I recently purchased entrenchment and after having played a few games I've noticed that the Starbase upgrades don't seem too well balanced, particularly when you consider that many of them need to be researched in addition to being built against the 8 slot limit available to a starbase. In particular certain abilities stand out as being pretty weak and noth with the research time/development cost/upgrade slot on the starbases. Here's the ones that stood out to me as being pretty pointless
The vasari repair starbase repair ability seems useless. It's one more thing to research on the defense tree (taking time away from other more valuable topics) and the result just seems to allow the starbase to slowly self repair during a fight. It's not clear if spending the second point in the ability even improves it significantly or even at all. Either way the upgrade slots would be better spent in the generic defense upgrade which makes a starbase massively more survivable than this repair ability particularly if you max it all the way to the 4th level.
Another ability that all the starbases seem to have is a planet denial upgrade that prevents an enemy from colonizing the planet you built the starbase around. I really don't understand how this would ever be useful given the cost of research and spending a slot and resources to upgrade a starbase with it. Am I missing something here? What's to stop an enemy fleet from coming in and destroying the planet anyway (avoiding the starbase). Simply denying colonization seems pointless if it fails to prevent the planet from being bombarded out of usefulness in the first place.
The advent starbase has a culture broadcast upgrade for their base the seems fairly pointless as well. I've never seen anyone win a game with culture anyway, it's the space battles that always decide the multiplayer games I've done. Culture defense techs pretty much ensure it's trivial to catch and halt a culture push before you lose a planet to it and even if you did lose a planet you wouldn't lose the orbital structures and the opponent wouldn't actually capture the planet so it's fairly easily fixed, again better off spending those slots on the meteor thrower or destabilizer.
The TEC safety override protocol is another seemingly pointless upgrade. The major cost of implementing so situational an ability seems pretty pointless. It also seems like it would be fairly predictable/avoidable by simply sieging the TEC starbase from outside the range of it's detonation or simply commiting the minimum required forces to defeat the starbase even if they use the ability the attacker's goal is still achieved as the base will be gone.
It's also interesting to note the economic upgrades are rather imbalanced as well. Vasari gets colony pods which while rather expensive produce a nice economic boost to drive their war machine in a late game scenario. Advent gets the 30% allegiance boost. This upgrade can be particularly good since it'll scale with the economic output of the planet and structures in the gravity well espescially if they are further out from the homeworld, like a desert planet loaded with trade ports that would normally cap at 35% allegiance suddenly almost doubling to 65%. But TEC gets the shaft here all their starbase only capable of being fitted with repair bays/shipyards, which is at best maybe gonna free up a logistics slot to throw down another trade port.
Finally there's the issue of mobility of the Vasari starbase. This gives it an incredible advantage allowing to to very effectively defend against attacks while the other races simply have their bases simply get flown past and watch helplessly as the planet is bombarded from the opposite side. What adds insult to injury is that this movement capability is baseline, requiring neither research nor a starbase development slot/resources. Perhaps to balance it, the Vasari starbase should have to switch modes between mobile/immobile carrying some penaltys while in mobile form (offensive capabilities restricted perhaps) or conversely giving this option to the other races starbases but with lesser or no restrictions on the vasari.
Some of your points I agree on and some I don't. I actually appreciate the automatic repair ability of the vasari SB. Combined with the deflector shield and a rather high armor rating, that thing simply refuses to go down sometimes. Not to mention it could pass by local regeneration bays for another 15 hp per second. I can't say much for the advent culture broadcast because I don't use it either, although I know someone on these forums love them...just can't remember who. As for the TEC last resort ability, I agree it does seem a bit situational and expensive. However the damn thing does 8000 damage in a very wide radius. I do agree it is predictable as I know I don't like the idea of getting close to it if I get even a hint it's been upgraded. However, I can't recommend using a "minimum" amount of ships to attack it though. Using a minimum amount will mean a few dozen ships atleast because the less you send in the more are going to die. Also rushing it isn't an option either as someone just blow it up. Probably the best thing to do is just bombard it from range if possible, but if you're vasari, that might not be an option.
I think vasari starbases should have a upgrade+research to begin moving or the move speed should be extremely sluggish and allow it a large increase in speed via upgrades.
