As it stands, starbases aren't powerful enough to warrant using a capital ship crew, i.e. slot.  Fleet supply is another thing entirely, and one I would be more inclined to support, but probably not at the current going rate of 50 supply (equal to a capital ship).

Admittedly, the primary component in the above is the range.  The Vasari starbase, being able to move, is actually not half bad.  There is also the issue of them only having one weapon type initially while the other two are accessible under upgrades, but this might actually be a good idea, so as to make the initial structure weaker (and cheaper).

I personally am completely opposed to allowing more than one starbase per gravity well per race.  I just think they need to be stronger (when upgraded).

I would like to see starbases have more of an economic impact than purely defensive.  While this necessitates making them initially weaker, making them increasingly stronger with increasingly costly upgrades, and changing the upgrade costs (if not the build cost) to be more expensive for military upgrades and less expensive for "civilian" upgrades, most if not all of these changes would seem to both be inevitable and a good idea.

Under such a system, you don't need a starbase to use up either a capital ship crew slot or fleet supply, as the vast majority of them would be used to supplement the player's economy; it will be rare that you will run into a fully upgraded defensive fortress, as it should be.  (Alternatively, the only starbases you run into will be fully upgraded defensive fortresses-but there will be far fewer of them.)

Economic starbases already exist. They come as trade ports, research labs, and mining centers.

Since starbases start small and weak, they don't need a capital ship crew to start. Instead, as they increase in size they may require capital ship crew to operate. One possibility is that every gravwell is allowed a small starbase, which can upgrade a bit to medium. But it costs one cap crew to go to large, and a second cap crew to advance to superlarge. This way each grav well can have a starbase, but players have to allocate their limited cap ship crew to the most important spots.

Is this supposed to mean that you don't want starbases to have an economic function as well?  As long as we don't have a Fort Knox at every planet, I have nothing against (and in fact would prefer) the ability to simply have an economic-style starbase-for obviously cheaper than a military-grade one.

However, your post was much more clear than your original post, and if starbases were done in that kind of a way, I could see myself agreeing with that.  I'm not positive the upgrades system in place could accommodate such a change, but other than that, and obviously upgrade prices not being their final values, I don't see why 1) the upgrade system wouldn't be sufficient to differentiate between military and civilian installations and 2) why super starbases using capital ship crew slots would be a bad idea.

I'm just totally against my starbase with two economic modules (or say perhaps a TEC starbase with the shipbuilding ability) -and nothing else-using a capital ship crew.

-

Bob, I don't want to have to use up a capital ship crew slot, or fleet supply, just to get a base with the 2nd economic upgrade.  I see no reason why civilian starbases should require either of those.  Other than that, I pretty much agree with what you said.

I'm not liking this chain of thought.  Fleets rule the game and we need our fleet supply to handle them.  If we have to start diverting significant fleet supply or cap ship crews to starbases, then we're right back where we started with too little resources to handle larger maps. 

This is why games so often turn into a situation where there are too many ways to get around your opponents' fleets and rape their worlds, while they do the same to yours.  You can't cover all the paths, and if you try to, then your fleets are too small and get rolled up in a hurry.  Starbases should help buy some time for you to reposition.  They aren't nearly strong enough to stand up to a real fleet, but they can hold them off for a short time and do some damage.

There's also the issue, for the TEC at least, that starbases are currently the only means of creating trade ports in non-planetary systems to keep your trade chain from being broken.  So it will be necessary to build some just for that reason.

Everything else has limits how much you can build / maintain. It would be illogical if Starbases had no limits other than 1 per location which feels arbitrary compared to fleet supply / capital / tactical / logistical slots.

And if someone wants to build 4 Starbases in the same grav well, let them. As long as they have available crew slots

I'm operating on the assumption that starbases aren't as strong as they should be, but even if they are, I still have to ask-how do you propose to take down such a heavily fortified planet?

Furthermore, if we're using capital ship crew slots as our example, then why not consider, as insane as it might be, 16 Vasari starbases in a single well?

But the "certain amount" is the arbitrary limit. Training crews is fine and good. But there's still a very hard limit on the number of said crews, which makes no sense. If your empire has 2 planets, you can have 16 crews. If your empire has 100 planets, you can have 16 crews. Even if the number of crews increases, this will still be the case.

Going with per-grav well is a dynamic limitation which is much better because it scales with the size of your empire. 100 planets? Can have 100 bases. 5 planets? Sorry buddy, stuck with 5. As for the "1 per grav well", that can be explained much easier than any other limit in game terms so it can make sense: starbases are big. Real big. They need lots and lots of people manning them. Any particular colony may only be able to spare enough people to man one base in its orbit. But how do you explain "x" number of crews max, regardless of the size of your empire?

You can have capital ship crew research maxed while at the first fleet capacity level.  I've done it.  If starbases require a capital ship crew but no fleet capacity, your empire's size still has absolutely no bearing on how many you can support.  (Sure, it requires 8 labs, or 32 total logistics slots, but that's doable with only a couple of planets.)

