Turrets already do quite large amounts of damage. Even as few as 3 or 4 (mobile) would probably be enough to prevent enemy capital ships from ever being able to bomb without being seriously hurt, and would probably also be enough to destroy a SB before it finishes building. This sort of thing would give the Advent an extremely powerful defensive ability IMO. The enemy would have to bomb or Ogrov the turrets ASAP or the turrets would be on their fleet like an Orkulus.

Advent are certainly in need of a buff. Is this it? I don't think so, but it would certainly be interesting to see how strategies would evolve if Advent had this sort of defensive ability.

Yes early game rushes would be difficult, but then early game rushes only serve to keep the community small by having new players get rolled by more experienced, efficient players.

Building turrets takes time and most of the time my constructors get destroyed quite early in the game from either a sova or skirantra.  Both TEC and vasari players have the luxury to go on the early attack.  You can build the starbase outside of the range of these turrets so that is not an issue really.  A properly countered early attack should penalize the attacker.

The advent need a strong defensive measure against a homeworld starbase 2 capital attack.  As it stands vasari can provide a relatively cheap(when compared to fleet) offensive weapon at any part of your empire by building a starbase "distraction".

Advent early game has an extraordinary difficulty gaining the killing power against vasari/TEC capitals and starbases.  Advent suffer from a severe weakness to early game bombing because of this weakness.

Building a couple turrets to counter would make this easy vasari trick have a cheap opposition.  The reason the advent need the cheapest and most effective defense would be because they have the worst economy.

For the vasari its all about neutrals, fight for those until you can't anymore.  Advent have a difficult time controlling neutrals quickly.  Especially while on the front lines where you have to spam everything.

Strategically, you don't attack an early game TEC homeworld with 2+ repair structures with an even fleet because those 2 are strong enough to turn the tide of the battle against you majorly(to the point that the TEC can just turtle up a quick economy and still have a viable defense against someone else who is spamming ships constantly).  Vasari have excellent cheap defenses as well, their turrets really tear into enemy ships and they can support a lot of defense with no tactical upgrades.  They also have a capital ship that is a tank that has an AOE heal making defense a snap(which amazingly, is one of the most built vasari capital ships).  Advent have almost no staying power with their capitals in enemy grav wells and therefore are weak on the attack.  This means that the enemy can spam fewer ships to effectively push your capital ship out of the grav well. So going head to head with an enemy who is bombing your HW while you bomb his means he has a distinct advantage.  That is why you must play defensively as advent and spam 24/7. 
An alternate to this strategy would be to provide effective defense structures to provide extra danger in the advent grav well that WILL have the ability to support the advent fleet enough to take out capital ships/starbases.

As this is a defensive measure the advent would remain balanced because their fleet would still have a weakness on the attack having no real early game healing ability.

So that is my final response, that the other races already DO have powerful deterrents for assault on their homeworlds.

I'm talking about multiplayer here, we don't run many mods for many reasons.  The only mod on multiplayer I ever see is distant stars and that is a rarity.  Having small "fix" mods isn't going to work for online play.

In single player this would only serve to buff the advent up, which from playing a scenario sol vs. orion 2.0 I found that it is almost impossible to set up a proper defense when facing 9 hard, allied computer opponents as advent.  As vasari, this defense is a snap and extremely easy to do and I ended up winning quite easily.  This was a great big numbers test to determine the resource efficiency of both races given an excellent starting location.  Surprise surprise, the vasari won by a long shot.  I never even had to micromanage anything, while as advent the only way in that scenario I could defeat the enemy was to send my fleet in and take some attrition losses.  Over time this adds up to become the deciding factor and eventual loss of the advent fleet.

That would be interesting...these turrets could leash within an area so they don't have the whole grav well.  I'm thinking 3  turrets to have the capability to cover the entire grav well (as opposed to 4-6 as it is now, excluding asteroids of course).

This would give advent something unique about their turrets that would give their enemies pause on the assault. 

Many people know how broken the advent are on multiplayer.  I'm sure the devs do as well.  I write these topics about this because I know their strengths and weaknesses quite well.  I also write these topics to remind developers that they are not really finished balancing the game.

If you are content to say "advent are way underpowered but thats okay i don't play them", then you should also regard any victory against an advent player as hollow and without merit.  I think this hurts the game substantially in the multiplayer scene, and effective "unique" balancing would serve as to increase the diversity of game play while also addressing some abnormally severe weaknesses.  Pretty much as it stands, any early game capital ship can enjoy romping around the advent homeworld gravity well with little stopping it. 