Now that I've actually tried out all the starbases, I'm going to have to say my least favorite is the TEC one. It turns into more of a staging point/base of operations, which actually makes sense, but in terms of military might it's actually the weakest. For planetary defense I like the vasari the best due to the movement. However in a star, I find I prefer the advent starbases. If I can afford it I like putting one or two or even three to block a phase lane. Disorienting a fleet while it's caught in a crossfire between starbases seems almost unfair.
i played with all the star bases quite a bit, so here are some of my thoughts
TEC: I personally think this is the best star base. The self destruct is extremely powerful. If your star base is going to die, might as well take out their entire fleet in the process. While you can out range it, you need to use ether orgov or abjuditcations, but those are easy to kill and cost a lot of fleet, the other option is bombers, and strike craft take a very long time to kill a undefended star base. With flak, strike craft will never kill a star base. The in addition, the factory upgrade can supply reinforcements very fast to the fight.
Advent: meteor storm and mass disorient, enough to cripple all but the most powerful fleet alone. The culture is somewhat useful to save logistical slots for more useful things,
Vasari: IMO, the worst star base at doing what star bases at defending. Unlike the TEC and advent star bases, they have nothing to deal with a large fleet alone. That being said, they are excellent offensive tools, They also very useful to help your economy.
You say the vasari starbase should have some nerfs to its movement, but you have to understand that the vasari get no anti-structure torpedo cruisers to attack from long range - their assault solution is their moving starbase. It is quite difficult to get this vasari starbase built into an enemy grav well if that enemy is built up - I lose so many starbases its ridiculous. If you DO manage to get one built, then you have to sit there and upgrade it quite a bit for it to be useful against an upgraded enemy starbase. Ever tried upgrading you starbase in a hostile well? Try it and see how many you lose.
To this day I have never understood all the jealously about the moving vasari starbase.
minor correction to something said in the OP regarding the alliegance upgrade of the Advent starbase.
trade ports are unaffected by planetary alliegance. only planetary tax income and resources harvested from the planet's asteroids are affected by alliegance. increasing the alliegance of a 35% desert world with lots of trade ports will not actually be a big boost to your economy. the largest benefit to be gained from this is by placing the starbase at your homeworld. 140% alliegance homeworlds produce about 5 more creds/sec than normal, which is a large bonus.
QFT. And as Elrosh said, the Vasari SB has no mass killing ability that the Advent (Meteor Storm) and TEC (Last Resort) have. The ability to move, its debris vortex and shield helps to balance this. All in all, I'm rather content with the balance.
I agree with Agent of Kharma about the whole moving starbase debate. I find that you can build a better defensive postition with stationary starbases then mobile. Mind you postioning the starbase is critical, I find that as close to planet as possible on same side as attack vector, but that is what this game is about proper postioning of your units in responce to enemy. Admittedly the whole aux gov upgrade is some what useless, though it does deny the enemy the ability of extending supply line, so I dont use it much. The whole game seems to me as being very balanced and in accords to race specific lore. I am partial to TEC but strive to be profecient in all races. The better you know the enemy and yourself the easier it is to claim victory.
I agree on most of what you say Valkya,
Yes, you are absolutly right, if I have to choose between another level of defensive upgrade & this ability, I will ALWAYS go for the next defensive upgrade. Lets face it, frontline Vasari starbases will most likely have 3 weapon upgrade + 4 defensive upgrade and maybe 1 squadron upgrade or the debris vortex.Another ability that all the starbases seem to have is a planet denial upgrade that prevents an enemy from colonizing the planet you built the starbase around. I really don't understand how this would ever be useful given the cost of research and spending a slot and resources to upgrade a starbase with it. Am I missing something here? What's to stop an enemy fleet from coming in and destroying the planet anyway (avoiding the starbase). Simply denying colonization seems pointless if it fails to prevent the planet from being bombarded out of usefulness in the first place.I hear somewhere IC was gonna fix this ability, lets hope they understand that its pointless at this time, I agree that denying colonization is just plain stupid, it should reduced bombardment damage by 50% or denying the possibility of bombarding the planet. Forcing players to actually destroy the starbase before attacking the planet.The advent starbase has a culture broadcast upgrade for their base the seems fairly pointless as well. I've never seen anyone win a game with culture anyway, it's the space battles that always decide the multiplayer games I've done. Culture defense techs pretty much ensure it's trivial to catch and halt a culture push before you lose a planet to it and even if you did lose a planet you wouldn't lose the orbital structures and the opponent wouldn't actually capture the planet so it's fairly easily fixed, again better off spending those slots on the meteor thrower or destabilizer.
