Is it just me or are Star Bases way too weak

Yeah, research starbase defences. Trust me, it's just you.

Ok thanks but I have. I have research all the Starbase fortifications. What do you think was doing with allthe constructors.

Maybe somebody opened the airlock while they were throwing Wesley Crusher out.....

In my last game my starbases destroyed any enemy stupid enough to attack them.
A fully loaded starbase takes something like 39 constructors. But to get the last couple requires researching pretty far into the regular defense and weapon techs. I think the max with just the starbase fortifications and defenses is 37 for the resource bases. The military base can take closer to 60.

Then again, once I build my fleet, none of their starbases seem to survive. Either they do not fortify them enough or I just have too much firepower. And once they start making very large powerful fleets, even my starbases fall.

I think that 32 is too low in terms of hitpoints. Starbases should be "bigger" and therefore capable of taking more punishment than most ships.

In my last game my starbases destroyed any enemy stupid enough to attack them. A fully loaded starbase takes something like 39 constructors. But to get the last couple requires researching pretty far into the regular defense and weapon techs. I think the max with just the starbase fortifications and defenses is 37 for the resource bases. The military base can take closer to 60. Then again, once I build my fleet, none of their starbases seem to survive. Either they do not fortify them enough or I just have too much firepower. And once they start making very large powerful fleets, even my starbases fall. a much easier way to defend starbases is just to leave a fleet on it. Yes it requires more mantanence but it works just so much better. And then you have a "roaming" starbase since the fleet can get stuff close to it and then go back to the starbase. Also later in the game starbase 40 life means nothing.

econ/influence/military bases get the same upgrades to there base stats. the only difference is that military gets upgrades that help other ships.

I wouldn't call them weak, with the right techs and upgrades they can really kick ass. But I do think they are too fragile. Early in the game the 30 something hitpoints they have are just fine against fleets of ships up to medium size or so. But when battleships and dreadnoughts starts coming off the assembly line they are just too fragile imo. A probably easy and logical way to fix this would be to have each module added also add hitpoints. Makes sense too me. Maybe non-military modules adds 1 hitpoint, offensive military adds 2 hitpoints and defensive military adds 3 hitpoints. Would make them stand up to late game fleets and ships better.

I would also like to have a series of modules that improves the repair rate of the starbase they are on as well as an option for a constructor added to a damaged starbase to repair it a set amount or percentage instead of adding a module. And maybe ship assist modules that increase the repair rate of ships in the sphere of influence of the military starbase they are on. These modules could be inserted in the construction research path but could also be in a whole new repair path that could add global repair ability at certain levels like other paths adds other bonuses.

i wonder if these add-ons that you bring up are moddable... hmm.

Yes you can mod starbase modules.

My 0.02...

Weak? Well compared to what they were before v1.1 that might be argued in terms of upgrades for output. But I could also argue that they were overpowered. As for not standing up in battle with enemy fleets I say defend your space better. I for one would not want to play a game where you could max out the starbase to the point where there was no hope of ever destroying it. My last metaverse game I managed to research all the way down the missile defense branch and got that nice module that adds 16 to defense for the star base. It seemed to protect mine well enough even when the AI was throwing battleships at it. One fleet that was 108 att and 3 def wasn't enough to wipe out my upgraded starbase. I'd say that's pretty darn good .

Also keep in mind that this isn't Galactic Starbases . They are certainly a nice addition to the game but by no means the focus.

Well I think that forcing you to defend your own is the whole point. In the later game Starbases are weak, but they are still very useful, and sometimes become neccessary to ones economy.
Thus it becomes neccessary to defend them. You can't just stand by and let your resources defend themselves. It goes into considering how to form your line, so to speak. You aren't going to build that uber strong starbase in your neighbor's backyard if you know that it can easily be blow to dust.

Giving Starbases the small HP means that in the Early game they'll be dreadnoughts of sorts but in the later game it prevents you from being too aggressive since you'll have to leave some ships behind during an attack or else risk letting the Cat in.

Starbases are strong at the beginning of the game, when a couple modules can make them able to destroy any fleet that tries to attack. During the mid game their relatively low hitpoints make them weaker than a good sized fleet. Eventually they get pretty powerful again, but at that point their still no match for the most powerful ships you can build.

I think their hit points should scale up, either with the number of modules installed, or with the development of the various starbase fortification techs.

Overall anything that gets attacked and can't initiate will be toast in end game, especially since you can't form fleets with the starbases. I don't know if that would 'unbalancing' but that would help the situation as well. It would be nice to be able to feed it a few more HP as time goes on though, agreed. Last game I didn't even bother with starbase fortification and just had fleets defend my starbases as well as planets since it takes so many constructors for the limited protection against high end weapons.

I think in general though, this game likes to favor the aggressor quite a bit more than what would be found in a 'realistic' scenario in order to speed things along. What if conquering and holding a planet were more like what's going on in Iraq instead of a quick 1 week invasion followed by maximum approval rating and civilians happily working under the provisional governments' factories and paying taxes...

I have tried putting defensive fleets in the same square as my starbases but when the square was attacked it was the starbase that took the first punch so to speak. Maybe that has changed since I last tried it since I did it in one of the early 1.1 betas. Or maybe my fleet was just considered weaker then the starbase. Whatever the reason I didn't like it and started massproducing constructors to upgrade my starbases which led me to the conlusion they are too fragile.

