Star Base suggestions

The reverse Repulsion has been suggested many times for the Transcencia. It would be sooo much more useful than Final Judgment which is rather pointless to begin with. Instead of hurling meteors at a planet they should focus on hurling enemy ships because that would work in defense as well.

Devs please consider.

Scuttling upgrades would be great, too.

you brought an interesting point to the now old scuttling argument: when you scuttle upgrades, you do so for all of them or none. maybe get a partial refund, not the point for me. but the point is, there is a price to pay, because once you do that, you start with a vanilla starbase again, which are pretty weak in the even that the front line will change yet again.

I'd say I can live with that. not individual component scuttling, but general 'back to basics'.

I'm completely against a "force pull" ability of any kind on any unit because it removes all choice from the target player. There's nothing he can do to prevent losing control of his fleet, which is never, ever, a good mechanic to have in a game. It should always be up to a player if he wants to engage a starbase, jump past, or retreat. It should not be up to a 2k credits upgrade

I still don't get this.. the upgrade researches both "fling meteors at the whole fleet" and "fling meteors at planet" abilities. It's not one or the other. It's both. The upgrade is useful for defense as much as offense.

Why not just scuttle the starbase and build a new one? the difference seems minimal, and if you are tearing out all of the upgrades and starting from scratch you may as well (as construction workers know, it is always much cheaper to build from scratch than to rennovate the entire complex) -- maybe this brings us full circle to the logic behind not being able to refurbish a base?

... just a thought.

lol. true actually. incidentally ... what kind of refund do you get for scuttling a starbase? maybe there could be a research that increases it, so that it's easier in late game to reorient. I mean, if you scuttle a 5 or 6 upgrade military one and get enough for a new one plus 1 or 2 civilian ones ... it might be worth it.

It's probably the percentage of the actual construction cost, I dunno.

There are many abilities already that "remove choice". Repulsion, Armistice, Reverie, Animosity, Subverters, Dominas.. the list goes on and on.

You always have the choice of not entering a grav well with an upgraded Transcencia Starbase.

It's just about balancing the ability with AM cost / range / number of targets / cooldown.

If a Starbase could pull in and destroy a few key ships from a passing fleet it might actually be worth building.

Wouldn't matter as much if their "extreme" long range weapons were in fact extreme and able to hit ships anywhere in the grav well.

That's not what I'm talking about. Repulsion just pushes them away. Armistice doesn't do anything but make both sides stop fighting. Reverie is a single target stun. Animosity is broken by movement. Subverters, Dominas are easily countered.

What you're talking about is "Oh hey, why don't I force you to attack my starbase, all my defenses, and my entire fleet and there's nothing I can do about it because I can just toggle this ability to pull your ships in range".

There's a huge difference.

Anatar maybe it wouldnt be so bad if it was just like one ship at a time and couldnt effect caps. I am on your side about this tho. I would rather see final judgement be used against ships at double the range of the meator shower. That way it could protect the planet. I would like to see 1 post from someone who used final judgement for offense(as in a defended planet) against a planet and said it works great and he would use it again. Annatar have you tried to use it? I dont mean to sound critical Im just tryin to help you see where we are coming from.

It's a double edged sword. The ability would be rather useless if it didn't pull enough ships, but if it does pull enough ships it's frustrating because there's nothing you can do about it but watch them get blown up.

I'm coming from not seeing what all the fuss is about. There are 2 abilities that your starbase gets when you do the upgrade. One ability throws meteors at the enemy fleet, and the other throws them at a planet. Obviously, throwing meteors at a fleet is almost always more beneficial than a planet - but you get them both. It's not like you pay the upgrade cost only to get the planet bombard meteor

To make Final Judgement useful, make it like its name - pulls down a huge asteriod and does 3000 planet damage and 50% population KIA.  Also IC, I would use it more if it had a better animation and maybe even a custom planet texture showing a massive crater, just because it would be unbelievably satisfying to see.

If anyone tries to say that it's OP 1)  You still have to get the base built and upgrade the base in an enemy system, which is very hard to do in the current build.  2) It's fairly similar to the TEC Novalith in terms of damage and tech level, though arguably less useful and possibly less costly(for one planet).

My fuss is about balance. All sb have useful and very beneficial abilities and the there is final judgement...useless.Well to me anyway   Its almost annoying seeing a button there never beeing used and this sb really needs something to protect the planet its at. Im just curious if you think the advent sb should protect its planets better? I mean the vasari can move and the tec can build ships to fend off bombers on other side of planet but what does advent have?

Advent have loads of strikecraft.

It drops meteors on the entire fleet for 600 damage a pop? It disables engines on groups of ships? And yeah, it gets 20 strike craft squads.

I have used final judgement only in one case (and found it useful, only in that one case), which goes as follows: I was playing a game with unlocked teams, start with an ally in a 2v2v2 map. After my team had got a difinitive edge (and the other two were moronically fighting amongst themselves), I built up starbases in key allied systems, preparing for the great betrayal! I turned out to be quite interesting to have a fleet prancing from planet to planet (of your former ally's), while having each of the key systems beseiged by SB's of varying strength. The AI of course never saw this coming (moron that they can be), so I managed to fair quite well, knocking out the ally in about 30 minutes of 'heavy sweeping' while only loosing one of the (about) 4 starbases I had supplanted him with.

