If so, then you may find military starbases have also been nerfed. The attack assist modules now cost much more, to the point where they're no longer all that worthwhile (might just as well build extra ships)

Well, I play evil civ in my game, and even with FREE improvement, I still think twice before over-using military starbases. Much easier to put it all into my Frigates and Ravagers Battleships.

The thing is, the Starbases doesn't move, a Starship can. If we need those 2 to become kiff-kiff in terme of production cost/efficiency, we need to increase the power of Starbases, because right now, I think that Starships greatly out-perform the Starbases on almost any military scale.

Your "build many small ships boosted with a starbase" strat would not resist to a rush of heavily fortified Battleships, with 30 defences, arrayed to take out the Starbase as a primary objective. I KNOW the AI is not clever ennough (yet) to use proper counter-strategy.

(and heavy-defended Dreadnought are beaten by all-weapon frigates, who are in turn beaten by starbase-boosted fighters. Rock, paper cissor)

I think that the amount of HP that starbases have is fine at the begining, but for scalability, it could go up with techs, such as the Fortification techs and, in the 1.2 mod, the hull design techs.

A nearly fully loaded military starbase - nearly because I did not have every tech researched (I think I had access to 53 of the 61 available modules) - has:

Beam / Shield - 65 / 163
Missle / PD - 58 / 163
Mass / Armor - 58 / 163
151 hit points

Plus the bonuses for the ships and penalties for enemy ships.

If it is not enough, you can always mod the starbase modules or add more of your own design.

I'll very seldom lose a starbase, and then only very late in the game. Never to little weapons like Phasers or Photon Torps.

151

Full "ship tree" research, xinithium, and 20% ability bonus, and my starbases don't get 50 until they've killed something... I'm on 1.2, is there a big hp boost in 1.3?

Also, even with those 160+ defense numbers...

I had a Large ship with 200 *base* missile defense in my little "tweak stuff" mod (I fixed miniaturization while I wait for 1.3 to go "live" by turning off size modification. Geeze ships start getting expensive... well, to be fair, that ship did also have only 14 attack (was meant to be in range of starbases) so even with the modules that "plump when you cook 'em" a Huge hull can approach that). Got jumped on its way to a planet by *a* frigate which had something like 78 missile attack.

It promptly 1-shotted my armored behemoth (which had 49 hp) about 3 rounds in. You can pile all the defenses you can get your hands on, and pump them up with all the military resources you can mine, but the things *will* get shot out from under you in a couple rounds if the computer wants them gone, even if they only send one frigate each time. Well, that might take 'em a big longer, but they'll definately average better than a frigate per hp of the base even with level-up healing and all.

(even without ships packing extra firepower because of the no scaling bit I tossed in, you'd have to multiply the base defense numbers by a LOT before they're really worth more than dropping into place to assist an attack you're about to make, and then picking up to make the next one cheaper. For something that is supposed to "project power into enemy territory" it doesn't seem very economic)

Thelron, are you sure? Well, DrrD sort of took care of this for me, but yes, quite sure (3 bases blown in one round kinda had me ready to just scrap the ships for their impudence, unfortunately I was playing Neutral so they were sent off to "assist" elsewhere by "slowing the enemy advance."

I've been playing a lot lately (it's Summer and I'm an academic, so I've go time for the next couple of weeks). Every single time I put a fleet or ships at a starbase, it's the ships that are attacked first. I guess I'll have to see it to believe it. Are you running the latest 1.3 beta? That's what I'm using. I've honestly NEVER had a starbase attacked first when I've had at least one ship parked in the same tile.

Not that I don't believe you, but it's amazing to me that we've had such different results with this game.

The thing is, the Starbases doesn't move, a Starship can. If we need those 2 to become kiff-kiff in terme of production cost/efficiency, we need to increase the power of Starbases, because right now, I think that Starships greatly out-perform the Starbases on almost any military scale.

I agree. Where military starbases are nice is in setting up a defensive perimeter. You can make your civilization into a fortress and concentrate on building up infrastructure and non-military research, which is an interesting way to play the game. But that's only viable if you don't plan on expanding at all later on in the game. However, if they introduce a way to move starbases (I think there's a tug or something coming in Dark Avatar?) then they'll become worth looking at again as you'll be able to expand your defensive perimeter out as you capture new territory.

151 hit points is too much in the beginning. As I said earlier, it should go up when you research certain techs.

Ehehe, I think I mixed 'em up with resource bases. V1m blushes.

Even with +24% they're still well worthwhile, especially when you have a cluster of planets such that the good ones get 2 or even 3 bases enhancing them.

Yeah, they can still be worthwhile. My opinion is coloured because I play "very slow" tech speed, which means reaching all the way to industrial sectors is a huge effort and I build all research buildings and use the focus to build, so I don't really have the military production to spare on constructors for that low a bonus (less than 15% for most of the game)...it's more effective for me to just build on spare tiles instead.

Also depends on the map. If you can get one starbase affecting 50 or more tiles at once then they're decent even on the lower bonuses. I don't think they were particularly overpowered originally anyway. Researching up to the god awful industrial sectors is a big sacrifice after all, not just in terms of research points but because industrial sectors are *so* expensive relative to their production. And there's nothing to stop the AI using them as well! If anything, the resource bonuses should be scaled down instead 'cos the AI is so awful at taking and keeping resources.

I thing making SB movable is very interesing (by own engine module), of course at lovest speed posible.

A speed of 1 could be a bit too tedious on larger maps, but it could easily be tied in with the research tree so that they get faster, but are always much slower than ships at the equivalent tech level. Wouldn't even need an additional branch of the tree...just add in modules to the current engine branch.

but when ships enter the area of phasors, photon torpedoes and such, a mere "+2 to missile attack" is kinda.. ehhh.. how to put it? Pointless.

Uhhh, if all you have is +2 to missile attack, then you haven't put enough modules on your starbases. I'm fairly sure I remember having far greater than +2 and well before phasors, photon torpedos, etc.