Suggestions to fix Starbase problems

First Idea: Restrictions on starbases

Put some kind of penalty or restriction on building multiple starbases or on the effect of those starbases.

The simplest way would be to attach a maintance cost to each starbase built. Some people have proposed an initial cost plus a cost for each module added thereafter. Although that might have some advantages from a game balance perspective, in order to decrease ISS the cost for extra modules should be small or non-existant. The maintance cost might start out small, and increase for each additonal starbase in the sector; free for the first, 5bc a turn for the second, 10bc for the third (for a total of 15bc a turn) or could just start out at a large value (20bc a turn) to really discourage widespread starbase placement. In either case the player would have to decide if increased production/cultural influence/whatever was worth the additional cost. As things are, other than for the initial cost of the constructors starbases are completly free.

Or instead the designers could put a hard limit on the number of starbases. Every sector could have one starbase, each colonized system in a sector would allow an additional starbase, and starbases on resources wouldn't count towards the sector limit.

This might force players to choose between the disadvantages of colonizing a system with a class 12 planet and the value of having an extra starbase in that sector. If the sector had several other productive systems, the ability to get another set of production bonuses might be worth it.

This would also allow the possibility of new wonders or monuments. A 1 per galaxy wonder that allows a second starbase in every sector, or a 1 per race wonder that allows one or more extra starbases to be built in that sector.

Another possibility would be to limit how bonuses stack, or which bonuses do stack. (Incidently along these lines, if it's true that culture or any other bonuses _multiply_ that should definitely be changed) Maybe only the best rated starbase in any particular category has full effect, and each starbase after that has diminishing returns. After all, how many Factories and Orbital Replicators and such can one system take advantage of?

Second Idea: Encourage fewer starbases

A short and simple encouragement first: Starbases should start off with less hitpoints, and get extra hit points for each module added on. (50, and +5 for each module?) It might also be desireable to have starbases not affected by the +Hit Points stat. After developing a fair amount of tech and developing a few military resources, starbases were starting out with 300+ hit points, which meant that even a totally undeveloped starbase often took a capital ship to take out, especially for races that were less developed. Just started or underdeveloped starbases should be easy for the enemy to take out, to encourage development and guarding of said starbases. (If starbases were immune to the +hit point stat, perhaps the bonus hitpoints for additional modules should be increased, and there should be one or more Armor improvements to add additional HP)

However the most obvious reason for ISS is that anyone who does the math will realize that a lot of smaller stations is cheaper than building up a few powerfull ones. Once you get the technology for Massive Scaling Centers, producing a new starbase and building up to the MSC will give you a bonus of +13 production per constructor. Once you can build Orbital Replicators those are worth building as well (raises the average to +13.3 per constructor) but building Smart Drones or Interstellar Distributers just lowers your average with no long term payoff.

Similarly for culture, once you've rushed up the line to a Party Palace, you're better off on average just starting a new starbase in the same sector and doing it again rather than bothering with the other improvements. (This is especially so if it's true that cultural improvements from multiple starbases multiply rather than add)

The best solution to this is to rebalance the numbers some, and make the module development more tree-like. Want that Party Palace? Maybe you need an Interstellar Distributer Mark III to handle all the party favors.

Note that these solutions wouldn't totally solve ISS, they would just encourage the player to develop a smaller number of more powerfull starbases. They'd still get the same bonuses as before, but there would be fewer starbases cluttering up the sectors.

As I posted under "AI Using Starbases" I saw the Yor stack maxed production/influence/military/defense starbases in their home sector, and didn't place them on resources (none there to begin with).

~SDC~

I too dont like the fact you can spam one sector with multiple star bases. The reason you are able to upgrade one starbase so much should be that you can only have one in a system. Sure maybe they should allow multiple starbases however make it so the other ones can only upgrade their defenses, and upgrading anything else is possible but yields no benefits if you have duplicate moduals, becuase some people might want to get another good production boost space station before they move their old one out of the sector.

Here's one proposed solution based on the earlier posts that I've spent some time working on:

Phase 3 Factory gets reduced from +25 to +15 production. Massive Scaling Center gets reduced to +20 production. Orbital Refinery gets boosted from +15 to +40, _however_ you can only build it on a station that has _both_ a Massive Scaling Center and a Interstellar Distributor Mark III (need to be able to distribute all those replicated goods to the right places)

This would maintain the best average production per constructor of the current way, but would require a more built up starbase to achieve it.

