Thanks for the advice I didnt know that they were weak against figters.

But I still think that they are overpowered. they could take out any defence even hanger bays if there is flack. and repair bays dont heal fast enough to recover 600 or so dmg in the cooldown time for the missiles.

I think they either should have a longer cooldown time or cost far more resources

I thought the same thing. I was playing a 1v2 against 2 hard AI and They kept me pinned down to 4 planets for the most of the game.  I managed to get starbases at the flanks and one in the center phase lane. I kept getting massive raids and etc that blow up everything. Eventually, the Ninja star ships come out and kill the starbases.  I get mad and reload an autosave from 5 minutes prior and build a massive mine field where I knew they will attack from. 150 mines concentrated in one spot.  I was laughing at the ensueing chaos. 18 fighter squads + 150 mines is the perfect defense.

Its even better if you can get your starbase to be in the spot where they warp in from and get a few phase inhibitors to help keep them around.

I have to agree with this. The Vasari do have an anti structure starbase though!, but you can only build 1 of them per GW. The other races can have heaps of them if they wish and can lay waste to all in their path in a short time. I guess if you are playing as Vasari and you have a good amount of time to build up a reasonable fighter fleet and lay a heap of mines, then everything balances out OK! But early on in the game it does leave you at a disadvantage

I recently attaked a Vasari system that had a starbace. My fleet had 5 ogrev's is what they're called I think and they absolutly wipped the floor with thier starbace, about 15 secs it lasted. Addmitidly I had a good fleet of 4 capital and 4 of everything else with them, and I was only playing easy difficulty but it just didn't seem to offer any resistance at all.

  Thank you Blair!!!!   That will be cool!! 

-Teal

well, if there's one thing Ironclad/stardock excels at, it's communication. I've never seen so much feedback coming from developpers, and it's a real pleasure to witness. Larger studios should take you guys as an example. While I didn't pre-order the expansion, I'll be getting it as soon as it's released, because so far the feedback I've seen from the devs pretty much guaranty we'll be receiving a kickass product. (I'm just not a pre-order kind of guy )

The Torpedo ships might be too tough, but the Starbases are definately not too weak.  Just finished a massive game where my ally and I were Vasari and didn't have Torpedo ships.  We had to kill a couple fully upraded starbases backed by slightly weaker allied starbases.  And it took a heck of a long time.

Yeah, the starbase buff atm is nice. As long as you have a support fleet, they can hold out for a looong time. Mines are icing on a cake. I just finished a game where an asteroid was the choke point, two incoming enemy lanes roughly 60 degrees away from one another. I put mines in that arc, as well as a starbase just behind the asteroid...it was able to shoot at anything trying to nuke the asteroid, and with the two dunovs (mostly in a fleet of kodiaks and flack) could push off two enemy fleets at once.

However, I would agree that the logistics points for the missle ships go up. At the moments the TEC AI tends to spam them waaay too much. They'll have entire fleets of them with their capital ships, only to get chewed up by the Vasari...who have no anti-structure ship added.

no no no no no. [i THINK You should] Make starbases more powerful. That way, anti-structure cruisers are practically required to take out a starbase, with the aggressive fleet tasked with protecting them. That way, taking out a starbase is a serious endeavor that takes planning.

That's the only way putting over 20k into a single defense structure would be worth the money.

Before I look at ur replay, did you guys try bombers against the SB?  I took out a fully upgraded Advent SB in seconds, chiefly with bombers.  Now, I did have 5 torp cruisers as well, and it's possible that they did most of the damage.  But I don't know.  We won't know whether SBs are tough enough (except against torp cruisers) unless we know they can withstand bombers with reasonable defenses (flak or fighter cover, etc).

Just to put my two cents on the table (and that's about what it's worth) - my bias is that if we are to err in the balancing of the starbase, we should err on the side of "a little too tough," especially if the game is called "Entrenchment."  The normal game already has a wide-open, offensive gameplay mechanic.  Let's give another gaming mechanic a try.

I was starting to transition to bombers, but we were mostly using fighters because the Starbases were being given MASSIVE fighter cover.  The starbases were being used to maul direct attackers, and we had to get strikecraft superiority before we could go bombers.

Torpedos might well be too tough, but I can tell you the Starbases themselves are pretty enormously tough now against conventional attacks.

I agree that starbases are extremely effective against normal (especially cap) ships, especially if fully upgraded. BUt they are also extremely vulnerable to bomber attack, once its fighters have been eliminated. I didnt see any in my game, but does the starbase even have anydefence against bomber and fighter attack (other than the fighters obviously)

OH and the torpedoes are a bitoverpowered, but i just find it funny that the torpedoes are shown as a missile as big as a frigate! Maybe a smaller design is needed...

There are situations wher starbases are really effective, but there are also circumstances where they are practically worthless, fully upgraded or not. Something needs to be done about tactics that allow starbases to be destroyed to easily.

Some sort of rebalance is needed, maybe flaks and a special ability that can take out a anti-structure unit anywhere in the gravwell every 30 seconds or so. As it stands, starbases are not good defense structures without a huge fleet to back it up.