The AI doomstacking is absoulte ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

[Comrade Johnny]

Just as the title says: The doomstacking ai is just straight up ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I dont know who thought it was balanced but I have lost so many runs to suddenly 10 60k fleets popping up in my system and I wont lie, the second I figured they DID that I stacked my stations, ships and everything on that one entry system. But as soon as they appeared they just obliterated my fleet in a second and I had 5 60k fleets in the system backed by a debuffing starbase with 50k fleet power too. ANd my naval capacity was at maximum already, I had 600/550 ships already. But the ai just farted them out of the way like it was paper. So first I want to say how much of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game mechanic that is because after a certain point you just cant counter it anymore because I cant take over the entire ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ galaxy against an ai that already gets slight boni to everything in 100 years just to prevent the ai doomstack-steamrolling everything. And the best part is that the ai on their own arent even doing it useful eigher. Like I had a game where the contingency was about to ♥♥♥♥ up everyone aswell, it worked fine, everyone seemed to doomstack on my fleet which was fine. Then suddenly they stopped but did so just a second after my fleet jumped in, died then they all scattered and the contingency absolutely handed our asses to ourselves. Its just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, you cant counter it nor fight it. The only way I managed to do SOMETHING was to use a jumpdrive, teleport a colossus and a torpvette strike force into an enemy system with a planet, nuke the latter with the colossus and jump out again before the instatravel space highways brought the doomstack of death to me.

Now. Since ranting mindlessly doesnt bring me anywhere, how DO i counter that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥?

[Elitewrecker PT]

How late was that? Because 60k fleet power is rather low, 10 of them combined isn't as strong as a single end-game fleet with some repeatable.
600 naval capacity isn't even 3 maxed fleets worth of ships.

How to counter:
If possible, consider whether you could make a fleet that hard-counters as much as possible the enemy fleets. If not, then you just use the strongest meta designs.
Then - just be stronger than the AI combined because AI be inefficient.

[Ryika]

The AI didn't win because it was "doomstacking", it won because it had more stuff than you when the engagement happened. That's literally what you're complaining about "They came with more stuff, I engaged anyway and lost, how is that balanced???" Like, what is it supposed to do? Come with 20 individual fleets so you can doomstack and kill them one by one?

The number one way to counter a bigger fleet is to play better in the earlier parts of the game and making sure that next time that happens, you're the one who has more stuff.

If that's not an option, ignore the opponent and go counter-attack. Or sit back and wait for the AI to split their fleets, which it will probably do. A direct engagement against a bigger fleet is obviously not what you're looking for.

[pete3great]

Originally posted by Ryika:

The AI didn't win because it was "doomstacking", it won because it had more stuff than you when the engagement happened. That's literally what you're complaining about "They came with more stuff, I engaged anyway and lost, how is that balanced???"

I'm going slowly insane trying to help people here.

[HappySack]

What was the difficulty set at? what year was this? and did you allow advanced empires to spawn?

This would answer a lot of things.

[Jack Niggleson]

I don't think individual empires ever have that many separate fleets, so I'm guessing you went to war with a federation. So it's probably actually 5-10 different empires throwing stuff at you.

If you don't mind the diplo penalty, just keep doing what you did. Crack their most populated planets until you can white peace them. If you delete their most productive worlds, they'll be much less scary the second time around.

[ScreamCon]

Originally posted by pete3great:

I'm going slowly insane trying to help people here.

Insanity is the creative tool that empowers science. Those who deny this are actually stagnating. No one achieves absolute perfection of no insanity what so ever. In science you rarely leave off where you started. Of course not everyone is scientists or inventors so not necessarily needed.

Though I do think we should have as many inventors as possible and as much automation as possible. Every time someone is angry about the toil of life, just say, well how are you going to automate yourself out of having to do the work.

Existentialism is nothing, less than nothing. And can be crushed like every other puny method to dust. It hides behind the two hard rocks, one saying your angry, and the other saying there's no way.

Originally posted by LplayerJohnny:

Your angry I get it, but hearts and political sounding headers will actually get you shut down faster. Hearts form so people learn to not make them as moderation doesn't want what it considers worse words. Now onto the issue.

The latest version of stellaris has bugs and balancing issue. The developers since version 3.2 have taken a more radical stance with updates. Updates are not receiving quality control in favour of putting more coders/ creatives on the system designing. New systems like the resource shortage system, unity rework, ship rework coming soon, event rework.

