The 'relative power' indicator should be less accurate/removed

[me6472]

One of the key elements of war is properly assesing your enemies' capabilities in order to make sure you don't go to war with someone who turns out to be more capable than you think. In stellaris the 'relative power' indicator tells you pretty much everything you need to know. Theres no spying, no assesing of capabilities, just a quick glance at the ui will tell you pretty much all you need to know.

Whats worse is the effect this has on the AI. The AI will only go to war if they are certain they can completely annihilate your empire, and there is very little you can do against an enemy that is superior in every way. 99/100 of the wars in stellaris will be won by the agressor because the 'relative power' indicator tells them all they need to know about the enemy, and obviously they would only go to war if they think they can win. Wars where one side is so much more powerful than the other are boring, as theres very little tactics involved, and its mainly just about brute force.

What I would like to see is an 'intelligence' system (similar to other 4x games, and I think theres a mod for this) or if thats too much, the complete removal of the indicator completely, and players (and AIs) are left to make their own assesments of the capabilities of the enemy. This would allow for more wars where the opposing sides are relatively equally matched, making tactics far more important and 'hiding' fleets and ground units possible (eg, a devouring swarm declares war, thinking you're just another tasty meal, but just as they are about to commence orbital bombardment you bring your fleets out of hiding and send them running with their tails/tentacles between their legs/arms/tentacles).

[Maya-Neko]

Also in this state of the game, intel is very important. Even if you've similar fleet strength, size and technology, one fleet might roll over the other one depending on what weapons are build in, so you already need to spy on your enemies ship design to properly prepare yourself before going to war. Because of this all may starbases near my rivals have the listening post equiped.

And btw, the AI will also attack you if the Indicators even out. Just yesterday an enemy declared war on me just to be annhilated by me and another empire i had a defensive pact with. And just keep in mind that if they're in a federation, they might send the federation fleet at you too in addition to his own fleet, which also can be the same strength as yours.

[MightyFox]

Originally posted by me6472:

One of the key elements of war is properly assesing your enemies' capabilities in order to make sure you don't go to war with someone who turns out to be more capable than you think. In stellaris the 'relative power' indicator tells you pretty much everything you need to know. Theres no spying, no assesing of capabilities, just a quick glance at the ui will tell you pretty much all you need to know.

Whats worse is the effect this has on the AI. The AI will only go to war if they are certain they can completely annihilate your empire, and there is very little you can do against an enemy that is superior in every way. 99/100 of the wars in stellaris will be won by the agressor because the 'relative power' indicator tells them all they need to know about the enemy, and obviously they would only go to war if they think they can win. Wars where one side is so much more powerful than the other are boring, as theres very little tactics involved, and its mainly just about brute force.

What I would like to see is an 'intelligence' system (similar to other 4x games, and I think theres a mod for this) or if thats too much, the complete removal of the indicator completely, and players (and AIs) are left to make their own assesments of the capabilities of the enemy. This would allow for more wars where the opposing sides are relatively equally matched, making tactics far more important and 'hiding' fleets and ground units possible (eg, a devouring swarm declares war, thinking you're just another tasty meal, but just as they are about to commence orbital bombardment you bring your fleets out of hiding and send them running with their tails/tentacles between their legs/arms/tentacles).

You have a very strange idea of how AI works. The AI doesn't use those indicators, they are just for player use. The AI always knows what you have, what its enemies have, and where you are in the system. It has to in order to respond. Removing the indicators won't change that. In the case of two AI going against eachother, the AI is just comparing numbers, and is doing so through parameters set forth by the developer, and the player. It will gladly take on a "superior" navy if several numbes coincide, such as aggression level, ethic options, border stress, and distance of allies from it's own border systems. I doubt it takes ship weapons into consideration, as it only rarely min-maxes their effects, but it certianly isn't looking at the diplomacy screen.

Player-wise, I disagree on it's removal. Basic information is essential for making decisions, and without it, everything you do is just going to be a snipe hunt. Besides, the indicators themselves arn't even accurate, and can be as equally misleading as they can be helpful. As a tool, I would say they are required to actually enjoy the limited diplomacy offered by the game, as a mechanic, I would say without it, the game would have a lot less players. This being the case, it is still required of the player to gain basic intelligence before going to war. They just don't have to do it on every empire in the galaxy at the same time.

[Partl]

I d say, we should have mapOptions that indicate fleetPower/overallPower. Hate to forget checking my neighbour for 5 minutes, suddenly facing overwhealming fleets.

Honestly, shouldnt be too hard to implement.

[Meewec]

I'm not sure how you could make it less accurate and still have it mean anything

[cooltv27]

right now the game will tell you equivelent if you are anywhere from half as strong, to twice as strong, which I would say is pretty inaccurate

[SkeL]

The relative power of the fleets ist totally broken. The numbers doesnt mean anything, the only thing you can get from it is the average size of the fleet, i mean you see a 100k fleet you know theres a lot of ships there.

If the numbers were correct I would never be able to win with a 100k fleet against a 260k. (Contigency)

What matter in your fleets is what are their defence and weapons agaisnt an enemy fleet.
If you and your enemy both have 100k fleets but im only using armor and hes only using energy weapons, im ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and he will have minimum loses.

In the end you gotta always scout the enemy territory to find an enemy fleet so you can check the details and see which weapons and defences its using so you can counter.

[Gafwmn]

Thats why you build sensor outposts to keep an eye on your neighbors , or have unused science ships sitting in places to help with the scan coverage. Its also a good idea to actually look at all the data you can about your potential target. Recon and intel people....look at ALL the numbers. If you rely on only 1 piece of data to plan , then you will get rolled over. You need to look at the enemy fleets composition , at EACH ship / class , to really see how your fleet will fare. Then make new or change your current ships to counter the enemies. Be smarter than your enemy.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by me6472:

In stellaris the 'relative power' indicator tells you pretty much everything you need to know. Theres no spying, no assesing of capabilities, just a quick glance at the ui will tell you pretty much all you need to know.