Then maybe starbases in UCGWs should have less total available upgrades, or something.  But I still think the size reasoning works just fine-for instance, in GC2 you're not allowed more than 4 starbases per sector (per civilization) "for navigational reasons".  This is kind of the same type of limit.

I still want to see a response to 16 Vasari starbases in a single gravity well.

What i want is a starbase that you see autoguns mounted everywhere and it firing at 20+ targets at once with smaller autoguns doing maybe 20 damage. Then having bigger missles and lasers that you have 5 of. Missles and lasers depending on race. Advent lasers. Missles for vasari and tec. I also opose more than one starbase a system. I think they should be fleet killers but not to the extrent that can take down over 500+ support alone. I think you should have a set limit of 5 and make them all mobile to an extent. Fully upgraded i expect these things to have over 25 or so guns firing at targets in differant modes such as focus fire, spread focus (groups of 5 turrets attacking 1 target), and spread fire (all turrets set to independant target) So you can choose acordingly. I also think since they are mobile they should at least have colinize abilities and the ability to bombard planets fast and heavily. Make their phasing take forever though but give them phasing (haven't played entrenchment to know if vasari does phase).

Speak for yourself. I use all of my capital ship slots. Of course, I only play singleplayer, but still, I like my capital ships, whether or not they are "cost effective." Plus, the way cap ship slots are now, you could only have 16 starbases, max. That is not even close to adequite to defend your planets and extend trade routes to uncolonizable planets.

Personally, I think that more than one star base should be allowed in a gravity well, but the number depends on what kind of planet it is. I think that uncolonizable stuff and dead asteroids should only be able to support one. Regular asteroids can have two. Actual planets can have 3 or 4. Stars should be able to have 6 or so. One starbase on a star, even if it is Vasari, is completely worthless. You can't even cover one phase lane. Even if the range gets increased to rediculously large, you still can't cover a star with one SB.

I really don't think it's necessary to have a Cap slot used.  It's going to affect capital ships and it will displace the purpose of starbases.

Capital ships are already in an unbalanced state. You get more bang for your buck to use frigates > capital ship (in most cases). Having a Starbase use up cap ship slots means we're only going to see fewer capital ships and fewer starbases. I really don't want a game with 8 captial ships and 8 Starbases. I think many Sins players will agree with that.

We want a lot of capital ships blowing the shite out of everything!

Furthermore, starbases are meant to be used as fleet support. They are not a mainstay, or the backbone of an offensive or a defense, fleets aka ships are used for that role. A starbase is meant to assist those ships by providing more fire power, producing ships on the front lines, boosting the economy and other non-engagement roles.

We gotta keep in mind why Entrenchment is being brought into design by looking at the problems we have now and the slutions being brought forward.

Problem 1: Original defenses were not very useful even at the most upgraded stages. Medium size fleets could easily overwhelm them. We needed something to boost these. This is being done by adding flak to hangars for instance or increasing the range of turrets (damage to beam turrets etc).

Problem 2: Online play showed that it was very easy to bypass all worlds and unreasonably pillage homeworlds to the point of frustration. There was nothing to stop opponents from running to the innerworlds and destroying them while our offensive fleets were on the other end of the system. Starbases are meant to solve this problem. So we need STATIONARY FREAKIN' STARBASE** (LOL) to either stop fleets from bypassing outersystems, or, one that sufficiently guards our inner worlds with the backup of the new defense structures.

Moving them into a fleet type role is going to offset the balance of the game in a negative way. Lets not leave starbases in an undefined category only to have them never be used. If we want super capital ships with heavy fire power, then ask for that and demonstrate why they are needed, but what we've asked for is a defensive structure to help defend our inner worlds or stop fleets from bypassing our outer worlds.

*Side Note: Problem 3 was the AI. Tactical, Strategic and Unit AI. Which I think they've improved on immensley and I hope they have a few more surprises.

** For anyone who doesn't know: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/333087/page/7/#replies

Capital ships being weaker than a bunch of frigates with the same supply cost is a separate issue altogether. I'm all for increasing low level capital ship firepower a little bit. It's ridiculous how long it takes for a cap to destroy a flak frigate.

But Starbases need to become increasingly more expensive as you build more of them however. Which would force the player to think where and how many to build instead of eventually building one in every grav well. Everything else in the game works in this way and I don't think Starbases should be an exception.

I do think that the capital ship slots you get with the same cost should be increased to 24. You'd get the same amount of caps and 8 Starbases as a freebie.

I disagree with the cap slots. You just just have a max of one per gravity well and have the range cover most if not all of the gravity well. At least cover half.

I've thought about it. I agree with you. I thought that wasn't going to work so i was going to edit it but didn't. See what response i get. Phasing SB would kill.

I would like to see starbases be able to all move. Just make sure the enemy has a way of avoiding them. I thought starbases where meant to defend key choke points so a limit of 5 would be good and have them super powerful but avoidable to an extent. Also raise the inistial cost to maybe 6000 credits and 900 metal and crystal. Start out powerful and make even more powerful.