The angry people now are paying the price of the product people tomorrow will enjoy. Stick around for a year you'll see. If you don't believe me roll back to an older version. You won't have access to some dlc or mods but you'll be able to play a version you may have liked more.

[ChaffyExpert]

You didn't have artillery battleships i bet, even outnumbered those things, especially with "no retreat" (if you are militarist) and the tech repeatable that increases firing rate, fleet would've been toast despite having bigger numbers.

A few 100k or 150k fleet power fleets of arty battleships would've demolished those easily. Well, still might've lost, but the AI's fleets would've been demolished too, buying time.

Also, stations are basically useless, unless you had hangers on them, then that would've helped a little bit, otherwise basically useless.

[Mazey]

How many times does it need to be said?:
If you're find a game so difficult that it isn't fun, play on a lower difficulty.

[Jack Niggleson]

Originally posted by Emperor Palpatinate:

You didn't have artillery battleships i bet, even outnumbered those things, especially with "no retreat" (if you are militarist) and the tech repeatable that increases firing rate, fleet would've been toast despite having bigger numbers.

A few 100k or 150k fleet power fleets of arty battleships would've demolished those easily. Well, still might've lost, but the AI's fleets would've been demolished too, buying time.

Also, stations are basically useless, unless you had hangers on them, then that would've helped a little bit, otherwise basically useless.

They are useful for one minor bit of cheese in late game battles. If you have your fleets sitting on the opposite side of the station from the one the enemy is entering the system from, the enemy fleet will usually waste their first strike on the station.

[ScreamCon]

Originally posted by Mazey:

How many times does it need to be said?:
If you're find a game so difficult that it isn't fun, play on a lower difficulty.

The percentage of population of earth that are new to this world.
The percentage of people that forget.

[I Am Atomic!]

stations useless is a lie! though you do have to heavily invest alloys into the right defence platforms to make it work, the ascenstion perk to buff platforms helps for this too

if you use the 50%range starbase component + max defence platforms with nothing but neutron launchers + your fleets, on a system with multiple planets with orbital rings also with defence platforms for the ring stations then thx to the +50% range you engage the enemy way early and absolutely decimate them before they even get in range to shoot back

you can use this to defeat fleets that are signifigantly stronger than what you have, this sort of setup can even hold its own to a degree without support from your fleets, freeing them up to attack elsewhere.

[I Am Atomic!]

Originally posted by ScreamCon:

Originally posted by pete3great:

I'm going slowly insane trying to help people here.

Insanity is the creative tool that empowers science. Those who deny this are actually stagnating. No one achieves absolute perfection of no insanity what so ever. In science you rarely leave off where you started. Of course not everyone is scientists or inventors so not necessarily needed.

Though I do think we should have as many inventors as possible and as much automation as possible. Every time someone is angry about the toil of life, just say, well how are you going to automate yourself out of having to do the work.

Existentialism is nothing, less than nothing. And can be crushed like every other puny method to dust. It hides behind the two hard rocks, one saying your angry, and the other saying there's no way.

Originally posted by LplayerJohnny:

Your angry I get it, but hearts and political sounding headers will actually get you shut down faster. Hearts form so people learn to not make them as moderation doesn't want what it considers worse words. Now onto the issue.

The latest version of stellaris has bugs and balancing issue. The developers since version 3.2 have taken a more radical stance with updates. Updates are not receiving quality control in favour of putting more coders/ creatives on the system designing. New systems like the resource shortage system, unity rework, ship rework coming soon, event rework.

The angry people now are paying the price of the product people tomorrow will enjoy. Stick around for a year you'll see. If you don't believe me roll back to an older version. You won't have access to some dlc or mods but you'll be able to play a version you may have liked more.

Does this seem like the right place for that kind of post.

Don't cast pearls before swine -_-

[ScreamCon]

Originally posted by Kaido:

Don't cast pearls before swine -_-

Aw but I want to see if one of them accidentally eats one too big for their own good :D
To be fair, half of my posts are dedicated to solving, and other half the pearl eaters.
Unless its a really terrible thread, of which case its all pearl casting.

[R131]

Use the "take point" option on your flagship fleet to form your own doomstack from all your allies. You then have the federation fleet and your own fleets to operate seperately to your "allied doomfleet" which will now follow your flagship fleet when set to "take point"

Start a new run once you have cooled down and form alliances and use the take point feature, the game is kinda epic now once you know how to play it fully with these mega fleets the magnitude of galaxy wide warfare is really prominent and i love it.

[Azor]

Play on Cadet difficulty.