Starbases 2.5

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 would agree with the eight-ten slots suggestion if it were structured in as an upgrade in the somewhat-limited tech tree. Maybe a final-tier upgrade that costs some 1500/300/300 or something like that? The eight is good for now, if you want more you should have to pay some kind of lip-service technological research fee to the further expansion of the sb's capacities.

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.

Well shadow the upgrades on a sb are pretty expensive so its still a tough decision and even with 10 you wont be able to get all the upgrades.

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.

But you'd still be able to get both the Vasari's shield and vortex maxed out, or the Advent's Meteors and disable and probably have a slot or 2 left for culture. Or every Starbase would just be a trade port..

No, it has to stay at 8 You still won't get all the "upgrades" with 10, but you could have all the ultimates.

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.

pretty much, I agree. but pretty much is not the same as always and ever. there could be situations where a repair upgrade is more useful than another hull of dmg upgrade. f.ex. if you have a good sized fleet stationed at a well where repair bays are not possible. as a matter of fact, I'd probably slap a hangar upgrade on before I'd go for all out defence, if standard hangars are not possible. I just wouldn't like total vulnerability to bombers, because these bastards are pretty good vs starbases. of course the standards of preferable, but just not always an option.

"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.

One thing HAS to get changed, its the (unlimited amount of?) sb at sun, i saw someone make 4 (dopple map) ... and i bet you can make more

think about that 5v5 multi star, 20 sb at each sun

game over no one can win ... all you have to do is make like 5 TEC sb at sun with the scuicide, and any fleet jumping is dead because you can cover all jump spots.

i think its a bug because you couldnt make more then 1 before, maybe its only specific to dopplegangers but it needs to be fixed anyway, we won it but only because they didnt max out the sbs and we had 1 vas and 1 advent sb in well with a lot of bombers

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.

Dude, it moves like a turtle.  You can drive circles around it.  Sure, it moves, but it won't win a marathon.  You can get away from it.

Everything else you said as far as toughness of the vasari SB goes for the other starbases as well.  I've seen similar fleets go up against TEC and Advent SBs and die.  However, I find it hard if not impossible to believe that 15 adjudicators wouldn't fry a starbase in seconds.  That is, if the adjudicators are anything like the TEC torp cruisers.  I used just 5 TEC torp cruisers to completely vaporize fully upgraded SBs in seconds.  Are adjudicators that much weaker than torp cruisers?

Do you really want SBs to be pussies?

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 was JUST about to start my own post about starbases, saw your post first MindsEye, and decided to post mine here instead:  The starbases don't scale; what I mean specifically is that a Cobolt takes no labs and little money to build, a Kodiak takes many labs and lots of money to build.  When you see your opponents has Cobolts you don't blink; if you see he has Kodaks suddenly, your eyebrows go up and the game changes.

It's not that way with starbases at this time in the Beta; they seem almost "common".  And even when you do see them, they are all the same looking/size (yup, there's another 8 slot 2 weapon/3 defence Starbase).  I was hoping when you saw one you'd say "uh oh, there is his main starbase".  Extra slots (10-12) could help; it would be easy to break down upgrades into 2-5 tears. 

But my main idea was that Starbases "start" with 4 slots.  The Defence Tech research has 6 and 8 slot upgrades (Large and Huge Starbases?)   So, lets say you play Vasari; you build a SB at the begginging of the game, and it has 4 slots (and only 2 spikes on their hull);  Later you research "Large Starbases", they have 6 slots and 4 spikes;  Late game you research "Huge Starbases", they have 8 slots (and the 6 larges spikes like they look like now).  They "scale up" in size/power, just like ships.

Just as important, scale down the cost of the first upgrades (like about 1500) and scale up the cost AND effect of the highest ugrades.  So if you see a Level 1/4 slot/2spike Starbase, you shrug your shoulders, but, when you see a level 3/8 slot/6 spike Vasari Starbase your jaw drops.  It would also be important that it costs to upgrade starbases to more slots (each base), so you could still have small/4 slot starbases in the game, and huge/8 slot starbases near the front for example.

