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[Kanil]

Hard to tell how different it is without seeing it in action, between reduced WE gain and the 2 year grace period, you might almost never see a situation that's utterly idiotic.

That said, making the utterly idiotic outcome rare doesn't mean the outcome stops being idiotic.

[Criptfeind]

It feels like their own first idea was bad (WE instantly ending the war) so they went and implemented a better and more obvious idea (WE giving penalties) but did it really freaking poorly (I think anyone could have seen before implementation that giving people the ability to lock others into a war with WE penalties was a terrible idea.) and then instantly gave up on the better idea and turned back to their first bad idea instead of trying to make the better idea actually work.

You should have been able to negate the WE penalty by offering Status Quo to the enemy, or not get them unless the enemy offers Status Quo to you and you refuse. That way you preserve the ability to keep on fighting if it's worth it in penalties to you, but no one can lock you into penalties just because they aren't ready to end the war yet and you can't surrender because they are fanatic purifiers or something.

[USEC_OFFICER]

That could also work but I think goes against what Wiz et all are trying to do with WE. Namely differentiate between short brawls for land and big, empire-ending clashes and stopping the former from always turning into the later. Having WE scale much better based on the goals/type of war would be a big step forward for that and probably better than fiddling with 100% WE behaviour until that is finalized.

Spoiler: Pointless Rambling (click to show/hide)

My personal solution would be to make WE global and have a WE capacity that changes based on the type/scale of wars you're involved in. So if you're at war for a single system the cap barely changes while being threatened with destruction scales it up massively. Additionally your ethnics/traits/whatever would also affect that cap, so militaristic empires have a larger WE capacity in general while pacifistic ones have it smaller in most offensive wars and larger in most defensive ones.

Obviously you gain WE by losing ships/troops, having your planets bombarded/invaded, occupied planets and so on. But more importantly, you lose WE when war is declared upon you or a current war escalates. So if you're at war for a single system and then the enemy pushes more claims onto your land, you both lose WE and gain a larger WE cap while your enemy only enjoys the larger WE cap. If you're in a big, long war and someone else jumps in then you similarly enjoy a WE reduction but your cap remains the same. This also means that if you just finished a massive war and then someone tries to snipe a few systems from you, you get enough of a WE reduction to prevent your empire from auto-capitulating but not enough to completely negate it.

Declaring war on someone while already at war should probably result in a WE increase as your people don't want to get embroiled in another conflict. Obviously this malus shouldn't occur when declaring war on the allies of the same person you're at war with, and similar situations. Alternatively you could be prevented from declaring war if your WE is high enough, based on a percentage of your current WE capacity. So pulling a Sci-fi Schlieffen Plan would only be possible in the early stages of a war. To be honest I'm not entirely certain how I'd resolve that edge-case.

Being at peace should reduce WE over time, especially for certain ethnics/whatever, and obviously WE has no effect on your production/research while at peace. You should also get a WE reduction for making peace, especially if you made gains or enforced your demands. Thus a short, victorious war should actually reduce your WE overall and enable you to keep on pushing if you have the capability. The amount of WE you lose for making peace should obviously scale based on how many wars you're still involved in. Ending your final/only war should reduce far more WE than ending conflict 1 of 7. Edicts and the like should also exist to increase WE reduction while at peace, so the player isn't locked into watching numbers decrease to 0 before starting their next conquest.

Going over your WE cap would grant you penalties, scaling by how much you've breached it. The penalties should help the current war wind down without significantly impacting the empire's ability to wage future ones or resist steamrolls. So defending systems/planets should get minor maluses, production/research moderate ones, while trying to perform counter-offences should have large penalties. Part of these penalties would involve auto-accepting Status Quo offers (ideally with a timer) after breaching the cap and auto-sending a Status Quo peace offer at certain (high) percentage over WE. Auto-sending offers should only be done if you haven't sent at least one since breaching the WE cap, however. Having a very low WE could grant you bonuses while at war, though obviously not large ones, as your people are enthusiastic for the upcoming war. If this occurs then Gesalt Empires would get lessened penalties from high WE but lessened bonuses from low WE as well. So they're less effective in the short term but better in the long.