Cultural Palace requires Cultural Maximization as well as Cultural Palace Structure

Party Palace requires Intersteller Distributor Mark III as well as Cultural Palace.

(If culture bombs are still too easy to build, make the Cultural Palace require the Satelite Water Park instead of Cultural Maximization, or the Party Palace require Orbital Replicators instead of the Intersteller Distributor)

Some new modules that might help balance things out:

Defensive Fighters: Adds +2 defense to all ships in the area. Requires Battle Stations Mark III and Dread Drones. (Would encourage player to full develop the military side rather than several bases with Mark 3 Battle Stations)

If Maintenance costs were implemented:

Maintenance Bots: Reduces maintenance by 1/2 (or some amount, obviously a balance issue) Requires Smart Drones and Oribtal Replicators

If reduced hit points were implemented:

Light Armor: +25 HP

Medium Armor: +50 HP

Heavy Armor: +75 HP

Also, don't forget this thread: http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?id=37539&BID=GF&page=1

In addition to tweaking the AI to deal with and use SBs more effectively, I really like the simple and elegant suggestion posted above above about making HPs of the SB tied to # modules with adjusted initial HP.

The problem, as has been noted a gazillion times, is that once certain high level techs are found, the optimal bonuses are achieved by spamming multiple SB with only a handful of choice modules rather than nursing each one. Again, in the simple and elegant category, I think the implementation of a logical build tree for these choice modules is what's needed.

A combination of requiring SB infrastructure to move onto the uber modules along with increased attractiveness for nursing individual SBs through HP bonuses per module would, I think, do a lot towards addressing current "exploits".

I would rather see the exploits toned down than just making an AI as ruthless and pragmatic as the humans. Somehow I don't see much fun in playing a game which breaks down into seeing who can fill the sectors with SBs, like some twisted Othello board, first.

there is an U.P. issue that deals with starbases not in your sector of influence (tax of x per month) and i have seen the a.i's build terror stars around their rescources and move them to where they prefer. And what levels of intelligence are you all playing at. Because what they do with starbases seems to change as their intelligence level does.



~SDC~

I vote for simply removing the stacking bonuses. As someone else suggested (I can't take credit for the idea, it was in some other thread), every module you build should only work once within a particular sector. So if you have two Starbases in a sector with Battlestations Mark II, then you would only get a +2 bonus for the sector for both the Battlestations Mark II, and not a +4 bonus.

Without the stacking bonus, there wouldn't be much of an incentive to build more than one starbase in a sector, unless there are two resources to mine in the sector (I've seen this happen. Maybe they should change the map generator so no more than one resource can appear in a sector?)

And then the AI has to be improved to build more starbases (even one starbase in a sector is a useful thing to have), and to attack the enemy starbases.

An HPs for modules scheme wouldn't work very well IMHO. It would make initial SBs too vulnerable, and would have no effect at all on spamming mini-SBs in core (well-defended) systems. It would also make maxed-out SBs godlike.

Perhaps simply limiting the number of SBs in a sector to 1+(inhabited stars) or something.

As well as that, perhaps top-level production and military upgrades should work more like the 'culture palace' upgrade sequence, and a SB can only have *one* set of maxed out prod/mil/culture palace modules.

~SDC~

I also like the idea of adding hitpoints to the starbase as you add modules. Instead of a starbase starting out with 150 hitpoints, maybe they should start out with 100, and get 10 hitpoints for ever additional module?

War party alien BB will bulldoze your 300 hp starbase with ease, I know I cried when 5 of my starbases fell to a cloacked BB Now I just dont build that many.

~SDC~

What do you mean when you say that other upgrades should work like the "culture palace" upgrade sequence? It seems to me that the culture palace is one of the more broken aspects, since it restarts the chain with a +20% module, allowing you to skip the build up through the +10 and +15% modules.

For SB not built on resources:

1) Starbases built in sectors without stars can only build defense, military, trade, and refueling modules. (No raw material for production, too far for influence or morale benefits.) Starbases outside inhabited sectors should have a maintenance cost. (Re-supply, crew rotation and morale, parts and equipment maintenance.)

2) Starbases built in sectors under complete alien control (you have no planets there) can only build defense, military, and cultural modules. The only reason to build there is to influence the alien culture.

3) Starbases built in colonized sectors (you inhabit and possibly control the sector) can only build defense, military, economic (not trade), morale, and production modules. (No need or benefit from influence.)

These first three are based on the premise that an inhabited system is its own trade center. Therefore, trade modules on starbases in inhabited sectors are both redundant and ineffective.

