fleet has some combination of more ships and better tech, I got outplayed. That being said, the game is lacking things other Paradox titles have: terrain, attrition, combat width, etc. Maybe my fleet is outgunned, but if I manage to ambush them in the nebula…?
I don’t have any interest in controlling tactical combat in 4X games either. For me Stellaris hits the sweet spot there (although I agree with @Enidigm on the balance problems they have -interactions are too simplistic-).
There are many 4X with focus on tactical combat, and while I enjoy some (SotS) most of them leave me cold. I want less micromanagement and more strategy in my 4Xs, and that includes combat. I don’t have any interest in ship design either.
But yeah, there are two very different kind of gamers attracted to the genre, in terms of what they want from it. It’s impossible to satisfy both.
It’s hard because this is ultimately a Clausewitz engine game and in historic titles variability is provided by terrain, leadership and other randomization quantities. It’s really hard to imagine “terrain” combat variables other than nebula (always with the nebula!). And they report fleets not by size but by power and the effect of leadership on expected combat value is actually displayed.
I don’t have a good answer, however I can imagine more combat options based around the type of system you fight in. That’s probably better than trying to create terrain within the system.
I think the answer could be more (and harder) counter to certain ship builds and technologies, along improved espionage system (so you can build to counter, of course) and probably inclusion of commander and tactics acting as a second layer of counters so technology is not the only factor.
A more involved supply system to punish mega fleets would also help, I think, along with bonuses for having fleets build of similar technologies (thus increasing the firepower but also the vulnerability to counters, since they won’t be mixed).
You don’t need terrain, I think, but you do need a much more complex underlining system. I blame it on ship customization. Had they had limited classes, it could have been easier to balance for interesting outcomes.
Hearts of Iron has historically had the concept of stacking penalties, especially in regards to air wings. Yes, you can throw 5,000 tactical bombers at a province, but pretty quickly you start running into efficiency problems with so many planes trying to bomb the same targets. That at least might break up the “My big stack is better than your big stack, so I win” problem. It would allow the human player to split their forces, harass behind the enemy’s lines, etc.
While “terrain” doesn’t work out too well in space, they could at least focus on the fortification part of the game. I think redoing the entire Drive/movement system is needed. Tear it up from the ground up. Then allow you to build fortifications, choke points, etc. I think this could go a long way to feeling like you have some crucial decisions to make as a player without devolving into fiddling with tactical combat.
Dare we say… logistics?
The problem with Stellaris is less the combat and more the war.
That just means that people are applying the concept of terrain too narrowly. On a tactical level, one could easily imagine e.g. the relative locations of gravity wells as being the terrain. (That’s certainly how a lot of written scifi works).
On a grander scale, you could easily just invent reasons for why parts of the galaxy have different rules. It’s all technobabble anyway, you don’t need to be consistent with actual physics. So you might end up with something like the Zones in Vinge’s A Fire Upon The Deep, where some technology just won’t work (or won’t work well) in certain parts of the galaxy.
Or maybe the propulsion technology works better when moving toward the center of the galaxy and worse when moving away. So basically you’d always want to vector your attacks such that you’re arriving from the center. (The tricky bit is that the other guy is trying to do the same). A bit like the weather gauge in age of sail combat.
Hell, just pick some kind of technology, and have its efficiency depend on the color of the star the combat is happening around. “Yeah, shields aren’t really effective near red stars. You really need to prioritize armor there instead”.
Those are some nice ideas!
Throw in some Survey Events that can affect the lay of the tactical landscape with randomized events inspired by Star Trek episodes:
In this system, 2-dimensional, energy-hungry organisms will sap the speed from any vessel (or projectile!) passing along the system.
In this one, a time anomaly randomly duplicates some percentage physical projectiles fired through Zone X. This includes potentially duplicating duplicated projectiles, because who doesn’t want the possibility of infinite missiles??
Here, ships which suffer hull breaches (armor attacks), miniature, furry creatures will breach the ship 50% of the time and begin rapidly multiplying until the ships dock for repairs at a starbase. . . infected ships will eventually go offline, but also have a 5% chance each of spreading the infection to any starbase they arrive at. . .
I think that combat in Stellaris works fine, its similar to EU series, and not ment to be the whole show. To make it more complex would easily also make it unmanageable. I do agree with terrain, with some imagination, it should not be too hard either.
You forgot to say that those creatures don’t like Klingons. ;)
I had times when i lost a 20k fleet to a 10k one, just because they had a different fleet composition or loadout. For example i had mostly big guns (cruisers/battleships) and his fleet was mostly vettes and destroyers.
Stellaris is one of the midweek sales games on Steam. 33% discount, 50% on the Galaxy Edition.