Starbase defense w/ defending ships?

Not that I've ever been aware.

Although your strategy points out a flaw in the game that the more you build up your starbases the more you can build and you get a nice upward curve with no diminishing returns and an economy that can take on anything the AI can dish out.

I really hope the game doesn't devolve into Starbses vs. Starbses economies and that SB's can be better balanced in the game eventually ehre.

~SDC~

Simple solutions would be: Limit the number of allowed starbases per sector / 5 per sector or 1 for each populatet planet + 2 per sector.

Pay upkeep for starbases: (high) basic costs for a starbase if you have a starbase in the sector and even (much higher cost) if you don´t have a planet in the sector or have more starbases than planets

Scale down effect of starbases: at the moment 2 starbases 200 % bonus (100%+ 100%)
make it 2 starbases 150% bonus ( 100% for first starbas + 50% for second starbase)

yeah that would sorta work but paying upkeep? that would sorta beat the purpose...dont u some starbases to increase money?

I've got a game at the moment where I have 20 starbases in each of two sectors. Each star base has the protector fields and upto Battlestations 3. My ships are able to absorb anything the AI throws at it and kill it when they fire. Unfortunity its just me and him so I'm going broke fast... :notsure:

Actually, building up starbases isn't always advantageous. Unless you have the cash to pay for a 100% economy, building starbases will force you to drop the economy down a bit.

Assuming you use enough starbases to get 200% boost everywhere. This will double your production capacity, as well as giving you 100% free production as well.

Unfortunately, it will also force you to halve your economy rate, so effectivly, you only get a 50% boost in production.

It's still much better than before, but 50% prod bonus isn't quite as impressive as those 200% may make it seem. Also, getting there can be quite costly - about 3000 production (takes about 10 constructors per 120% bonus starbase) per sector.

An insidious disadvantage is also that the lowered economy rate makes it a bitch to develop new worlds, unless you build up huge farms there as well (Terror Stars are your friends ... the rowing fleets of construction Terror Stars in my latest game was a sight to behold .. though I guess my enemies feared my Pleasure Stars more...).

The only thing making huge starbase farms work out was/is the ability to get those huge tributes from silly AI's ... less of a problem in 1.02 - I've noticed that they refuse to spend themselves into the ground now.


~SDC~

Why not do what I originally thought was the case: Starbases can only have a certain number of modules - say, 10 - when this number is reached, no new modules without scrapping old ones. Want a Production-maxed starbase? it won't have more than Basic Defense....

@ Thelon Fairblade

max. number of modules => spez. Starbases. Imlike this really like this idea!

@one_man_assault.
Paying upkeep would force the player paying attention if it is really an advantage / costeffektiv to build an starbase. At the moment the situation reminds me of the crawler flood of Alpha Centauri: build more crawler => more production => more crawler => even more production

For me it is not much fun littering space with starbases it is tedious and simply not fun.

The intro says something like stargates were to expensive to mantain though trade didn´t develop. A starbase should be same.

The ratio what is best for your economy improvement on a planet or building a space should always favor the planetary improvement. Only in special circumstances=> resources in space, many populated planets in a sector etc. borderline sector etc. it should make sense to build startbases.

There is, apparently, a limit on how much of a production type bonus you can get from starbases in a sector. I've no idea what it is, though, since it's always seemed to increase no matter how many starbases I get up to.

~SDC~

@Mythor: I agree if there is a limit, it is high, intergaltic even LOL

If stardock thinks GalCiv should be "GalCiv the constructor fleet" at least they should include the Vogons as a race though we can get "Vogon constructor fleets"

@Mythor: I agree if there is a limit, it is high, intergaltic even LOL

If stardock thinks GalCiv should be "GalCiv the constructor fleet" at least they should include the Vogons as a race though we can get "Vogon constructor fleets"

As Yin is doing although an idea thread for an improvement of the way starbases are handelt I would like to give this one a too.

I really don't see the issue with starbases. You have to invest an enormous amount of time and production into fully upgrading several for each system. You also have to climb the right portions of the tech tree to get the right upgrades for your bases.

You have to consider the resources as well, I have rarely gotten resources in the same sector as my planets, so you have to develop those starbases too.

Meanwhile you aren't building military might and you aren't building social projects so your morale (and tax rate falls) and you start to look like a nice target for the AI to attack. And the AI will have plenty of big ships since they didn't spend years building constructors. It is very annoying to see a almost fully decked out starbase get destroyed in a matter of seconds.

I think turtling is a good gameplay option to have. I much prefer to non-aggresively expand by building my infrastructure and tech until someone is decides to declare war on me. Then I take one of their nearby sectors and sue for peace.

On tightly clustered maps stacking starbases is more effective, but on scattered maps it isn't as much of a problem. Still it is balanced, because on tightly clustered maps (large at least) typically you can one or two very large AI empires to contend with.

Brysos, my grip is that there is no practical limit to bonuses which could be aplied through starbases. I fyou have for example 4 really good worlds in a sector it is in my opinion simply to cost effective to improve this sector through endless starbases like Ineluki mentioent with 20 starbases per sector. Frogboy explined in other threads that the player shouldn´t build all the improvemnts on all the planets always to mantain a healthy cash flow, this does perfect sense to me. On the other hands mantain a starbase should be incredible costly but it isn´t.

For me endless bonus stacking it is an exploit of the game mechanics. Unfortunatly it is to rewarding as it is and the computer isn´t able to even recognise or counter this tactic.

In another thread people are discussing "party palaces" and nearly considering a buck that is possible reach levels of 1000000 infuence points. Limiting the starbases and bonuses per sector like I expalined earlier would make for a much more interessting game.

Endlless stacking of defence bonuses make it impossible for the AI to attack this well defended sectors etc.

Other suggestions I would like to see in game would be : Scale up effect of new starbases when they are newly build in a sector=> first year for example a party palace has no effect afterwards it startts to spread its influence slowly. First month 1/12 of its full effect, secound month 2/12 of its full effect etc.

You could although limit the number of possible imporovements per starbase though you would have to spezialize in them (but please put in a starbase govenour to reduce micromanagement)

I do the starbase trick but really I could of won much quicker by making half those constructors military ships and simply pounding the opposition. What it really does is allow a passive player win in a much less military way (usually cultural). That new patch definately makes life harder as money becomes a problem especially on a tiny/small universe after you have lost a couple of the major players so there are less willing to buy new techs from you.

Also it gets very tedious moving these constructors each turn i mean for a early/mid production base (+80%) with the basic defenses needs 9 constructors. For the ability to crank out a constructor each turn at max spend you need 4-6 bases. How far could you get with the same invested into frigates and transports?