It is rare that players will use up all their capital ship slots in the game. More often than not frigates are better for cost, and eventually the fleet will fill up with only a modest number of caps. This leaves over half of the cap ship limit unused and unloved.
However, balancing starbases is tricky as is. If each system is allowed the same thing, then starbases have to be balanced as a moderate defensive unit. They can't be fleet crushing wonders AND litter your entire empire at the same time. They certainly can't do it for cheap, or players could never break the defensive lines for cost.
Starbases are massive structures. They're bigger than cap ships, have larger crews, and more advanced weaponry. Make them use up a cap ship slot to produce. This way, the structure made to turn the defensive tide has a hard limit. They can't just be spammed at every grav well, players have to decide where is the most important to defend.
Without the guarantee of having starbases everywhere, the individual structure can be enhanced to be cheaper, stronger, and deadlier at every turn. Or, it may simply allow 2 of them in a single grav well, if you can chance your other planets getting none.
It also means that the number of starbases is controlled by the tech curves in the game, instead of going directly from zero to everywhere.
As it stands, starbases aren't powerful enough to warrant using a capital ship crew, i.e. slot. Fleet supply is another thing entirely, and one I would be more inclined to support, but probably not at the current going rate of 50 supply (equal to a capital ship).
Admittedly, the primary component in the above is the range. The Vasari starbase, being able to move, is actually not half bad. There is also the issue of them only having one weapon type initially while the other two are accessible under upgrades, but this might actually be a good idea, so as to make the initial structure weaker (and cheaper).
I personally am completely opposed to allowing more than one starbase per gravity well per race. I just think they need to be stronger (when upgraded).
I would like to see starbases have more of an economic impact than purely defensive. While this necessitates making them initially weaker, making them increasingly stronger with increasingly costly upgrades, and changing the upgrade costs (if not the build cost) to be more expensive for military upgrades and less expensive for "civilian" upgrades, most if not all of these changes would seem to both be inevitable and a good idea.
Under such a system, you don't need a starbase to use up either a capital ship crew slot or fleet supply, as the vast majority of them would be used to supplement the player's economy; it will be rare that you will run into a fully upgraded defensive fortress, as it should be. (Alternatively, the only starbases you run into will be fully upgraded defensive fortresses-but there will be far fewer of them.)
i dont like that, because i want a starbase on any planet on my singleplayergames
Economic starbases already exist. They come as trade ports, research labs, and mining centers.
Since starbases start small and weak, they don't need a capital ship crew to start. Instead, as they increase in size they may require capital ship crew to operate. One possibility is that every gravwell is allowed a small starbase, which can upgrade a bit to medium. But it costs one cap crew to go to large, and a second cap crew to advance to superlarge. This way each grav well can have a starbase, but players have to allocate their limited cap ship crew to the most important spots.
Bobucles,
I think you have a great idea with the upgrade path and the OP with the use of the cap ship slots. You could technically use the same strategy for Sole Soul's economic starbase as well.
The TEC SB already allows for it to become a trade port. What I think should happen is that the intial starbase should be able to only allow 4 upgrades (one hull point, one weapon, one trade, and one defense) which would keep it as a small or medium (with all the upgrades) starbase. Then you would have to research the ability to upgrade starbases to Large or "Sinful" sizes which would open more advanced civilian, military, and defensive options.
I don't know if this is possible or not, but if IC could make the upgrade to larger starbases (after the appropriate research) require cap ship slots then you would have to think about which SB's are upgraded while keeping the smaller bases behind the front line. I still think the starbases should use fleet supply, since they still have to maned and should be equal to a cap ship (50 supply) for the large or Sinful sized starbases. Small/Medium starbases wouldn't cost anything or very little fleet supply.
One other thought is that perhaps you add a new logisitics research line for Large/Sinful Starbases? Again so you can have small or medium SB's in all the grav wells, but only a finite amount of the large/Sinfule defensive (or ultimate civy) starbases. And it makes you think about which is more important, fleet size, cap ship availability or Starbase size.