This is where I disagree, this ability is actually quite powerful, upgrading a starbase with all 3 levels of culture can be deadly for your neighbours, for exemple; raising the culture spread from 3 to 22 can be very hard to counter.The TEC safety override protocol is another seemingly pointless upgrade. The major cost of implementing so situational an ability seems pretty pointless. It also seems like it would be fairly predictable/avoidable by simply sieging the TEC starbase from outside the range of it's detonation or simply commiting the minimum required forces to defeat the starbase even if they use the ability the attacker's goal is still achieved as the base will be gone.This ability is very powerful, yet at the same time pretty pointless, if they do fix the auxiliary government upgrade(forcing players to attack the starbase before attacking the planet), this ability will be VERY OP. After thinking about it, making the axiliary government reduce bombardment damage is this only way to keep this upgrade in the game.It's also interesting to note the economic upgrades are rather imbalanced as well. Vasari gets colony pods which while rather expensive produce a nice economic boost to drive their war machine in a late game scenario. Advent gets the 30% allegiance boost. This upgrade can be particularly good since it'll scale with the economic output of the planet and structures in the gravity well espescially if they are further out from the homeworld, like a desert planet loaded with trade ports that would normally cap at 35% allegiance suddenly almost doubling to 65%. But TEC gets the shaft here all their starbase only capable of being fitted with repair bays/shipyards, which is at best maybe gonna free up a logistics slot to throw down another trade port.
Well TEC starbases do get trade ports (2 levels of them if I'm not mistaken), so this is NOT unbalance.Finally there's the issue of mobility of the Vasari starbase. This gives it an incredible advantage allowing to to very effectively defend against attacks while the other races simply have their bases simply get flown past and watch helplessly as the planet is bombarded from the opposite side. What adds insult to injury is that this movement capability is baseline, requiring neither research nor a starbase development slot/resources. Perhaps to balance it, the Vasari starbase should have to switch modes between mobile/immobile carrying some penaltys while in mobile form (offensive capabilities restricted perhaps) or conversely giving this option to the other races starbases but with lesser or no restrictions on the vasari.
This is where I agree with you 300%, I have stated in many other of my post that the Vasari should not depend on their starbases to attack other starbases. They should have an Anti-Structure Cruiser. Like I said some of my post, making the Vasari mobility a researchable tech AND an upgrade to the starbase.
Bottom line is, Starbase abilities a far from being balance, IC needs to look at this a little bit more before moving on to the next expansion.
My eyes!
Starbase upgrades are not meant to be the jacks of all trades. They are designed to allow you to specialize your starbase how you see fit and to maintain racial diversity. Not every single one is there to make you "win", and you cannot compare their super-abilities with the more mundane upgrades and say it's imbalanced.
Would it be better if Aux Gov't were to move all tax revenue creation to the SB until it is destroyed?
Well, its not a bad idea, but to have tax revenue, you need population... Vasari already have this with the Colony Pods, so it's not gonna work. Maybe the answer to the Auxiliary Government should be different for all races;
TEC: bombardment damage reduced by 50%. This would "forced" players to actually assault the starbase before attacking the planet, otherwise it would take forever vs. a 6000 points planet.
Advent: bombardment impossible, must destroy the starbase in the gravity well before attacking the planet (Advent could be using the combine might of their PsiTech to "force" players to attack the starbase first).
Vasari: because their starbase can move, they should not have access to this ability.
hehe, you never played me obviously. 2x planet suction...that's all I have to say about that.
Zee gogglezz, they do nothing
The main point of my original post plays to this. You have *Just* 8 upgrade slots on your starbase, and probably over 16 different possible upgrades. If the different upgrade paths aren't somewhat balanced or useful in different situations at least then some will never get used. I'm not really out to compare one race versus another race's upgrades but the upgrades available to each specific race when they build a single starbase. The most obvious case of this imbalance I'd say is with the Vasari repair ability. It always makes more sense to do the generic defense upgrade (which will be up to 4 of your 8 slots) before ever getting the repair ability. The only time you'd even consider the repair is after the 4 points are spent, and at that point your remaining 4 points are much better spent on the other options available (particularly the 3 points of weapons upgrade, bringing it to 7/8 points spent). A Vasari starbase with 3 upgrades to weaponry and 4 to structure, seems more potent to me than any of the other seven point combinations available, particularly when you consider you don't have to do any special research to pull this off.
