I agree with moving from 8 to 10 slots. Something I've been finding I'd like during my play sessions with the beta.

I dunno, I kinda like the 8 slots limit. it's just the number that forces some hard choices. after all, you don't have to get the weapons and armour upgrades. if you want construction abilities, phase stabeliser, meteor showers or whatever, you should have to sacrifice someting for it. otherwise, it's not really so much of a hard choice anymore, if you can build the modules you want and only leave those out that you don't care so much about anyway.

there could be a bit more civilian or economic upgrades though. maybe another level of trade for each? what about a research lab upgrade? tec has a slot free anyway and with the ability to sort of offshore trade ports to sb, the planet slots would be free anyway. it would give them extra options if they are in a cramped position.

The weapon and armor upgrades are pretty much required for any kind of frontline Starbase to be effective. So you're really only working with 3 (2 for Vasari) slots for everything else. It's effectively "pick your ability."

I'd be more comfortable with 10 myself. Then you could decide what kind of mix of strikecraft/combat abilities/economic abilities you want. It's a pretty tight constraint right now.

Keep em at 8, but add the ability to decomission upgrades... ie you can sell scuttle your trade ports in favour of hanger defence, but you dont get any money back... that's the penalty.

I'd love to see the starbases have a point-defence upgrade for dealing with fighters. I'd also love to see the models grow/ begome segnificantly different with certain upgrades. I know the TEC has nominal changes, but it'd be pretty cool if the texture changed with each armor upgrade or something like that.

I'd also love it if you could dock ships at a starbase... ie- 100%hull regen but its disabled for x Ammount of time while docking takes place.

"I have not faced one using this..."  and  "...don't have much experience with these abilities but it really SOUNDS unbalanced."  I highly recommend getting the experience first before commenting on the balanced or unbalanced nature of the vasari SB.  Do you really want adjustments made before you've actually tested anything for real?

I have tested the vasari SB.  I have not yet been able to mount a successful assault against an enemy SB with equivalent (or more) hull points on my vasari SB, plus the anti-structure weapon upgrade.  Now, that's not saying anything definitive about the SBs - perhaps it's my own incompetence.  The point is simply that one should actually put these units to the test against an unfair AI or a quality human opponent, and THEN make your comments.  Sound reasonable?

Regards.

Agent when I said that I mean in mp. I havent been able to play mp at all till 2.5 and its hard to find a game. The ai is to stupid to use these abilities sometimes at all or to their fullest. So until I see this used in mp and see how it works I will feel as tho I have not really tested it out. It doesnt mean I cant look at the stats and have an opinion.That is why I stated I dont have experience so that you can understand its more of an opinion.I have used it against a large unfair ai fleet with 15 adjucators and 40+ illums and 20+ destras and my hull never went below 15k. I think that is a little unfair.Just think about it. It can block 100% of incoming damage for  45sec.All the while you cant even get away from it cause it can move.45 sec for it to completely heal itself. level 2 lasts for 60 sec. Alot of how effective this ability is depends on how hard it will be against a human player to split up your fleet and attack it from the sides which will open your fleet up to more of its firepower.

Adjudicators do significantly less damage to one target then an Ogrov, yeah. They can hit four or five targets at once, though.

For taking down tactical structures, they just decimate things in seconds. Against a Starbase Ogrovs are more effective.

I like PurplePaladin's idea of a stratification of starbase scale. It would definitely address some present delemas with starbases that kinda irk me. For one, I wouldn't find myself spending obscene resources on a starbase in an in-between gas-giant that has no strategic relevance sheerly for colonization (Vasari) or trade (advent/tec) or culture bonuses (advent). It would make more sense of these 'trade-post bases' as well as allow for the creation of a much more formidable (and costly) defensive fortification. Even after the 2.0 release (and 2.5, which had far less import) I find a fully-upgraded starbase something of a disappointment on defence - it seems that all a fleet needs to do is sit with a well-guarded squad fleet outside its range or bombard with several well-guarded anti-strucuture ships for your massive invsestment in time and treasure to be wasted without an adequate struggle.

