How about I direct everyone's attention to this thread and you can see the way things were originally planned for Entrenchment?

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/333260

Why not just make two models of starbases.  An offensive and a defensive.

Offensive can be along the lines of a deathstar (of course).  Moves to a planet, charges up large gun that takes FOREVER (while fighters fly around looking for the exhaust port), and fires it.  Maybe cutting down half the health of the planet?

What I'd really like to see is planets blown up never to be heard from again.

-I really like PJI mitigation. This is a good solve for many of the problems

-I like the cost structure and build times now as it also helps with defensive capabilities. Sounds like people want starbases to be front walls that stop everything from entering. This seems unrealistic and not a fun game to me. I'd much rather have multiples star bases, like 1 on every planet or two that have different functions.

If we raise the costs and build times too high, all we'll see is one or two ultimate star bases, that people just by-pass to attack weak planets. So to me, that defeats the purpose of entrenchment. As the new stratgey will be, bypass starbases as fast as you can, eliminate undefended worlds and then return to destroy the ultimate starbase when the enemy economy and fleets are defeated.

With a shorter build time and cost, with lots of upgrade functions, we can have defenses on many worlds and choke pionts. These starbases however will not be so powerful as to slow the game to a stall. Think of how a game will be played if we have a super station in one gravity well, and in the next one over there is the enemy super station. We will either jump right past it, or if that option is eliminated, we'll just sit there as a stale mate. No one will risk, or even able to defeat a massive starbase that can shoot everything in the system and not allow jumps in or out. To top it off, if the stale mate is there, then both sides will have their fleets stationed at those locations and the chances of successfully invading become impossible.

I think this right here is where most of the disagreement about the direction starbases are taking will come from. Some will want starbases to be the "ultimate" weapon, while others would rather have them a more common occurence and are fine with them being more limited in firepower/what have you.

They don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. If the cost to build a starbase is low but the upgrade costs high and substantially increasing with every rank, then it allows both styles of play to be seen in the same game: one player places midgrade bases (10k or so invested in each) at several key points whereas another will spend the extra money (80k+) to upgrade a base to an 'ultimate' edition in a particular spot.

Very good point...this would allow for varying concepts to come into play.

This is true

The same situation can occur now: two maxed fleets guarding either end of a choke point with maxed repair bays / antimatter rechargers.

And the same weapons meant to deal with these stalemates will still work now: superweapons. The Kostura will disable defensive structures for a bit (if it doesn't hit the starbase, it needs to), ships briefly, and deal 10% damage to the defending fleet; a little push to help the attacking fleet to crush them.

The Novalith and Deliverance engine let you eat away at their economy (one significantly more effective than the other) so you can then attack and win a war of attritition.

The issue then becomes getting scouts to enemy territory to find launch targets. Perhaps Scouts are in need of a buff to sneak past blockades.

thats one of the reasons you still need to be able to build a starbase in an enemy well, given enough resources could turn the tide of the battle in that planet.

wow, so many posts, so much to read.

in any case:

1) the weapons 2 upgrade of some bases do not actually increase range, but add another weapon type with longer range. the old ones stay the same short.

2) the actual range upgrade (for all types) sounds like a workable solution, but nevertheless the basic range has to go up. quite a bit.

3) the PJI idea (the old one of beta that totally blocked phase travel) also sounds like a good idea, but also very powerful and more of a hard solution, when a softer one is usually better, you should be able to go around it, but only at a price/ at some effort.

4) starbases ARE not only military ojects. I upgraded the vasari ones with both pop upgrades and the trade module and it gave me about 2,5 + 1.1 = 3,6 or so creds. which is quite substantial imo. and the CAN fill the gap of trade lines. in my vasari game I established a long trade route which was connected through a dead roid via a starbase (and ended in one). tec ones are also useful with their repaid and construction upgrades, avents seem to have culture spreads. so there is definately a non-military use to them, if you want it. and that's what I think is great.

5) about stars and gas giants. I set up a vasari starbase in a star grav well and was suprised. the star is so big, that the actual grav well is only a fairly narrow band which is in its breadth pretty much completely coverable with a vasari starbase. so ... if you put it in the beginning or end, it should reach most ships.

and for gas giants .. well, haven't had any so far in entrenchment, but it might be interesting if the planets were enlarged vis à vis the total grav well. that way you could have a large total area, but it would be more of a travelable ring whose entry points can be guarded via a starbase. it does become a problem with multiple lines though I'd say.

6) starbaes in enemy wells. large penalties in setup and upgrade times, plus a general increase in their set up time should fix it. if it takes 5 mins to construct one in an enemy well, I don't really see much problem. after all, leaving him alone there for so long, you deserve punishment. and, as has been said, vanilla starbases aren't that much of a threat. if the upgrades are also increased, I'd say it's cool. viable as an offensive tool, but you have to prepare it and bring a fleet to defend it until it is ready to fight for itself. but it should definately stay as an option.