I agree that starbases shouldnt be super unbeliveably powerful, able to take on entire warfleets but on the other hand they should be able to stand up to them.

As starbases will never get to attack first (unless its the rare lesser spotted leaping "assasin" starbase)so they should have a increase in HP to make them at least survive the first attack, while their defence can be upgraded and this helps they still seem incredibly delicate, i like the idea of mods added to them increaseing HP, i think a max of say 100hp regardless of mods added and level, would be fine.

And as for the invasion thing, well you wipe out 99% of the population when you invade, its quite an incentive for the remaining to be happy and working hard, wouldnt you say?

One possibility would be to make starbases, as being fixed installations that can mount larger everything, from weapons and defenses through to sensors, have a chance based on their sensor modules + starbase defense modules installed to be able to get off the first volley when being attacked. This way, early starbases would not be able to "shoot first", but "fully loaded" starbases in the late game would get the advantage of a "fully armed and operational battle station" ( - Emperor Palpatine, Star Wars VI )

i like the idea of mods added to them increaseing HP, i think a max of say 100hp regardless of mods added and level, would be fine.

Which still wouldn't be enough for the endgame, when 200+ damage fleets roam the galaxy. You could give them up to 500hp and after a few attacks (IF it survives the first attack, which I doubt) they will be scrap metal, since a star base only shoots once while a fleet of seven ships shoots seven times, then six times, then five times... you get the picture?

They only thing that saves a star base is it's defense value. Oddly bonuses from military resource bases work for the star base defense, but not for it's attack. Had once star bases with 50 attack in everything but with 250 defense in everything when I've controlled 8 military resource star bases. (Didn't even know that it was possible to have so many military resources in one game...) They survived some attacks from 300+ damage fleets from my enemy without damage, until one lucky enemy fleet took them out in one attack.


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And as for the invasion thing, well you wipe out 99% of the population when you invade, its quite an incentive for the remaining to be happy and working hard, wouldnt you say?

What? There are still 1% surviving? Outrageous, I have to talk to my generals.

no 'base' should be undefeatable. its one of the first laws of war, being on the defence takes away your advantage.

in one of the Star Wars books ive read there is a situation where the falcons gang are trying to stop a star destroyer with only the falcons weapons, Luke said "there must be a way to stop this ship" and Han says "thats what other capitol ships are for kid".

you want to stop large fleets then move in your own fleets. star bases are just that, bases. and in a real war a bases are the prime targets. logistics are what win wars and since starbases are the corner stones to your civilizations logistics capability then its natural that a SB would be target one, being able to put the most firepower on a given target the fastest with the most 'shock and awe'. no one has ever WON a war from being on the defensive. in every single example in world history where bases were tryed to be used as a defence against an agressor enemy, from hadrians wall to the French line pre-WWII they all fell and rather quickly to a faster moving enemy.

the best defence is a good offence, you wanna defend your SBs? then launch a major attack against the enemy, slag their ships, crush their planets and impose your brand of 'culture' on the remains.

look back (those of you that are old enough to recall) at the Tet offensive, it was a systematic attack by the Viet Cong against the American millitarys bases. and it caused no end of turmoil. all because we were smug in our belief that our bases were unasalable. it also shows that no enemy with freedom of movement could be suppressed by a fix placement millitary.

i think the star bases are just about right in strength now. i do however think that your own fleets should be used to guard them. i dont understand the concept behind the games theory that the weakest ships are allways targeted first. or why starbases are treated the same as ships in the first place. if a fleet of ships and a starbase occupie the same square then the fleet should be the first to engague. at the very least the fleet and the starbase should be treated as being in the same fleet for combats sake. since the starbase provides the logistics to begin with it shouldnt be included in a fleets logistics calculations. the fleet would controll the logistics cap and rate of fire along with any other calculations 'rolls' and the SB would be a suplimental addition, adding the one extra attack and at the end of the battle if all the defending ships are destroyed first then the base itself would come under attack.

Some good points guys, but the point I was trying to illustrate was that considering the resources that are put into them, star bases are pretty weak.

What I do and what many have suggested is to not allow them be attacked. One should also be able to form a flett around them. It just makes sense to me.

Cant have everthing though

Well you can park a defensive fleet directly on top of the starbase. And so long as it is more powerful from an att/def stand point then the game won't allow an enemy to attack the starbase until it destroys that fleet.

I suppose it boils down to balance. Would it be nice to have modules to add HP? Sure. But I highly doubt they'd ever make it so that a single starbase can stand up to a late game fleet armed to the teeth. As for making the starbase part of a fleet who knows but again I'm sure it's something they considered and either didn't have time in the schedule to implement or didn't put it in the game again for balance reasons.

So are they weak for the resources? Personally I don't think so given how quickly you can pump out constructors.

I agree with the low hp. Arguably they start of as the cargo-hulls of starbases... however, there should be modules that add to HP - even doubling would be nice. Of course, SBs should never be able to take 80lp of ships.

That said, posting two average ships with a starbase increases it's effectiveness immensly, since it usually draws fire from the base for a few rounds. The only bases I see get blown up are poorly prepared ones - the starbase defence techs are cheap, so it's easy to arm bases early-game so that nobody - NOBODY - can destroy them.