Just to refine the idea a little, perhaps 3 tiers would be best -- small for the aforementioned trade/civilian SB types; medium for mixed-functionality/minimum-threat border areas; massive to scare enemies shitless and provide and truly FORMIDABLE boost to local domestic vitality. The only difference that I would recommend is that in the specifics of how they scale. I think that every level should increase bank #'s slightly, along with per-target firepower -- the bigger the death-star, the more turrets it is likely to have, no? Increase in slots is logical, but the amount they increase I think should be higher than PurplePaladin recommends: why not a 4-8-12 system? This could also go along with a couple of upgrades for all sb's that, judging from posts I have seen, are popularly supported: range-increase slots (maybe call it a 'power-system upgrade' and also increase energy regen/capacity) and anti-aircraft guns.

Along with scaling of weapons banks, physical size, and upgrade slots, these different categories of s/b would be VERY sweet if they also had different influences on their well. It only makes sense that the bigger the satelite the more domestic benefits are enjoyed. Perhaps a small sb provides a max-allegiance upping of 2, the mid 5, and the SUPER a wicked 10 alliegance boost.

These cultural benefits, along with all the logistical/tactical upgrade changes, make the necessity of a scaling COST also clear. Adding two new tech researches (3-5 if you include the range, anti-squad, and culture) should of course be appropriately expensive (I have no suggestions here), but would have the obvious benefit of thickening out the defensive research tree.. which at present is a little sparsely-packed.

Those are my two cents on the matter of the (dream-like) prospect of starbase scaling. Hopefully it isn't too late in the game for such a suggestion, as I think that (along with necessary AI tweaking and upgrading) would really put the icing on the cake of this really exceptional $10 purchase.

8 slots or 24; does not matter to me.  Outpost, Starbase, Starfortress, names don't matter to me either.  We just come up with all the brilliant ideas, it's the Dev's job to "Bell the Cat" 

I like this idea.  It seems like a good way to make the starbases powerful enough to matter towards the end of the game (assuming the price for upgrading to the top levels is suitably gigantic), without making them ridiculously overpowered at the beginning  (not that they are -- I'm just assuming that the reason for the low "power ceiling" is to avoid having unstoppable battle platforms show up in the early game).  In addition to scaling some of the stats (weapon banks etc) with level upgrades, maybe you could also scale up the phase destabilization, so that a top-level starbase was a more effective deterrent to fleets trying to bypass it.

OTOH, the current UI probably doesn't have room for this (where would you put the button to buy a level?) and I bet Entrenchment is in feature-freeze by this point in the development cycle anyway. 

  Karma abilities have a cooldown timer. The cooldown timer is longer then the ability lasts.On level 1 it lasts for 45 sec and the cooldown is 90 so you have 45 sec inbetween casts. It has 19k points of hull. If you divide that by 45 sec you get 422. That is the amount of dps you would need to kill it inbetween casts and that is not after mit and not factoring in up to 30 points of repair a sec or armor.

Here's what's in each of the 4 stars .entity files:

maxStarBaseCountPerPlayer 4
maxSpaceMineCountPerPlayer 500

and here's what's in each planet's .entity files:

maxStarBaseCountPerPlayer 1
maxSpaceMineCountPerPlayer 150

As you can see, it's not unlimited, it's just more to compensate for it's massive size I personally like more, so changed all planets to 2 and stars to 12. I also reduced mines to 50/per well, and gave each races starbase enough upgrade "slots" to max every one.  Even with all of these "improvements", I had no trouble killing any of the 9 unfair AI opponents' Starbases (mixed evenly between PSI, Tech, and Phase).   The fleet I used was 10 capital ships (2 of each kind) with a ratio of 2 to 1 bomber/fighters all were level 9 (It takes 90K exp to hit 10 in my mod).

I had no problem destroying those starbases, and some had 40K+ health with 30+ armor and 25K+ shields (I upped all "final rank" research for all 3 races to level 30, which enables some huge hull/armor/shields/wpn dmg/wpn spd etc)

I don't see how any starbase at all is "overpowered". The only time any of my capships took hull damage was when they ran through mine fields, and even that was minimal

Maybe there should be an upgrade option for Starbases that adds slots.

Say you spend 5000/1500/1000 and that lets you have two more upgrade slots, buyable once. That means I can choose to build more Starbases, or build less but spend the extra money to make the ones I do build into absolute beasts.

I understnad why they don't want bases to have *every* upgrade, but I find it overly limiting right now.