I use military starbases as well. But this strategy seems a little imabalanced so far because it seems to me, at least in my games, the AI has never tried to take out my military starbase without which all my ships would be junk. Instead the AI keep attacking my planets and getting its sgips destroyed, litterally dozens of ships, when not all their ships. It should go for the starbase instead ! Maybe it can be tweaked to attack it more. I see it attack resource starbases all the time, but not my military assistance starbases.

Lets say you have a fleet of 4 2/0 0/1 0/0 ships. x 4 = 8/0 0/4 0/0

Then you bould the modules +1 all attacks +1 all defence (just 3 construcotrs)

You now have 1 fleet of 3/1 1/2 1/1 x 4 = 12/4 4/8 4/4 (remember this is just from 3 cons)

So instead of the constructors you could biuld 3 ships. for 6/0 0/3 0/0 add to the combat power of the first fleet = 14/0 0/7 0/0 . So 14/0 0/7 0/0 v 12/4 4/8 4/4

Though the most important thing to keep in mind is only 1 fleet can attack at a time. How many fleets of 8/0 0/4 0/0 is it going to take to deystroy one fleet of 12/4 4/8 4/4 also lets say the 8 is in counter to the AIs config whic uses missiles. I would estimat about 2.5-3.5 fleets.

The important thing is the high defence value you get via the starbases that 8 defence is distributed across 4 ships not 8. After a bit of research you can get a +3 module for a specific weapon type. So this means you can park a fleet in the zone of a SB give youe fleet a massive defence bonus that means the AI hardly scores a hit on your fleet. Say you had a defence of 2 per ship against missiles in a 4 ship fleet. With three constructors you can jump this to 6 per ship and 24 for the fleet as opposed to 8.

By dramaticaly increasing the survability of your fleet you levarage the investment made into that fleet massively. Ergo the Starbase after the intial investment carries on providing levarage to any fleet in its zone. It means you get more for every BC spent on fleet assets.

This is a tactic that allows me to survive any tech gaps very early on and then go on the offfencive very aggresively early to mid game.

I play on huge or gigantic maps and rarely use military starbases. There just aren't enough choke points to make them effective, especially once I've gotten to mid game and 1 or 2 other races have been eliminated. I usually engage in a series of short wars designed to gain planets, usually leaving existing military starbases far behind my borders and not effective.

The only time I will use them is to reinforce a border against a second enemy if I know I will be taking care of them later. The only problem is that I don't think the AI takes starbases into account when it calculates your military strength. So if I use older tech ships and starbases to protect a frontier, it makes it more likely that race will attack then if I use the production to build newer ships.

I would have been doomed with out my military star base a few games ago, I love them

I only play on gigantic.

The starbase rush works best if you can find two enemy planets close together. With this approach there is a tipping point after which you can sytematiclay dismantle any enemy empire. They will exhaust there fleets trying to take back the planet/s that has fallen and you can just keep pumping fresh fleet assets into the mix. Soon there is point where there is hardly any enemy left in the sky and you can just steamroller over the whole civilisation.

The starbase rush works best if you can find two enemy planets close together. With this approach there is a tipping point after which you can sytematiclay dismantle any enemy empire. They will exhaust there fleets trying to take back the planet/s that has fallen and you can just keep pumping fresh fleet assets into the mix. Soon there is point where there is hardly any enemy left in the sky and you can just steamroller over the whole civilisation.

I think of this as exploiting a stupid AI. If you had ships that had a 14 attack versus their 4 attack they wouldn't throw themselves on you. But have a ship with a 4 attack and +10 benefit from a starbase and they will continue to waste every single ship on you.

In my most recent game I had the wonderful situation where one of my systems neighboured two Yor systems. I built the military starbase initially to help defend my world, but since it was so close it also proved very useful when I attacked, too.

I think of this as exploiting a stupid AI. If you had ships that had a 14 attack versus their 4 attack they wouldn't throw themselves on you. But have a ship with a 4 attack and +10 benefit from a starbase and they will continue to waste every single ship on you.

I am realizing this now, but when you first come up with the tactic well you use it no questions. I will carry on usieing it as the AI is the only enemy I can fight and thereofre I must exploit his weaknesses. However I would love Stardock to patch the AI to make it more effecitve against SBs.

If it only biult a few of its own then the tactic wouldnt work.

I play on huge or gigantic maps and rarely use military starbases. There just aren't enough choke points to make them effective, especially once I've gotten to mid game and 1 or 2 other races have been eliminated. I usually engage in a series of short wars designed to gain planets, usually leaving existing military starbases far behind my borders and not effective. The only time I will use them is to reinforce a border against a second enemy if I know I will be taking care of them later. The only problem is that I don't think the AI takes starbases into account when it calculates your military strength. So if I use older tech ships and starbases to protect a frontier, it makes it more likely that race will attack then if I use the production to build newer ships.

I've found several places where military starbases are useful on larger maps. My last game both the Yor and the Korx were doubleteaming one planet (Wardell II) which was my manufacturing capital. I was really struggling to hold onto it the whole time- attacks from them plus an influence squeeze from botht hem and the altarians made things really touch and go. Then I got a milstarbase up and running and suddenly a fleet of 2 obsolete warships was handling everything that came near me, largely without taking damage. The trick, I've found, is to try and realize what your enemy is going to be gunning for, and set up defenses so that when they do come, they're already shafted.