This also has the additonal benafit of not letting a person build a full 8 slot Starbase suddenly in an enemy well; you'd only get a 4 slot "Starbase weed".

This would all make the "Hard Choices" actually "hard"; do you pay to ugrade a base to 6 or 8 slots?  Do you spend an extra 3k to give it the ultimate beam weapon or sheild defence?  Or do you leave it a Stabase "toddler" at 4 slots and level 1 upgrades?

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.

I like your guys idea.

Yeah it moves slow but the point is that you cant run while its using its deflector ability and stop then shoot it inbetween casts. I dont understand how you cant understand what 100% damage reduction means. It wouldnt matter if it were 100 adj if all damage is blocked.One of the reasons I posted about this was I was hoping to get someone who has faced this ability in mp to post his thoughts on it and how hard it was to defeat.

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 couldn't understand it because that's not what you said.  You said you had a fleet of this many X, that many Y, and 15 adj but the hull never got below 15,000.  That implied to me that damage was being applied, but the hull never got below 15,000.  This implied to me that the sb in question did not have a frontal shield, or it wasn't being utilized, or it was being fired at from the side or behind, or whatever.  I simply said that if the adj is anything like the torp cruiser I can't understand how the sb wouldn't be obliterated.

Now, afterwards you mumbled something about the frontal shield, and not being able to get away from the sb, yadda yadda.  Sure, if you say the shield blocks 100 pct of all incoming frontal fire from all ships, then we agree it doesn't matter whether there are 10 adj or 1000 for those 45 seconds, in that particular circumstance.

I will still say that in practice I have failed to successfully assault any enemy sb with my vasari sb.  Either my opponent doesn't let it get built in the grav well without being destroyed (even with an escort to protect the migrator, even with a diversion sent first to another part of the grav well before I jump in with the migrator, etc), or my opponent doesn't let it sit there and upgrade to the level necessary to take on his sb, or I successfully build the sb and upgrade it, but the enemy sb kills my vasari sb in the assault.

Bottom line, the vasari sb doesn't seem so big and bad to me, in practice anyway.

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. 

The thing that annoys me is that front lines of battle shift over the course of a game.

If you build a SB at an enemy planet and give it combat abilites and then capture that planet and 2 more, then that SB is now useless.

You should be able to "reconfigure" SBs so that if a SB was once on the front lines but is now deep in your territory, you can remove all upgrades to free up slots and then re-upgrade it the way you want.

  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.

I got one idea for extra vasari anti structure capability:

karrastra siege ships double as structure killers, via an alternative mode. basically, they're like starcraft siege tanks. lose movement, but gain powerful, long range attack. this would not be so much out of character, since the assailants already do something comparable. place it a high lvl, something like tech lvl 5 and off you go. after all, the siege ships are horribly expensive and fragile anyway, so I doubt it would be overpowered. and by making them imobile (at least until mode change) and a siege analogue, it would be different enough to warrant racial diversity.

not that I insist on it, but it's a workable idea and the vasari starbase being their main means to take down another sb ... it's just not practical. buy a bunch of heavy ships for the same price and I'd say you're better off.

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

Limited slots is a great idea so a player has to think and choose what type of starbase to build where: full combat, full economy or a mix.  However as it stands now at 8 slots that's not enough to fully upgrade any races weapons, hull, strikecraft, and combat abilities that use antimatter.

If I've got a starbase holding back the hostile hordes 'o doom at my empires back door I'd really like to be able to max out (or at least come darn close) all the combat abilities I can cram into that sucker!

I like the suggestion of adding a tech to the slightly sparse defense tree that would increase the number of upgrade slots for starbases.  It could use some high end (rank 7 or 8) techs and another slot or two would help get full combat starbases a little closer to actually having the full set of combat upgrades.

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.