influence bases are to much work

I enjoy a good influence victory. But I find the influence starbases too much maintenance on immense maps. I tend to use a great number of them to chop an anemy down to size. All of those constructors must be managed, then you must click,click,click for each one to select which option you want, or cancel,cancel ,cancel because you ran out of money and 10 more constructors have arrived. Since it makes no sense to select anything but the largest percent option anyways, why not do away with all the mumbo jumbo and simply have the power level increase every time a constructor is sent to it. Each construct would just increase the bases influence by "X" amount. No more useless choices.

In addition, when playing against the krynn, 4 fully loaded influence station are needed directly beside the planet to get them to flip within my lifetime! this just gets to be a source of agravation. A tech should be available to double your base influence levels, or maybe a second more expensive influence station, or just more constructors to make them more powerfull.

Last but not least, functional and weapons upgrades should be seperated. I have never used the weapons or sheilds on influence bases, after all, once the planet has fliped, who needs it anymore. This way you could send cunstructors to them and only see a notice that it was upgraded to level "X". It may be a nice improvement if the constructor could be loaded with influence energy similar to loading people on a colony ship.

Anyway, just a few ideas for you devs.

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On the bright side, the MCC is now fixed to do what it's description says. Once they get the skull & crossbones, they'll now flip to you the next turn.

Playing as the Korath, this is a sick combination. Once you flip a planet, build a Dark Influence building on it and so on and so on..just like dominoes the enemy falls to you. Plus, they get a GA to boost their influence star base power...

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On the bright side, the MCC is now fixed to do what it's description says. Once they get the skull & crossbones, they'll now flip to you the next turn.

Really? is that just on TOA or is there going to be an update for DA?

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

This might get backported for the 2.0 update. I haven't heard for sure.

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Aye, the full details of what will get ported back to DA hasn't been disclosed. I wouldn't see any reason why it wouldn't make the cut though.

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cancel because you ran out of money and 10 more constructors have arrived

Back to your premise that influence SB's are too much work.

It sounds like you're wasting time with the modules that are based on the diplomancy branch of the tech tree. Basically I ignore the diplomancy dependent modules which start with Diplomatic Outpost because the bonus they give is not worth the effort.

There are a total of 11 possible Influence modules making a total of 12 constructors required to build a maximum Influence SB. With all 11 modules the influence bonus is 337%. However if you don't bother with the modules starting with Diplomatic Outpost (which itself gives a measly 5% influence bonus) then you can build an Influence SB using a total of only 6 constructors that gives a total influence bonus of 255%. This gives you 75% of the total bonus for 1/2 the constructors. If you want to truly maximize your bonus per constructor then simply build two 255% influence SB's for the same number of constructors as a single 337% influence SB. It's a no brainer.

It's also easy to do. Simply don't build the Diplomatic Outpost with it's lousy 5% influence bonus and that will exclude all the other diplomacy based modules from being selected. The only modules you need are the following. Of course you will need to have researched the Influence branch of the tech tree but you would need that *plus* the Diplomatic branch for a full 12 constructor SB anyway, so this allows you to skip the diplomatic branch.

Franchise Center (25%)
Franchise Headquarters (30%)
Cultural Maximization (40%)
Insurrection Coordinator (60%)
Cultural Conquest Center (100%)

That's 5 constructors plus the orginal constructor to build the influence SB for a total of 6 constructors. That's a pretty cheap and easy SB to build. An economic SB (for research and production bonus) requires 7 constructors, a resource mining SB requires 8 constructors and a maxed out military SB requires 28 constructors. The only simpler SB is an economic SB that only gives a trade bonus which reqires only three modules for a total of 4 constructors.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

One thing that you can do if you have sufficient logistics, and have figured out how many constructors you'll need, is to create a fleet of constructors of the right size, and commence construction when you get to the destination. Instead of plugging in a module every couple of weeks that a constructor arrives at a starbase, you get a *booming voice* fully operational influence starbase in one week!

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