Isn't the AI building too much starbases?

The AI in general likes to bankrupt itself.  It upgrades its fleet points to silly levels very early in the game on vanilla and spams starbases in Entrenchment (As well as silly fleet upgrading).

However.  90% of those starbases will have no upgrades to them, a few will have weapons upgrades and few still will match the monstrosities a player creates to defend with.

I guess there is serious work needed there. The AI is much better than it used to be, but a bit of resources management code would be helpful for it.

I never notice many starbases my self. At most three I have every seen. If anything even the insane, fortifier AI can not even give me a run for my money when I attack it.

A few days ago I played against a Hard AI (Vasari) on a small map.

They attacked me at 3 fronts with their light frigate spam and I had a hard time defending my planets. But then they made 2 big mistakes.

1. Instead of researching better units they researched Starbases and put one into every planets grav well. If they had put the money into better ships instead they could have finished me.

2.They sent a cap ship (Skintara) with full health and 5+ Light frigates to one of my planets. I had 1 repair bay and 3 beam turrets and no fleet. It was very funny to see 3 turrets killing a capital ship. The AI did not even try to retreat.

I played against a random AI and I really hope that it was the Fortifier type.

Btw. What are the differences between the AI types and what is the best/most dangerous AI type in the long run?

Play against the Unfair AI.

They research high enough in the tree, and DO upgrade their starbases to the fullest extent on key worlds.

You will notice that some AIs want particular planets and will fight for them even if they're allied up.  (the random broken treaty) in order to obtain the planet.

Just play around and you'll see their strengths and weaknesses.

When I play against AI I tend to put a starbase at every planet, mostly upgrade it for the Auxilary Government upgrade (or other race equivelent) then I add 3 econ upgrades and 4 miltiary upgrades   It means I dont have to worry about any kind of nonsense raids which is the only way AI can ebat me at 4x speed.  Because I cant split my fleets well enough to coutner every raid.

I'm still learning and playing on normal.  I just finished a game and the AI had several upgraded star bases, they were not all to the same level. The more front line bases seemed more powerful.

Anyone here think starbase comes way too early in the tech tree? Theses monsters require a lot of resources to build and maintain, i think they should come after we have the economy upgrades to support them. The AI bankrupt itself building starbases while it could build more raffineries and trade stations...

well with the tec, i build star bases as fast as i can and as often as i can, and i build trade post on 90% of them,  they pay for themselfs very quickly, with in 45 mins to an hour in game, my credit income is usaly well over 100 per sec.  I played a game just to see how high i could get my income, my record (before i had to upgrade my fleet) was 412 per sec.  i always play agenst unfair AI.  its too easy.

Yes, yes, yes, I thought I was alone on this one. I personnaly would like to see starbases higher up the tech tree. Level 2 for Vasari is just plain ridiculus. Advent/Vasari starbases should be level 5 and TEC starbases should be level 4 (after all they're the one getting assaulted from 2 sides). I know there's no way the devs will change this because there's just not enough of us to ask for this, but I'm glad to know I'm not alone on this subject.

No i don't feel they come too early. But thnx for asking.

As I originally conceived them as juggernaughts of power that you'd be forced into fighting and would laugh at the puny efforts of your fleet, I'd think where they are in the tech tree is certainly too low.

As they've actually been implemented, they seem more like a very hardy support structure with the added and needed benefit of not allowing your far away worlds to just be crushed by a handful of units when your fleet is ages away.  I'd focus research on such trade and military bases far earlier than fancy superweapons any day if I were any of the three.  Thus the placement on the research tree seems great, especially considering stronger powers do require you to have more labs and aren't just allowed right after a starbase is first constructed.

im mixed about the starbases too early, on one hand, i agree that to upgrade even one starbase to an acceptable degree of effectiveness early on in the game is really hard, and realistically, it would be good to have more economy beforehand, on the other hand, as Mazuo said, the more powerful/useful upgrades require you to build more labs and research more tech, so it kinda balances out....

i would, however, like fighter and weapons upgrades to be cheaper, and i know alot of people say this but seriously, when it costs more to upgrade than it did to build the damn thing, you gotta look at your plans again, and knowing the TEC they would be nothing if not cost effecient.

A replay for you Sirs proving that Starbases come at just the right time.

Downloaded for viewing later.  It's too damn late to be loading one tonight, heh.

I'd say that the problem is not about where starbases sit in the tech tree, but with the AI.  I agree with those who point to the AI 's poor resource management/ strategy as the root problem!

I believe the AI set an insane priority to building starbases everywhere. Heck the AI even build it in enemy territory but without a fleet to actually make use of it (the starbase often end up destroyed by the lack of fleet support). I think the dev should lower the starbase priority so it can build up it's fleet and economy before trying to secure the universe with starbases.