That's not true. In fact, almost the opposite is true. Sure, if the enemy is two steps higher or lower than you then they are reliably stronger or weaker than you, but if they are one step away it is very difficult to tell just from that how you will fare in a war against them. If you are listed as equivalent to them then there's essentially no information provided at all; making a decision based on only that information would be best described as "guessing".

The vague nature of the relative power scale means that a smart player is always going to attept to assess the capabilties of their enemy in some supplemental way in order to ensure that they are not being misled by the scales' inaccuracy.

Originally posted by me6472:

Whats worse is the effect this has on the AI. The AI will only go to war if they are certain they can completely annihilate your empire, and there is very little you can do against an enemy that is superior in every way. 99/100 of the wars in stellaris will be won by the agressor because the 'relative power' indicator tells them all they need to know about the enemy, and obviously they would only go to war if they think they can win.

This is not true either. I don't know exactly how the AI determines when to go to war, but I assume that they try to target enemies that they believe are weaker. However, because there are often complicating circumstances the outcome often does not meet their expectations.

For example, I focus on controling and defending choke points. It is not uncommon in the games I play for my neighbors to be "overwhelming" compared to me. I try to be friendly with as many as I can, but inevitably there will be neighbors who declare war. If you were right then 99/100 of my games would end with that overwhelming enemy crushing my chokepoint defenses and then overrunning my entire empire. That does happen sometimes, but usually what happens is that my overwhelming neighbor receives a very harsh lesson about how unpleasant it is to fight a weaker fleet backed up by a massive starbase. In some circumstances I have even been able to push out after they break their fleet on my wall and take territory from them before they can recover. So, from the AI's perspective, whatever method it used to determine that I was a good target for a war was horribly flawed.

Of course that's AI vs Human, so one might be inclined to dismiss it as an example of an inherently uneven matchup. However, your statements fail even when comparing only AI vs AI interactions. If the AI only went to war when it was certain to win, and then in fact did win 99/100 of those wars, then everyone would know that to be true from the after-war reports that we see when an AI vs AI war ends. For my part, I see more than 1/100 wars that end with the defender gaining systems, and I assume that I am not some exception in this. Instead of 99-1, I would put the ratio closer to 60-40, which I would interpret to mean that the AI actually isn't that good at predicting the outcome of wars it declares. Some of this is accounted for by outside factors, such as getting stuck in multiple wars, but I suspect that if it were possible to factor those wars out then the ratio will would not be close to 99-1.

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The reason that relative power (and whatever calculation the AI uses to make its comparisons) is so inaccurate is that it takes into account factors that may not actually impact the outcome of a war. For example, technological level is one of the components considered in relative power. However, the comparison is made based on the raw number of technologies researched, rather than weighting military techs higher. The result is that two empire with similar research output may compare very differently on the tech scale, with the lower empire possibly being the stronger militarily. Empire A always researches the cheapest tech available; Empire B only researches military techs and prioritizes ship techs that unlock new ship classes and stronger weapons. Empire A will have more techs total, and so will be stronger in tech according to the ranking, but Empire B will have better ships.

Another component of the comparison is fleet capacity. Here the inaccuracy comes from the fact that it is compared in isolation of the factors that make it dangerous. Let me clarify that: consider Empire C with 100 fleet capacity and Empire D with 1000 fleet capacity. The game will always consider Empire D's fleet capacity to be vastly superior to Empire C's. However, fleet capacity alone does nothing; it is the actual ships that fill that capacity that are capable of doing damage. If Empire D has no ships at all and Empire C has 200 capacity worth of ships (running 100 over capacity) then the game still rates Empire D as vastly superior. Of course the disparity is reflected in the actual fleet strength comparison, which also factors in to relative power, but the result is that the disparity is muted by this massive fleet capacity that is in fact doing nothing to contribute to the outcome of the war. Also, fleet capacity is factored in without comparing factors like mineral stockpile, mineral income, and number of shipyards. It is impossible to predict what will happen in the C vs D war without that information. If Empire D is out of minerals and has very low mineral income then C crushes D, but if Empire D has 100 shipyards and enough minerals stockpiled to build 100 battleships immediately then C's initial advantage is about to fade in dramatic fashion.

Since fleet capacity comparisons, and relative power comparisons, don't factor in these key facts they are inherently unreliable as predictors of anything meaningful. So, I don't really see any need to make relative power less accurate, or to remove it, to prevent the effects you describe, because I don't believe that your assesment of the impact of relative power on gameplay is correct.

Originally posted by me6472:

What I would like to see is an 'intelligence' system (similar to other 4x games, and I think theres a mod for this) or if thats too much, the complete removal of the indicator completely, and players (and AIs) are left to make their own assesments of the capabilities of the enemy.

Adding an espionage system is a good idea, and one I expect to see in a DLC eventually. When that happens there will likely be changes to the relative power system, but I doubt it will go away entirely because there needs to be some cue to serve as a basis for more in-depth assesments to hang off of. In other words the relative power would represent your initial impression of the other empire, and then you would conduct espionage to refine that assessment.

[Percopius]

Originally posted by Partl:

I d say, we should have mapOptions that indicate fleetPower/overallPower. Hate to forget checking my neighbour for 5 minutes, suddenly facing overwhealming fleets.

Honestly, shouldnt be too hard to implement.

there is a Map Mode Mod that adds that exact mode to the map, and many others. very useful.

[markdb92]

just build i see everything megastucture and they cant hide from you.