Very well said!
Thank You! Valkya
Note below
Agreed
I think the TEC one like that could be a built in shield generator, mainly a flavor difference. I also think that TEC bases should get nukes instead of production facilities, what is the point of upgrading all that and having to spend MORE resources to use it. All the other starbase abilities are automatic once they are active.
I also agree that they should have much more than 8 slots to upgrade into, mabey move the costs and benifits around a little to compensate for much more powerful possibilities.
Ran into a fully upgraded tec base earlier today in a game and I was in a panic as I realized that thing could blow in my face. Then I remembered that I had 2 radiance battleships which could alternate fire their detonate anti-matter. Can anyone confirm if this ability will stop Last Resort on the TEC starbase? If it does, Last resort just got a whole lot less useful in my eyes.
garv222 - I find that some capital ships' abilities do not work on starbases. Examples such as the Antorak Marauder's Phase Out Hull ability doesn't work on it ( T_T ), but the Jarassul Evacuator's Nano-Disassembler and the Skirnatra Carrier's Repair Cloud do.
I am still trying to figure out the balance ....overall, I would stay Ironclad has done a pretty good job of making unique starbases that all have their strengths and weaknesses. Heck, when you see so many people disagree as to which starbase is the best or worst, that is a good indication that the balance isn't too bad.
The main thing I have noticed is that it is difficult to assault Vasari SB held worlds in multiplayer. It isn't because the starbases are overpowered in themselves, they are in fact very killable if you have enough time to kite them with strikecraft, or a very big fleet to just beat them down. The problem is that they are often guarded by mines, have repair bays with them, and a small fleet. Because they constantly chase stuff around the gravwell, the burden of micromanagement is VERY heavily on the player attacking.
I have noticed a strategy where the Vasari players just build a SB everywhere and slowly colonize the whole map with them. This strategy has not beaten me yet, because starbases are so expensive, but I can see how attractive it would be, because it is so simple to implement. When you are fighting in multiple systems against an enemy trying to build starbases all over your empire while you are trying to whittle down a big starbase at your main offensive, it is very taxing. The starbase builder just has to plant and water each base and watch it slowly eat everything in the system unless a fleet counters it.
BTW, Override Protocol is tremendously powerful. I find it to be the main thing that makes the TEC starbase worth it. Once you blow up the entire enemy fleet, it is hard to look back. Yes, they can kill your SB from range, but that is just more work for them, so it is still indirectly benefiting you. Actually, just the fear of it is beneficial.
Cykur explained it perfectly.
Hmm, the starbase did say abilities disabled... so I'm going to just assume it does actually stop Last Resort. I typically play single player so I can't ask if the SB had the upgrade.
In reference to this point, I was uninformed. TEC indeed has an major economic advantage from their starbase in that it's trade upgrade can be upgraded twice for a huge economic benefit, particularly nice since it's earlier in the research tree. The TEC base also seems to upgrade more efficiently having similar hull and shield numbers at 3 structural upgrades to a vasari starbase with 4!
Sounds like that 5h game we played against Scott and Hack, eh?
Anyway, I agree with your observation that the balance is good, despite or especially because people are constantly arguing about the advantages/disadvantages of their favourite race. Each and every tactic has its weaknesses and its counters, making it vulnerable when facin a smart opponent and overall making the game more interesting. Personally I haven't encountered a strategy that was imbalanced though I often got overwhelmed. But lets be honest, if one strategy beats another that's solely due to the fact that you do not adapt fast enough and don't have the proper counter against his forces.
Bottom line is: there's very little to be balanced, if any, in this game. Though I do agree that the ability to deny colonization should somehow protect the present colony as well. Otherwise especially TEC starbases are pretty useless in case the enemy simply passes them by and attacks from the other side.
Yeah they should make the Starbases double as a planetary shield generator where it is indestructible until of course the starbase is destroyed. Vasari have advantage here.(Moving Starbase)
The TEC could have their energy shield. The Advent a Psi Shield. The Vasari a nano shield.
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