Basically this should hopefully resolve several problems with the current system.

• Since you have to send a Status Quo offer at least once after breaching the WE cap, you can't prolong wars indefinitely. You have to eventually send a Status Quo offer after breaching the cap and always accept them once you do. Ideally players should send the offer well before this point but that won't always be the case.
• Since auto-accepting is on a timer and auto-sending is on a high percentage over WE, players should never be caught off guard by the sudden end of a war. They can thus push to minimize loses/increase gains in the limited time-frame they have should the war last that long.
• Penalties are impactful for the current war but don't affect future ones too badly. Being at high WE for a long period of time won't cause you to stagnate and fall far behind everyone else.
• Small wars results in low WE caps, meaning that taking a few loses results in quickly breaching the cap and quickly resulting in an end to the war.
• Large wars result in high WE caps, meaning that you need to take large loses before WE forces an end to the war.
• Fights to the death result in massive WE caps and a very low chance of the defender surrendering without being completely crushed. If bonuses for a low percentage of WE are implemented then this also assists the defender in the early stages of the war.
• Escalating wars results in increased WE caps and reduced WE for the other side. Capitalising on another side's WE penalties is thus difficult to achieve.
• Other empires piling on you while you're already at war results in an increased WE cap and WE reduction so you have breathing room to fight them off.
• The player has the ability to increase WE reduction while at peace, to prevent the problem of 'hurry up and wait' with WE. Though if WE is still high after ending a war then their empire probably needs time to recover anyways.
• The potential for lots of flavour as your people surge to the recruitment centres or wearily pick up arms to fight off the latest wave of invaders. But Stellaris's design philosophy seems to be as bland as possible so I doubt that'll ever happen.

I'm sure there's a shitton wrong with the system I'm proposing, and a ton of number crunching is needed to keep it balanced and entertaining. For example, a war were one side has far less WE cap than the other could prolong the war for a very long time. The economic penalties for high WE means that the smaller WE cap empire can chug through a long war if needed, while the larger WE cap empire obviously has more pressing conflicts to worry about that encourages a quick peace deal. So ideally that edge case shouldn't be a massive deal-breaker. But then again I never said this was anything beyond pointless rambling so whatever.

[Egan_BW]

The other side not accepting surrender or other empires joining the war against you raising the Exhaustion cap makes sense. Your people are still as tired of fighting, but it's also becoming more clear that not fighting is not an option.

[Criptfeind]

That could also work but I think goes against what Wiz et all are trying to do with WE. Namely differentiate between short brawls for land and big, empire-ending clashes and stopping the former from always turning into the later.

It certainly doesn't do it any worse then the current system. Your solution looks... Well, pretty complicated. Which a complicated solution very likely is the best one, but it's at least understandable why it's not done. I just don't understand why they not only want to go with simple solutions, but simple bad solutions when there are other solutions that seem obviously better and are similarly complex that they aren't even trying.

[LoSboccacc]

to what end tho? it prevents many classical sci-fi situations (like bug crusade after buenosaires was hit with a meteor etc)

[USEC_OFFICER]

It certainly doesn't do it any worse then the current system. Your solution looks... Well, pretty complicated. Which a complicated solution very likely is the best one, but it's at least understandable why it's not done. I just don't understand why they not only want to go with simple solutions, but simple bad solutions when there are other solutions that seem obviously better and are similarly complex that they aren't even trying.

To be fair, I'm probably massively over-complicating my explanation. Handling a bunch of edge-cases at the same time doesn't help make it clear either. You could easily summarize it as 'Global WE that scales with how fucked you are if you lose'. But if I did then it wouldn't be pointless rambling, would it?

For what the Stellaris team is trying to achieve, I think there's no simple solution to it. Players usually want to fight every war to the utmost, so they rarely end wars without being obviously outclassed or enforcing their demands. So having a war end without being a war to the death is hard to happen naturally or in an enjoyable way. So Wiz et all are going to have to complicate their solution. The question is mostly how and how much. Hopefully they eventually stumble upon one that everyone can enjoy.

to what end tho? it prevents many classical sci-fi situations (like bug crusade after buenosaires was hit with a meteor etc)

To allow more limited conflicts. Slow down blobbing until better wargoals are acquired. Allowing smaller empires to better resist a larger one from annexing them. And a few others I'm probably missing.

