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Starbases - Which upgrades and why?

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Starbases - Which upgrades and why?

what do you call a 'fully upgraded' starbase?

from Sins Forums

I've been seeing the term 'fully upgraded' starbase around the forums a lot and I've been wondering what people mean by that.  We all know that you can only get so many upgrades on each starbase, so does that mean offensive upgrades such as weapons and hull, or civ specific upgrades like the Advent's culture or the TEC's factory?  Obviously, everyone can't be talking about the same thing when they refer to a 'fully upgraded' starbase.  So, my question is two-fold:

1.  What do you mean by a 'fully upgraded' starbase?

2.  What are your favored starbase upgrades for the civ you play and why do you like them?

I haven't had entrenchment long enough to pick favorites, but I gotta love the TEC's hull upgrades.  Having a 20000+ hull starbase surrounded by other defenses like repair bays and hangars becomes a tough nut to crack.  Combined with the Docking Bays ability that repairs surrounding hulls and recharges antimatter, the whole defense cluster lasts an inordinate amount of time.  To me, a fully upgraded starbase implies max level weapons and hull upgrades, and then a few levels in whatever else is appropriate, so that its upgrade slots are maxed out.

strategy
23,740 views 30 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top

if you are vasari i wouldnt worry about any upgrades but hp and weapon dmg. your fleet will do everything else you just want a big moving juggernaught to focus enemy fire on prevent any devastating micro swaths into ur fleet.
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I've always found that sometimes its better to put some points into forward shield and debris vortex instead of one of the survivability upgrades. I have seen massive fleets (AI of course, but still) take forever to bring the shield down, and then once they do, just get all that HP healed up by their own hulls. I havent lost one of those yet.

Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top

I perfer to get a bit of all of the upgrades possible

Star Control: Origins
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Sqirelmaster, reply 1

if you are vasari i wouldnt worry about any upgrades but hp and weapon dmg. your fleet will do everything else you just want a big moving juggernaught to focus enemy fire on prevent any devastating micro swaths into ur fleet.


 

I've always found that sometimes its better to put some points into forward shield and debris vortex instead of one of the survivability upgrades. I have seen massive fleets (AI of course, but still) take forever to bring the shield down, and then once they do, just get all that HP healed up by their own hulls. I havent lost one of those yet.
End of Sqirelmaster's quote

 

no human would not micro target an sb with shield down unless the hull was over 9k and their fleet was getting blasted. which is why i mentioned that hull and dmg are a must. i usually put the final trait either into trade if my fights near my hw are over, or like you said forward shield. but a vortex isnt really necessary unless you are being heavily pushed by the enemy and you need to hold ground, probably a 3v1 or 2v1 situation at a bottleneck. but if you are upgraded enough to buy debris vortex odds are the fight is 10x further along than any sb being able to heal after a fight.

-bronze

Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top

I haven't played much, and I just got Entrenchment a couple of days ago, so keep that in mind. Also, I only play against the AI.

One thing that I really like so far is dropping TEC SB's into the star gravity wells on multi-star maps. I've only played a couple of (partial) matches with multi-stars but damn these things are great for both protection and assault. I make sure to put at least 2 SB's at a star. I max out the SC hangars, and then defense so the'll be hard targets. One SB will have 2 points in the Factory, and the other SB will have the Trade. Any other SB's have all hangars, and all weapons, with a couple in defense.

It's great watching an enemy fleet try and come into a system, start crawling towards the phase lane with 40 or so (3 SP) strike craft chiping away at them. Even if they manage to get to the edge, the unstable phase lane wipes out a goodly proportion of their fleet as well.

I don't know if this is a grand strategy or whatnot, but it certainly seemed to do the trick!

Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top

I rarely use all of my starbase upgrade slots.  It costs a lot of resources that could be put into ships instead. This is particularly true for 'trade' starbases; unless you have good reason to think the enemy is going to be raiding that sector, don't bother putting on anything except civilian upgrades.

So do you mean to say that the starbase actually rebuilds squads faster?  Keep in mind that the hangars are being repaired by both repair bays and the docking booms ability so they won't go down too fast, even to structure busters.  If the enemy is there with his fleet, he can probably make mincemeat of your flak ships, but it'll take him longer to wear down the hangars.
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Hangar bays function like carrier cruisers, meaning they require antimatter to build fighters. Hangar bays don't have all that much antimatter and they don't regenerate quickly, and once their antimatter is drained they're effectively out of the fight.

Starbases function like capital ships - building fighters costs no antimatter.  They'll keep rebuilding pretty fast. This is worthwhile even if the enemy kills all your strikecraft and has space superiority, since you can micro a bit and keep your squadrons docked until they've rebuilt enough to make a difference.

Of course, starbase upgrades cost more per fighter. It's up to you. *shrug*.

One clever bit you can do with the hangar defences is to hold all your fighters and let your flak guns/ships go to work on the enemy Fighter squadrons. This will cost you some damage, but it's more efficient if you are outnumbered.