To counter close quarters advent as TEC, you just spam sova. First sova out goes for embargo, the others get fighter upgrades of you arent' facing a halcyon with TK or missile turrets.  The third sova is the nail in the coffin.  This is against a full blown early game advent tier 0 spam.  Try to spam lums against that...Try to get the killing power you need and play it safe with defense vessels, try to do anything to that.  you won't be able to build many turrets as the constructors will be dead very quickly, and the sova will ensure that they will stay dead.  against skirantra it is much the same. 

Another way to improve advent defense is to increase the damage that disciples/scouts do.  But I am loathe to do so because Advent need more early game options.  Also developers have only nerfed that damage, so its not going to happen. So building some turrets that have greater effectiveness in planetary defense means that the advent can build a defensive turret that is well worth the investment.  I would take a 50%-100% increase in costs with this improved turret for the capability it provides. 

Remember turrets aren't used on the attack, they are used to protect your sanctified planets from attack.  They would still only serve as a strong defense to supplement your existing fleet.  By themselves they would still lose to a vasari starbase attack, although the vasari player would have to invest a bit more into the starbase to do so.  this evens the playing field a bit more.

I like the idea just cause I think, for turrets, that they're on the heftier side of cost. The Advent could use the defensive measure to balance out their otherwise weak core fleet units.

All opinion.

Another idea would be give them a targetable ability that lets them warp to a friendly ship they target--it could act as a spotter to get the turret there--and back again later.

Advent turrets are very powerful once you get that upgrade that increases their damage and gives them shields next to each other. The only reason they aren't a bigger deal is because bombers can deal with them safely. If they could move at anything resembling combat speed I'm sure we'd see more Advent gravity wells filling their tactical slots with turrets.

Try this.

enemy vasari starts building starbase on your hw.

You are smart enough to NOTICE this.

you havent built any turrets anywhere.

Because you have the recently buffed communal labor, you can build 3-4 turrets at a time, right around his starbase, at record speed.

You are also pumping out ships out of your frig factory.

If he has a carrier defending it, you prolly also have your own capital ship there as well.

Lets see how that works out.

Don't need to remind them... pretty that they are busy to balance Rebellion as we speak ( write )... Titan, new capitalship and new corvette class, it is a lot of new thing... pretty sure that we will have plenty of balance patch after Rebellion public release...

Given the cost of a Vasari SB, I don't think it deserves to have "an easy cheap counter". The cost for a SB is quite significant. It shouldn't be *very* difficult to counter, but it should take some effort and you should know what you're doing. Currently it seems too difficult, at least for the defending Advent. It should be possible for a good Advent player to defend against a good Vasari player, at least in the beginning of the game - this is the crux of the problem.

Perhaps rather than countering the starbase by buffing the defenders why not address the issue at hand which is that Vasari can field a starbase much more cheaply and efficiently in the early game since it deploys from the migrator and only needs 2 Mil Labs. Why not simply move the starbase construction up the research tree to at least be equal to the other races? Right now Orky is 2 Mil Labs but Tran & Argo are 3 Mil Labs. I see no justification besides blatant fan-boy-ism to allow Vas SB construction so early especially since they already get Kanrak at 1 Mil Lab.

Well I actually address this issue in my statements above.  I discuss substantially increasing the vasari colonizer cost, so that it is more on par(still cheaper, but not by much) with the other races.  In this way the initial cost of building a vasari starbase goes up, their endgame fleet mitigation tactic (by bringing in a couple of these spaced around the grav well that at any time could make a starbase and therefore turn the tide of the battle) would also be nerfed.  The vasari fleet already is very potent without this "target hopping" advantage they can bring to the fight, so it is truly necessary from a balancing perspective.  Either that, or make it more viable for other races to provide the same tactic to the fight.  This would sure increase the dynamics of a fight!

With this increase in cost it would mean the vasari would be far more wary of building early starbase rushes, and they would be more penalized for WHERE and WHEN they place them.  Later on they would still be a viable tactic as their economy would be better.

If the advent are having trouble dealing with Vasari Starbases around their homeworld.

Why not just allow the Advent to use their constructors to quicken the building of their own Starbases?  Conversely, they need to sacrifice the constructor but the Starbase builds faster because of it.  That way fighters don't just wreck the constructor while it's helping?

The problem I foresee with any fix, is that it may lead to a consequence unforeseen that make the Advent too powerful.  Or it becomes a one-trick solution to one specific strategy, and is useless when that specific strategy isn't used against them.

Perhaps the Advent should have a CD activated ability on their Temples of Communion that slow down the construction process of all enemy ships in the gravity well.  That way, fighters / bombers rebuild even slower, starbases build slower, etc....

The turrets could be made to have a different helpful ability.  Say, allowing the turret to charge an allies shield by firing on the ally; thus making the Advent fleet more resilient to attack; and giving the opponent a real reason to assault a stationary turret.

The Advent base needs to be able to microphase!