[Mephansteras]

Decided to show off a bit of the game I'm in right now. It's been shaping up interestingly.

Spoiler: The Great Hall (click to show/hide)

Dwaaaaarves Iiiiiiiin Spaaaaaace! You can see the core of the empire here. I built out a solid area to work in and then went for habitats and megastructures. We have a very large population now, and quite mixed with races from all over the galaxy. You can still see the remnants of one of the Marauder clans off to the west. The Eastern one was up against the galactic center, but got wiped out at some point while I wasn't looking.

Spoiler: The Galaxy (click to show/hide)

Here you can see the galaxy over all. The Scourge has taken the entire NW corner of the map. Before they arrived most of that was owned by the sliver of teal just north of the brown and red empires to the west. The red empire to the north was also considerably larger before they arrived, and there were a few small splinter & vessel states in the area that no longer exist. Also of note, there used to be an Awaken Empire up there but they proved to be nothing more than a speed bump against the swarm.

Spoiler: The Factions (click to show/hide)

There are, essentially, two major factions in this empire (not counting the swarm). My Grand Alliance is the vast swath of purple taking up most of the South & East. I've focused more on helping my allies expand rather than build out myself so I'm much smaller than most of them, though still the most powerful by far. The Sanguine Coalition is the red group on that map, excepting the far SW bit which is actually a FE that seems quite content to let the swarm devour everything while they sit in their little hideout.

There is also that green bit to the north of me, a Hivemind. I was at peace with them for a very long time, until my SE neighbors finally joined the Alliance. They had been warring off and on with the Hivemind most of the game and getting the worst of it every time. Once they had a very powerful set of friends, we quickly waged several wars to not only gain back all of their lost territory but took a large chunk of hivemind territory in the last war. The arrival of the Scourge ended all that before another war broke out.

Far to the West is an isolationist empire (the brown one) that has held out alone for quite some time. The Scourge has only recently started doing any actual damage to their empire. We can only hope that they can hold out a bit longer, as we have no real way of getting ships that far over to help.

I expect, should we defeat the Scourge, that we'll win the game shortly after the crisis ends.

Spoiler: The Northern Holdings (click to show/hide)

One of two enclaves I have outside my core Empire. This one was a pair of worlds taken from the hivemind in the war right before the Scourge arrived. My initial plan was to use it as a base of operations (I installed a Gateway on the system with a Gaia world) to carve out a nice little area and help the next war against them. Once we'd pacified the area I was planning on setting the area free as a vassal state. With the arrival of the Scourge this has become a staging point for the northern fleets. The Gateway has proven instrumental in allowing me and my allies a way to quickly get fleets up there. The stations there also have Shipyards and provide a lot of the reinforcements on their own.

Spoiler: The Bastion against the Scourge (click to show/hide)

There is nothing of note in this system. It was a pirate stronghold for much of the game, unclaimed by the weak empire that bordered it and not useful enough for anyone else to claim. But when the Scourge arrived I saw an opportunity, and sent out a small fleet to clean out the system and claim it. Then I built up a formidable Citadel here and installed a Gateway. This the Bastion against the Scourge, and the first real line of defense between it and any of our actual systems. It is surrounded by a fragmented set of nations that splintered off from their home empire, leaving several 1-2 system empires. A few of those have joined us, the others are now vassals to various other powers. The home empire, the Concordant Of Dir, is part of the other Federation. A more worrying aspect, I suppose, if the galaxy wasn't in Crisis right now.

It is the jump off point for our Western Fleets, and should the Scourge get down this far should be a fairly defensible point as I can pump reinforcements in quickly using the Gateway. It's defensive systems are also all specifically tailored to be strong against the Scourge ships.