4) Limit starbases in inhabited sectors to 1 per star plus 1 per planet (type of planet doesn't matter). First come, first served. For example, a sector two systems you control 1 system with 3 planets, the Drengin control the other system, which has 2 planets. The maximum non-resource starbases in that sector would be 2 (stars) + 5 (planets) = 7. If the Drengin build 4 starbases, you can only build 3.

5) Add Repair Modules. Have damage reduce starbase functionality across the board – less defense, fewer HP, less offensive abilities, and no trade, morale, influence, economic benefits until the starbase is repaired. This would have to take upgrades in to account so that benefits were only lost from genuine damage and not as a result of discovering Tri-strontium Steel, for example.

6) This was brought up during beta testing, but I'll reintroduce it here. Add Terraforming starbases. Terraforming starbases are built next to a star system and require special, more expensive modules. These starbases require one module for every class improvement you want to make to a given planet, to a maximum of 15.
For example, your home system has 4 planets at classes 22, 11, 5, and 2. You want to terraform the class 11 planet so you build a starbase and add 4 terraforming modules to it. The first module costs 100, the second costs 200, the third costs 300, the fourth costs 400. When it's complete you pay a fee and move the starbase "on to" the class 11 planet (like moving a colony ship on to a planet). The starbase is used up and 4 turns later, you have a class 15 planet instead of a class 11 planet. Theoretically, you could do this with all the planets in a system.

End transmission.

~SDC~

Leave them as they are, improve the interface (via allowing increased automation) to reduce the micromanagement required to build them, and improve the AI to use them more effectively if it's deficient in that area.

Lets face it ... if you can't build starbases, there's nothing to do in the late game. Except go to war. And I'd prefer if there were multiple choices other than just war.

Captain Bizzare:

For #1, are you saying that culture _shouldn't_ have an effect on neighboring sectors? Because it certainly does at the moment. Changing that would be such a major game balance issue i can't see it happening at this point.

Or are you just saying that starbases alone shouldn't be able to affect culture if they aren't in an inhabited system? Might make sense from a gameplay perspective, although i have to wonder why traders and other people on ships passing through can't stop for McDonalds and Starbucks

#2 would make it difficult to build good starbases to give to your allies. Of course if the AI used starbases effectively that wouldn't be as much of a problem.

#4 clearly all sectors need to be given one freebie starbase allowance, otherwise the starbases in uninhabited sectors you're talking about above would never happen

#6 sounds cool, but i'm not sure about the gameplay issues. Certainly 100 per level is way to cheap for starters.

And overall, once again we get to the problem of Terror Stars. How is the module limiting handled when the starbases start moving around?

Daettrin:

1) Culture should have an effect on neighboring sectors. Starbases in uninhabited sectors shouldn't be able to build influence modules, but should add to your civilization's influence in that sector. Of course, without influence modules, they wouldn't add as much. However, I think that having a starbase in an otherwise empty sector should count for quite a bit of relative influence in that sector.

"Might make sense from a gameplay perspective, although i have to wonder why traders and other people on ships passing through can't stop for McDonalds and Starbucks"

I'm guessing that the coffee at the Starbucks on the lone trading starbase in Sector 0-1 isn't going to taste good enough to carry a lot of influence.

2) I suppose that depends on what you mean by a "good" starbase. In theory, once they receive the starbase it should count as their starbase and no longer suffer the same limitations that the original builder had. In other words, you've given them a fully-loaded military starbase (perhaps including cultural modules that no longer have any effect) to which they can now add economic, culture, morale, and production modules.

4) I figured different rules for different circumstances, but a base of one starbase per sector would probably be easier from a programming perspective.

6) The costs I suggested were ballpark figures. I think you'd have to play-test the whole thing, especially costs.

"And overall, once again we get to the problem of Terror Stars. How is the module limiting handled when the starbases start moving around?"

I'm not sure I see a problem with this one. With the exception of Terraforming starbases, all starbases could have defensive and military modules. Since the Terror Star is a purely a military weapon, what more would you need? Now, if you're talking about a floating Party Palace - the "Cultural Terror Star", you'd have to ship the required number of constructors to the target sector and assemble it there.

So far, the thing that bothers me most about my suggestions is implementing sector-base rules without requiring lots of goofy programming changes. If I thought there was a chance of this stuff happening I'd want to simplify it as much as possible. Thanks for the input!

End transmission.

~SDC~