I think i like these ideas the best so far

a) how do you arrive at the 10k and 80k figures? at least credit cost is 2000 plus 1800 per upgrade with a maximum of 8. so that makes 2000 + 14.600 = 16.000 or 16k. maybe if you count the value of the metal and crystal you need ...

b ) you say 'if the cost to build a starbase is low ...'. isn't it already? I'd say it's low enough, it could even be upped a little, not really much and some extra strength. but the generel feel is about right and as we saw, it IS possible to have multiple of them or just one or two maxed out ones.

a good point, but as I said, I'm not quite sure whether you mean to change to lower cost and subsequently higher cost or just advocate the status quo vs opposite changes.

i believe the death star had an offensive role...did it not?

it also took year to build and then some.

Not to mention the engineers that designed it were from italy... so it failed, twise.

I agree to some extent with pretty much everything here, but if I were to have it my way, this is how it would be.

• Starbase creators would build starbases slower
• Starbase upgrades would be much less expensive, ESPECIALLY the trade port and culture upgrades. As it is, it's much more expensive to put them on a starbase than around a planet, which i find to be ridiculous, because it's taking up a valuable slot. In general i think the upgrades should be much less expensive, to give someone who is trying to build up a defense an advantage over a quickly offensive player. 
• Also the speed of upgrade for the first tier weapons and armor should be greatly decreased, and while reaching higher tiers, upgrades get even slower than they currently are...
• Someone in an alternate post mentioned the idea of having the effect (possibly optional, upgradable) of not allowing phase jumps to planets behind this one. E.G. say you're attacking, and you want to pass the planet you just jumped to, which has a starbase. You cannot use any phase lines that connect two enemy planets.
• Starbases could orbit planets in the gravity well, and be allowed to move around in this set circle, giving the starbase weapons access to any and every corner of the gravity well.
• I DO NOT think that any starbases under any circumstances should be allowed to phase jump. That defeats the purpose of a starbaase, and turns it into a super capital ship.
• Also, I think starbases should have leveling, just like capitals, but seperate from. Meaning they should not have to share XP, but receive full XP. In other words, as long as a unit is killed in the gravity well the starbase is located in, the starbase will get XP for that kill, seperately from captialships, which should also get the full XP split between whichever capitals are in the grav well. Make Starbases need maybe 3-4 times as much XP to upgrade, and this should work great.
• Also, mines, though easilly countered with a couple of Scouts in the fleet, there should be a way to direct ships not to fly into mines, but make them fully invisible without scouts present. I think mines should be used to greatly slow aggression, but not deal damage. I think that's what starbases are made for, for when you're ready to make a stand.

ooooooooooo  I like this thought.  ooooooooooooooo

Does seem interesting!

How would this work in say an astroid or nebulae?

"Our Starbase has entered ppphhhhhaaaaaaaaasssssssseeeeeeee orbit."

What if constructors were more like the planet ones, in that a SB was built, rather then grown from a constructor seed.  This way, offensive SBs would have a really easy counter (Kill the builder).  This is usually the weakness of turret rushing in most games.  Having a fleet could prevent this, but even then a few bombers could probably still focus on the builder and kill it.

As a bonus, the builder could also be used to capture mines (Instead of scout/colony) and even possibly build outposts/refinerys in neutral areas (Like astroid belts).  It should be pretty simple to give these a 4-8 slot limit.

If IC was really ambitious, they could even have trade shuttles fly from nearby planets to the SB building site dropping off supplies.  That would really be impressive.

Asteroid belts and nebulas, i'd say that their grav well is much smaller, and i don't see why a special ability of, say, a nebula, would be increased range due to lack of planetary bodies and the like interfering. For asteroid belts , gee, i dont know. Easy solution would have them be free moving only in non-colonizable planet grav-wells.

I think a good reason would be lack of gravitational pull.

To those saying upgrades need to be cheaper, keep in the mind the current prices are clearly 'placeholders'.  I'm sure the devs realize the hanger and trade upgrades are not worth the same as the weapon and defence upgrades.  Though in general I agree the base cost/build time needs to go up while the upgrades all need to go down significantly.  For something that can be built at 3 labs (TEC version at least), it is far too expensive to be seriously used until you've got a lot of trade ports going.  This is problem for 1v1 and small-medium sized 2v2s, as it means it will likely not get used at all in its current form; which defeats the entire point of the expansion for many players.  Weapon range definitely needs to be increased as well.

I'm not sure about a PJI module though.  You can build them normally and put them beside the starbase if you want to force people to fight it.  Having to destroy a fully upgraded base backed by mass repair bays before you can leave the sector seems detrimental to the pace of the game.  Especially when you can have more than one starbase.

As for mines...the buildable ones need a cap per sector for sure.  Enhanced detection methods plus limiting minefields to 3 (or 30 per well) seems in order.

YEs they are placeholders, because the devs want to see how the community reacts to them, and see where the community wants them to be. Hence why we are discussing it.

in many cases that would not be enough, even for asteroids need like 60 for suffiecent coverage