This is the only case that I have ever used final judgement, and the only time it has proven useful (and against a ally that had any brains it would have been useless, as the SB's would have been long ago detected as the thinly-veiled subversion that they were)... the effort required to construct an advent SB in hostile territory AND upgrade final judgement is simply too great for it to make any sense for any  sane player (excepting those who enjoy slow and painful, mocking dismemberment of opponents--in which case final judgement is perfectly suited to your cruel passions!).

I think that maybe scratching it is unecessary, just because it is kinda a neat upgrade in that limited situation that I mentioned. Instead, I think the best thing to make it 'worth while' would be to greatly increase its strength, as I believe Raptor suggested (though maybe not quite 3000 damage..), and ADD a seconday meteor ability that does somewhere from 800-1200 dmg to cap ships (which has also been suggested, I forget where or by whom). This new meteor ability should have a long cooldown time, obviosly, or lvl 10 cap ships would be wasted before the battle was half through. FINALLY, another ability, if the cap-ship meteor isn't to your liking, could be something along the lines of a 'malicious debris' ability, whereby the same 'psionic' abilities being used to direct meteors is used to direct either meteors or debris to damage either ships generally or (and this is the more interesting one to me) specifically target squadrons... the benefit of having it target squads would obviously be that it would knock out two birds with one stone, both upping the usefullness of the meteorite upgrade and increasing the resilience of advent SB's vs. strike craft (another oft-discussed problem with SB's more generally).

Looking forward to thoughts from all, I am sure I have spoken SHEER MADNESS in these suggestions...

... it already does this. 600 damage to target ship and all targets in radius around it, which is large enough to hit the entire fleet in most cases.

i understand how the ability works now. I am suggesting a stronger and more targetted ability. Perhaps on-top of the damage make it disable strike-craft construction, or abilities, or weapons, or something along those lines -- just a way to make a more targeted and precise use of this ability to hurl meteors around willy-nilly and fix the problem of the inadequacy of final judgement. maybe 1500 dmg would even be sensical for such an ability, so long as cap ships were the only ones affected-- could be called 'target critical systems' or something like that, and have a percent chance to knock out each of the afformentioned different functions of a cap ship.

What do you think about the anti-strikecraft meteorite ability I suggested?

Final Judgement to me kind of replaces the ability to prevent the planet from being taken by enemies (auxiliary government or whatever the advent version is called).

Instead of preventing it from being taken while the SB is alive, the SB can simply pound the stuffing out of any colony the enemy creates while the SB is alive. Plus you get the ability to meteor the enemy fleet at the same time.

I just wish you didn't have to choose between it, strikecraft, culture, and mass disorientation. Seems like you should be able to get more options then you do, given that the defense and weapon upgrades are largely mandatory at any base that is on the front line.

The meteor on the fleets is nice but I think the only way it could protect your planet is to place the sb right next to the planet which is not where I like to place mine.Disabling engines doesnt protect the planet much and it has less range then the meteor shower(i think).I wasnt aware it could have 20 squads which is impressive but is that 4 slots to get that?You will be giving up alot in armor or firepower and a fleet would easily take out the sb and not need to bomb your planet from the other side. Most siegeing mp fleets probably have at least 20 carriers or 10-15 hosts so 20 squads will not protect your planet very well from being killed.BTW I have played a mp game where I put a sb at one of my planets and he never engaged my sb and just killed my planet and it sucks alot. Felt like puting it there was a huge waste of my resources.Im not saying it doesnt have good combat ratings but mostly its the only sb that you can carefree your fleet around the well and bomb the planet to death and never worry about it.

I think 3? It starts with a few, then upgrades to 6 > 14 > 20 or something like that.

And the aux government, when works, will make them fight the starbase. Right now if you upgrade it they can still bomb the planet, so either the description is too confusing or it doesn't work

actually, I think it's 2 (standard equipment) > 6 > 10 > 14 > 20. so 4 upgrades in total. you can also check it on the menu, gives you all the info on what's there, what's planned and what's possible.

Oh, well Can't check at work

I an advent addict, and Shadowhal is right -- starts at two and each of the first three upgrades are of 4 squads, last one is a wicked 6 -- but almost never makes sense given the limitation on slot totals.

This would be really good if it does what you are saying it will. Here is an easy way to defeat 20 squads. Anti strike cap+a few carriers or flak and you could sit back and kill planet.Especially the kol which could kill all 20 squads in one burst.

Ok everything considered.. maybe it would be better if the Mass Disorientation ability just had unlimited range in the grav well. That way the Transcencia could stall ships long enough for the Strikecraft to actually inflict some damage. But the ability would not be overpowering on its own. And strikecraft can be countered.

I just wish Starbases had some other function in MP than to watch fleets passing by outside of range.