A short list of bugs and issues from beta 2.5...
- The Vasari starbase's phase stabilizer ability now costs antimatter. But adding the module doesn't raise the starbase's max antimatter, so it's impossible to use the stabilizer unless you also research and build one of the other ability modules.
- Starbases aren't targeted by the effects of planetary bodies. i.e. they don't get antimatter regen from stars, or a hit penalty in asteroid belts; starbases in magnetic clouds/plasma storms can still use abilities / launch strike craft.
- The Vasari starbase's Debris Vortex ability doesn't do anything. At all. Ever. Nothing ever happens when I click the button, and the ability is never used if set to autocast.
- If ordered to attack a stationary target, the Vasari starbase only moves until the target is within range of its default pulse guns, even if it has more weaponry available. You have to manually move the starbase in order to make reach firing range for the disintegrators. This means it actually isn't very effective against structures at all if you forget to micromanage it.
- The Vasari gravity mines seem to me to be pretty much useless. The duration of the effect is too short. You might think that 45 seconds is a long time. The problem is, any time you manage to make an enemy hit a grav mine, you could have put an explosive mine there instead, and the explosive mine's "blow everything to smithereens" ability has a duration of "forever" - the duration for which dead enemies stay dead.
Gravity mines can be useful if an enemy fleet hits them while trying to escape a losing battle, but that's not really a believable situation. Most of the time, ships hit mines while entering a system, not while leaving. I tried using grav mines to keep enemies in a system so they would get pounded, and found that the grav mines didn't matter at all; the effect wore off less than 20% of the way through the battle. And again, except for cap ships, most ships would be dead anyway if you had just placed explosive mines there to begin with. If you're trying to leave a losing battle, you probably have a bunch of damaged ships that would die anyway if they hit an explosive mine.
Perhaps instead of completely disabling phase jumps for a short time, the mines could inflict a phase charge rate debuff that lasts for several minutes? Or the "gravity mine" research could add a jump disabling debuff to the explosive mine's effects, rather than enabling a different kind of mine. Or grav mines could deal damage themselves, or disable the victim's weapons and abilities for a while. But there needs to be a convincing reason to switch to grav mines; as is, there are very few situations where grav mines help you damage the enemy more than an exploding regular mine directly damages the enemy.
- The hangar upgrades for starbases are a lot better since Beta 2, but they're still much weaker than the weapon and armor upgrades. Each weapon upgrade deals as much damage as an entire level 10 capital battleship, comes with several multi-targeting banks, and is placed on a nigh-invulnerable starbase that the enemy can't easily destroy. Each squadron upgrade only adds as many squads as two cruiser-class carriers, which can be easily annihilated by enemy fighters or anti-fighter frigates. Also, Advent actually gets the worst strike craft abilities for their starbase, since Advent has to buy 3 of the lower-quality 4-squadron upgrades before getting to buy the better 6-squadron upgrade.
Basically, 2 weapons upgrades will get you the most lethal object in known space, able to deal body blows to an entire fleet, while 3 or 4 hangar upgrades will get you a very short-lived strike craft group that dies off in the first 2 or 3 minutes of combat against most enemies. I think it would be better to ease up on the power of weapons systems - which are often pretty ridiculous now that they multi-target - and boost hangar upgrades to compensate.
