He's talking about ship defenses.

And here i was thinking this thread was about starbase strategies.... silly me!

Even ship defences fail to keep up with weaponry, but different to starbases, a player can change the defensive capability of ships to suit whats going on at the time.

Every influence base produces an amount of IP's not a bonus to a planet.
They have a range you can see by highlighting the base. If multiple bases intersect in the sphere of influnece, the amount of IP's will be added to get the total influence enforced on that given point.

hey it actually worked, i overwhelmed the lousy humans with my influence and 2 planets in a star system i expanded my influence into defected to my side.... too bad a law was passed which limits evil civs to only 1 trade rout... guess what i AM evil and about 60& of my income was generated through trade.... im doomed

That is why you should ALWAYS save the game before every UP vote. I learnt my lesson back in Galciv1 when a permanent vote against Terror stars was implemented. I'm like, "oh yea, i'm really gonna want to continue playing!!CNTRL+N".

1. They need better tech

Agree very much so

2. They should be able to host ships like a planet (but few, say, 3-4)

Yea, might be nice - agree a little bit. but tiny hulled ships only, Since it is reasonable that a starbase can have a fighter squadron.

3. They cannot be built on another race's territory

This idea has merrit. I'm thinking it would make it harder for players to achieve an influence victory or horde galactic recources. Also it would be harder to keep influence overwhealmed worlds. The only negative being that AI starbases would be unable to annoy players (it's the challenge hehehe).

4. Its GOOD, not EVIL that should get the maintenance free perk. This would represent funding or resources from other good-aligned races for its upkeep (like Bab5 was)

Not necissarily. However i would agree that good alignment is missing some legitimate potential advantages.

I DID kinda litter space with Starbases . On the flip side of things, the limit, the number you can build, should be a lot lower I think.

NOOOOOOOWAY no no no and no!

What is the limit for SBs

The limit is 4 x the number of sectors on the map.

not including recource starbases

Right.

The reason I'm thinking fleets, is to pop a sizeable (and slightly armored) starbase in one turn, to prevent the "enemy" to snipe my constructors or my base before it can do anything But the idea for rally points is a good idea when operating in my own space indeed.

You only would need to do fleets if you were already at war, or you felt you were VERY close to war. Your opponents will not "snipe" a friendly or neutral base, only an enemy one, so this is a non-issue if you aren't basically at war.

I always have a number of planets building constructors. They build one starbase at a time and upgrade it to where I want it and then move to the next base. I set a rally point at the Starbase and then I set the rally points of the planets building the Starbase to that point. When that base is done I move the rally point and the planets start building the next one. I usually play loose clusters so I usually have a few stars with 10 or so planets. Half will build starbases for all the planets the other half build military ships. I try to place econ starbases in sectors so they cover as many planets as possible.

I rarely upgrade economy Starbases past the factory upgrades and trading upgrades, sometimes not even the tradeing upgrades if my routes do not go through the sector. Battle stations and sensors can be accomplished in other ways. I build sensor arrays...basicly a hull with one engine and as many Mark IV sensors I can fit on it. Cheaper than the 4 constructors it would take to bring it up to sensor 4 and better sensor range. I will sometimes put weapons on them if I get in an early war but that rarely happens. Usually its because of some random assassination event. Otherwise I would rather have small fleets of fast corvettes to intercept anything that gets close to my clusters of starbases.

Influance starbases are very useful on the fringe of your territory. I usually put one in any system that has one of my planets plus other races. Usually one fully upgraded influance starbase will flip a planet (usually) if you have one planet as well nearby. For flipping planets in other territorys I find you need 2 or 3 fully upgraded ones to flip a whole star system of 2 or 3 planets. Once one goes however they all start falling. I am big on morale and diplomacy early and trade for weapons so this works well for me.

I have not found Military starbases as useful as I would have hoped. I think they have their place and I could see them being very powerful especally in the early part of the game if you found yourself on the defensive. But their lack of mobility and the lack of chokepoints makes them difficult to use well. Teamed up with tiny or small ships in huge numbers they could be fun. That is how I would use them if I had to. Put them near my fringe systems and build lots of tiny ships to take advantage of the bonus the base would provide to each ship.

Hope that helps someone

Actually I have found economy starbases to be not that useful and military starbases very useful. With econ starbases, I have found it hard to recoup the cost of the constructors you use building it; especially when you consider the time value of money (i.e. 1 bc now is worth more than 1 bc a year later). You can't just improve your economy for the sake of improving your economy--there has to be some other end in mind.

Military starbases, though, I am quickly able to recoup the value in constructors back. Each ship of yours that doesn't die, or that you never have to build in the first place, counts towards that. I have found that a few constructors invested into a military SB can save a lot of bc worth of starships. And you tend to get that return on your investment quickly. Their benefit of course diminishes in the late game, but...so do economy starbases. After all, if the game is about to end anyway, how much benefit are you really getting back from your economy SB's?

What are you doing that's making you so much money? Are you not getting enough industrial capacity up & running, or have you discovered a magic trick like with the trade ships & starbases in GC1?

12 maxed out starbases?!? That sounds fine and wonderful if you're making your empire all pretty, but are you really winning games with that? So you're playing on high difficulty, aliens are knocking at your door, all hope seems lost, and...you pulled it out in the end by surrounding your capital with 12 maxed out starbases? I have a hard time believing that. In no small part because you can't max out starbases until you get industrial sector. That's end game. Besides that, for 12 maxed out starbases...you could build 50 troop transports with that!

I can honestly say I have won games with military starbases. Because of the timing. I'm in a war and/or a military build-up, at 100% military spending, and all I do is switch out some constructors instead of fighting starships. The constructors do more than their share of the "fighting". And the beauty of it is, at the end, I have a military starbase on the front lines left standing--not a bunch of dead starships.

tetleytea - different strategies for different situations.

Exactly. Also player skill plays a part. An elite player probably won't get into a really bad strategic position in the first place - not unless he's bored and wanted a challenge! hehehe.

So for somebody who is trying to play way above their skill level, i can see how Gre_Magus strategy won't seem possible. Not that theres anything wrong with playing way above your skill level, if you can win, there is no sweeter victory!

If you can build 12 upgraded starbases in peace, I would say you're playing way BELOW your skill level.

What are the key indicators your playing above your skill level anyway? Naturally the in game statistics are supremely useless so.... hmmm for me i think the best indicator is AI technological advancement compared to me. Especially when the AI's all have a big list of techs and i cannot afford any, yea i know i'm in serious trouble then! Also when the AI builds pretty much every project ahead of me, yea, generally when i start seeing more and more AI projects completed i begin to realise i'm in trouble.