If you scuttle a SB you would reclaim the captial slot(s) that were used for that starbase but only get 10-15% of the resources back.
Is this supposed to mean that you don't want starbases to have an economic function as well? As long as we don't have a Fort Knox at every planet, I have nothing against (and in fact would prefer) the ability to simply have an economic-style starbase-for obviously cheaper than a military-grade one.
However, your post was much more clear than your original post, and if starbases were done in that kind of a way, I could see myself agreeing with that. I'm not positive the upgrades system in place could accommodate such a change, but other than that, and obviously upgrade prices not being their final values, I don't see why 1) the upgrade system wouldn't be sufficient to differentiate between military and civilian installations and 2) why super starbases using capital ship crew slots would be a bad idea.
I'm just totally against my starbase with two economic modules (or say perhaps a TEC starbase with the shipbuilding ability) -and nothing else-using a capital ship crew.
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Bob, I don't want to have to use up a capital ship crew slot, or fleet supply, just to get a base with the 2nd economic upgrade. I see no reason why civilian starbases should require either of those. Other than that, I pretty much agree with what you said.
I tend to agree that Starbases should cost something to maintain. There should be some consideration where and how many to build in total.
Since they are built for military purposes or for a military application of a civilian tech I would say they should indeed cost capital ship slots. Probably not fleet supply since they are immobile and thus easier to resupply. But the crew they need should be similar to a capital ship. A Starbase, even if only upgraded with a Trade Port, is still a military base with guns, shields etc.
I'd also consider lowering the cost for capital ship slots or slightly increasing the number of slots gained per research.
I'm not liking this chain of thought. Fleets rule the game and we need our fleet supply to handle them. If we have to start diverting significant fleet supply or cap ship crews to starbases, then we're right back where we started with too little resources to handle larger maps.
This is why games so often turn into a situation where there are too many ways to get around your opponents' fleets and rape their worlds, while they do the same to yours. You can't cover all the paths, and if you try to, then your fleets are too small and get rolled up in a hurry. Starbases should help buy some time for you to reposition. They aren't nearly strong enough to stand up to a real fleet, but they can hold them off for a short time and do some damage.
There's also the issue, for the TEC at least, that starbases are currently the only means of creating trade ports in non-planetary systems to keep your trade chain from being broken. So it will be necessary to build some just for that reason.
Regarding the trade path stuff - it is changing. In Vanilla, they go through neutrals without interrupting the chain. In our Beta 1 of Entrenchment, the new trade path stuff isn't in, which is why it's wonky at the moment.
But in general, I agree with not liking this train of thought. There's no logical reason why starbases should use fleet cap or capital crews.
Everything else has limits how much you can build / maintain. It would be illogical if Starbases had no limits other than 1 per location which feels arbitrary compared to fleet supply / capital / tactical / logistical slots.
And if someone wants to build 4 Starbases in the same grav well, let them. As long as they have available crew slots
So you just listed a limit and then dismissed it as arbitrary, as if the same argument couldn't be made for fleet suppy/capital crews/planet slots (planet slots in particular)
"Sir, we already have 16 capital captains!"
"Well, we need more.."
"We can't do that, sir!"
"Why not?"
"Uhhh......."
I'm operating on the assumption that starbases aren't as strong as they should be, but even if they are, I still have to ask-how do you propose to take down such a heavily fortified planet?
Furthermore, if we're using capital ship crew slots as our example, then why not consider, as insane as it might be, 16 Vasari starbases in a single well?
Using cap ship slots for Starbases is not an arbitrary limit and it makes sense to me. You have a certain amount of crews trained and you have to decide how to distribute them.
One Starbase per planet is comparable to allowing only one Frigate factory per planet, arbitrary.
I mentioned it in my earlier post that the amount of capital crew slots should probably be increased.