Spoiler: The Front (click to show/hide)

This is the line I am holding against the Scourge. They push, we push back. Sometimes we send fleets deep into their territory to strike at weakly defended systems. Sometimes they push forward and we have to push back. Sometimes we can't for a while, and entire planets are infected and their people destroyed.

We have Cleansed many worlds with our Neutron Sweeper Colossus. We expect to cleanse many more.

For now, we are holding. As our technology and those of our allies continues to improve we fare better and better against the invaders. I hope that someday this threat will be destroyed.

But for now, we are the Dwarves. We come from the Mountainhome, and we will not stand idly by while this threat consumes our Galaxy!

[Eric Blank]

So ive got this "Spectral Wraith" megacreature jellyfishing its ass around in my frontier regions next to an extremely valuable system, and im wondering how much military power is going to be necessary to bring it down? It of course displays a death mask, which isnt very helpful. I have about 2.1k total military power at the moment, in pretty primitive ships (my tech and fleet power are way behind)

[Sirus]

Yeah that won't remotely be enough. You'll want to be somewhere in the realm of 50-100k for anything with a skull icon.

[Eric Blank]

Alright then, thanks.

I was terrified for a minute because it said it was pathing to a system for which the shortest route would be through one of my most inhabited planets and my homeworld, luckily it seems to have chosen a longer route, though i cant see it now. Do those things go after planets and pop?

[forsaken1111]

Alright then, thanks.

I was terrified for a minute because it said it was pathing to a system for which the shortest route would be through one of my most inhabited planets and my homeworld, luckily it seems to have chosen a longer route, though i cant see it now. Do those things go after planets and pop?

No they mostly just hang out at a star for a while then move on, attacking any ships along the way

[Criptfeind]

Yeah that won't remotely be enough. You'll want to be somewhere in the realm of 50-100k for anything with a skull icon.

You don't need nearly that many for the wraith. "Skull" can range from around 10k to 60-70k in my experience, and the wraith is on the weaker side of skull marked enemies. I think probably around 20-30k should do it.

Although talk to the curator enclave, I can't recall if the wraith is one of the things they know about, but I think it might be. If it is you can ask them if your fleet is strong enough to take it, and you can buy a massive damage boost against it. Also wraiths are weakened by certain color of star, depending on the color of the wraith. So fighting one in that type of star is the best idea.

[Paul]

They're not hard to kill if you have the right ship setup. You can do it with as little as like 4k fleet power.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1. 1/3 of their HP is in armor, the other 2/3 hull. No shields.
2. They have very high evasion, like 85. If they are in the same color star this is reduced, but I can never seem to get them into the right star colors.
3. Their weapons are basically lasers, so penalty vs shields and bonus vs armor. They have very high tracking, so evasion is nigh useless against them.

So you need + hull damage and armor damage weapons with decent tracking/accuracy and as many shields as you can fit on your ships.

Unless you can lure it to the right color star, you want the Picket computer for tracking, and the best sensors you have. If you can lure it to the right star color (or if you have top tier sensors/sapient picket computers for lots of tracking bonus), neutron torpedos on destroyers or cruisers is really good. Otherwise go corvette swarm with small plasma.

I was able to take it out with a fleet of 60 corvettes packing plasma, picket computers, and mid-range sensors and shields. My fleet still melted pretty rapidly under the wraith's lasers and I lost over half my fleet, but the plasma took the wraith out very quickly too.

Man, the RNG can be HARSH in this game. I just started a new game and got to exploring. There are four exits from the little bitty cluster of 5 stars I have spawned in. On the exit to the north, there is a xenophobic fallen empire. On the exit to the south, there is a marauder empire. On the exit to the east, there is the second marauder empire. And on the exit to the west, there is a 1 system choke point with what I think is the dimensional horror (it killed my science ship without even triggering an alert). All I have in this little blotch of space is the 2 auto generated planets, one of which is too close to the fallen empire to actually make use of. I normally don't restart due to bad starting conditions, but this one takes the cake - I would be getting hit constantly by the marauders and not be able to expand at all.

[Loud Whispers]

Hardest thing about the wraith is just tracking it down. The bugger rolls around all over the place