Quite honestly, I don't think I've ever even built a military starbase in any game I've played. Even if starbases were strengthened, I probably wouldn't build many if any. Fleets are where it's at and I recognize that-I think I've repeatedly stated that the starbase would ultimately still require fleet support to survive long term but that the one ship, one shot destruction of a leviathan starbase just really should not (in my subjective opinion) be possible. With a starship versus starship, perhaps it should be, but to me it makes no sense that a massive starbase cannot pack more defensive and offensive punch than the largest starships available in this game at roughly equal tech levels. Of course, this being a game a lot of things are not going to make sense and I recognize that too. It is imaginary after all. The strategic solution to these enhanced starbases is to attempt to avoid them of course, but having heavier fortification definitely makes them more of a factor in attack planning and would help mitigate the rush attack. In any event, I am rarely in late game situations where my starbases that I do build (mining starbases and economic starbases) are being destroyed (and yes I regularly play the upper difficulty levels). I rarely lose them with the current levels of fortification that are available once fortified unless the AI makes a determined and repretitive attack. Usually, before that happens, a fleet can arrive and save the day. But none of that means that an extra fortification level or two would not enhance possibilities and make them more useful than they currently are.
It has nothing to do with the fact that one can rebuild the base easily and economically-of course that can be true (but it's not always true if you are playing with limited planets and resources.) If players are not even bothering with defenses because it's more econominical, then why even have them in the game? That's a game flaw that could be fixed if fortification was a little more powerful and the economics of them improved a bit.
If those enhancements lead to the fact that a single fleet of small or medium ships can't destroy the base, then so be it. If huge hulls are where it's at, then why the hell would anyone be building small ships late game to begin with? That's just a player's game play choice. The key would be to avoid attacking that base with ships that can't overcome it's defenses and to build ships that potentially could. Like I said before, one cannot build fortifications such that they cannot be outflanked or bypassed.
I also agree that the game play mechanics and AI are not optimally set up to take into account starbases at this time. They do regularly enhance their own military starbases but they regularly dont enhance mining starbases to any great degree even on the higher difficulty levels from what I've seen. They also tend to be obsessed with bases and launch wave after wave of lightly armed and armored ships against fortified starbases that, although eventually destroyed, cost the AI much of its fleet. Costs maybe need to be adjusted and of course the enhanced fortifications would need to be high on the tech tree. Perhaps that will change with the enhancements coming to TA.
Still, one can always present the most extreme example as a straw man and then knock it down to demonstrate why an improvement should not be implemented, but in the vast majority of cases it's just not going to be applicable. Further, if a player is using tactics that merely exploit AI weaknesses, then changes to starbases really don't make any difference-the AI weakness continues to be exploited. To make the game fun, I try not to do exploits like that. Playing on rare habitable planets with rare planet availability means that I rarely have more than one or two production centers and could not perform the exploit described in this thread anyway. In sum, my last word on this is that nothing stated thus far dissuades me from the belief that an extra layer of fortification or two or three or four that makes starbases more survivable will enhance, not worsen gameplay. This is especially true if some of the forthcoming changes to AI take that into account.