But the "certain amount" is the arbitrary limit. Training crews is fine and good. But there's still a very hard limit on the number of said crews, which makes no sense. If your empire has 2 planets, you can have 16 crews. If your empire has 100 planets, you can have 16 crews. Even if the number of crews increases, this will still be the case.
Going with per-grav well is a dynamic limitation which is much better because it scales with the size of your empire. 100 planets? Can have 100 bases. 5 planets? Sorry buddy, stuck with 5. As for the "1 per grav well", that can be explained much easier than any other limit in game terms so it can make sense: starbases are big. Real big. They need lots and lots of people manning them. Any particular colony may only be able to spare enough people to man one base in its orbit. But how do you explain "x" number of crews max, regardless of the size of your empire?
Following the logic that the crew comes from the local planet means Starbases couldn't be built in uninhabited locations at all. But they can and the crew has to come from somewhere meaning you have to invest in training them. And the more Starbases you want, the bigger your empire has to be to be able to fund them since the cap crew cost isn't linear. But more than 16 cap ship slots would be needed for sure. Say, 24 with the 8 extra slots divided evenly without changing the research costs.
You can have capital ship crew research maxed while at the first fleet capacity level. I've done it. If starbases require a capital ship crew but no fleet capacity, your empire's size still has absolutely no bearing on how many you can support. (Sure, it requires 8 labs, or 32 total logistics slots, but that's doable with only a couple of planets.)
Then maybe starbases in UCGWs should have less total available upgrades, or something. But I still think the size reasoning works just fine-for instance, in GC2 you're not allowed more than 4 starbases per sector (per civilization) "for navigational reasons". This is kind of the same type of limit.
I still want to see a response to 16 Vasari starbases in a single gravity well.
You haven't addressed the arbitrary limit on the number of crews, as well
What i want is a starbase that you see autoguns mounted everywhere and it firing at 20+ targets at once with smaller autoguns doing maybe 20 damage. Then having bigger missles and lasers that you have 5 of. Missles and lasers depending on race. Advent lasers. Missles for vasari and tec. I also opose more than one starbase a system. I think they should be fleet killers but not to the extrent that can take down over 500+ support alone. I think you should have a set limit of 5 and make them all mobile to an extent. Fully upgraded i expect these things to have over 25 or so guns firing at targets in differant modes such as focus fire, spread focus (groups of 5 turrets attacking 1 target), and spread fire (all turrets set to independant target) So you can choose acordingly. I also think since they are mobile they should at least have colinize abilities and the ability to bombard planets fast and heavily. Make their phasing take forever though but give them phasing (haven't played entrenchment to know if vasari does phase).
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No phasing.
Please, for the love of God, no phasing.
-If they phase, they're super capital ships.-If they phase, the concept of a limit per gravity well is useless.
Speak for yourself. I use all of my capital ship slots. Of course, I only play singleplayer, but still, I like my capital ships, whether or not they are "cost effective." Plus, the way cap ship slots are now, you could only have 16 starbases, max. That is not even close to adequite to defend your planets and extend trade routes to uncolonizable planets.
Personally, I think that more than one star base should be allowed in a gravity well, but the number depends on what kind of planet it is. I think that uncolonizable stuff and dead asteroids should only be able to support one. Regular asteroids can have two. Actual planets can have 3 or 4. Stars should be able to have 6 or so. One starbase on a star, even if it is Vasari, is completely worthless. You can't even cover one phase lane. Even if the range gets increased to rediculously large, you still can't cover a star with one SB.
So many obvious things that need fixing, and still people come up with crazy-assed stuff to fix problems that don't exist.
Let's see... We make starbases phase-jump, take up cap slots, and move, and we get... yeah. Like Sole Soul said, capitol ships. Yay.
Can we just focus on making starbases at least useful enough to protect one orbital facility, or golly, maybe even a planet, and cut down on the insane mine spam? Then maybe we can start breaking things that are working fine, like the new tech tree.
I really don't think it's necessary to have a Cap slot used. It's going to affect capital ships and it will displace the purpose of starbases.
Capital ships are already in an unbalanced state. You get more bang for your buck to use frigates > capital ship (in most cases). Having a Starbase use up cap ship slots means we're only going to see fewer capital ships and fewer starbases. I really don't want a game with 8 captial ships and 8 Starbases. I think many Sins players will agree with that.
We want a lot of capital ships blowing the shite out of everything!
Furthermore, starbases are meant to be used as fleet support. They are not a mainstay, or the backbone of an offensive or a defense, fleets aka ships are used for that role. A starbase is meant to assist those ships by providing more fire power, producing ships on the front lines, boosting the economy and other non-engagement roles.
We gotta keep in mind why Entrenchment is being brought into design by looking at the problems we have now and the slutions being brought forward.
Problem 1: Original defenses were not very useful even at the most upgraded stages. Medium size fleets could easily overwhelm them. We needed something to boost these. This is being done by adding flak to hangars for instance or increasing the range of turrets (damage to beam turrets etc).
Problem 2: Online play showed that it was very easy to bypass all worlds and unreasonably pillage homeworlds to the point of frustration. There was nothing to stop opponents from running to the innerworlds and destroying them while our offensive fleets were on the other end of the system. Starbases are meant to solve this problem. So we need STATIONARY FREAKIN' STARBASE** (LOL) to either stop fleets from bypassing outersystems, or, one that sufficiently guards our inner worlds with the backup of the new defense structures.
Moving them into a fleet type role is going to offset the balance of the game in a negative way. Lets not leave starbases in an undefined category only to have them never be used. If we want super capital ships with heavy fire power, then ask for that and demonstrate why they are needed, but what we've asked for is a defensive structure to help defend our inner worlds or stop fleets from bypassing our outer worlds.
*Side Note: Problem 3 was the AI. Tactical, Strategic and Unit AI. Which I think they've improved on immensley and I hope they have a few more surprises.
** For anyone who doesn't know: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/333087/page/7/#replies
Since when was choice a bad thing? If you want to build nothing but Starbases with 2 planets it's a losing strategy. But it would be possible.
Another strategy that would cost you the game before you'd manage to build them all. That's not really relevant. You can also play the game building only Trade Ports or any other silly strategy that doesn't work. To be reasonable though, the number of Starbases could still be limited to one per location even if they cost a cap ship slot.
That's Ironclad's design so ask them.
Capital ships being weaker than a bunch of frigates with the same supply cost is a separate issue altogether. I'm all for increasing low level capital ship firepower a little bit. It's ridiculous how long it takes for a cap to destroy a flak frigate.
But Starbases need to become increasingly more expensive as you build more of them however. Which would force the player to think where and how many to build instead of eventually building one in every grav well. Everything else in the game works in this way and I don't think Starbases should be an exception.
I do think that the capital ship slots you get with the same cost should be increased to 24. You'd get the same amount of caps and 8 Starbases as a freebie.
I think adding a new research bar to the fleet research would be best for limiting Stations. Have each one you can build after the first one take a bit of your economy to maintain. Where the player puts them is their business. Some defensive research might be able to reduce the cost
A similiar thing could be used for mines. Maintaining large minefields has to be expensive, have each on you lay over a certain ammount per system affect your economy.
Perhaps have mines also affect your nonmilitary ( I forget the word) slots in a system as all those mines can be dangerous to labs, factories, etc.
Then the best place for mines would be on front line worlds, not deep in the core.
I disagree with the cap slots. You just just have a max of one per gravity well and have the range cover most if not all of the gravity well. At least cover half.
I've thought about it. I agree with you. I thought that wasn't going to work so i was going to edit it but didn't. See what response i get. Phasing SB would kill.
I would like to see starbases be able to all move. Just make sure the enemy has a way of avoiding them. I thought starbases where meant to defend key choke points so a limit of 5 would be good and have them super powerful but avoidable to an extent. Also raise the inistial cost to maybe 6000 credits and 900 metal and crystal. Start out powerful and make even more powerful.
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