Hi all, having a problem keeping my stations alive and running through wars (War/Exconomy/Influence) It seems no matter how much I upgrade them, the enemy can always send one fleet to knock them out, and then all my hard work at building them up (15+ constructers) is down the drain.
If these stations were easier to upgrade, then their loss would be more barable, but as it is, it takes a long time to get these guys at full capacity.
Is there an easier way then spamming constructers at them, or do I need to fill them with ships so they survive.
I can only assume your'e refering to resouce starbases. My experience is to defend with ships. No starbase is defensivable on it't own. Remember the AI is more or less in the same position.
Use fleets to defend and focus military improvements on augmenting your fleets. If you have the spare constructors putting weapons and defenses on them can weaken the enemy fleets if they do attack, or even win if then destroy your fleet but are heavily damaged in the process.
The scoremonster crowd seem to generally agree that arming starbases of any sort is a waste of resources and that the only sensible thing to do is defend them with fleets.
But depending on your map settings, choice of civ (tech tree) to play, acquired techs, military resource mines, and playstyle, you can have a game where fully-upgraded starbases end up exploiting some AI weaknesses and actually destroy large numbers of enemy ships that might have done you serious harm if they'd been sent into one of your core production areas instead of aimed at an isolated resource mine. I haven't seen it in a while, but more than a few times I watched a jaw-dropping number of enemy fleets follow one another to certain doom when they attacked one of my starbases.
Mind you, I'm pretty sure I've only seen this sort of thing happen because I'm not a maximizer and I do lots of things in a game that are more like playing with building blocks than they are like playing cards or chess.
The problem with arming starbases is that they can't move*. All those constructors' worth of weapons and stuff that you put on a starbase goes to waste the minute the front lines move away. It can certainly be worthwhile to put a few weapons on early in the game to keep some 1-attack pissant from taking it out, but otherwise, if I'm going to have X number of guns protecting a starbase, I'd rather have them mounted on a fleet parked on the starbase, rather than on the base itself.
*Even in TA you don't hear about fleets of starbases flying around
Actually I tried to guard starbases with ships, but I found that pretty ineffecient. You constantly have to pay for these ships. You always got to watch over them, make them attack if an enemy nears, and you´ll need to upgrade them once the enemy has better weapons researched. this costs a hell usually....
Therefore I usually research the starbase defense tech very early in the game, enabling my starbases to have an attack of (sum) +90 with just 4 constructors, while the enemies ships are still round +5 or so. I never loose starbases. I you`ll instead tried to arm a ship with such firepower you´ll have to do a hell more research, and such build ship will cost you a hell day-by-day.
The Ai usually never researches starbase defense but concentrates on ship armament, and once I´m finished with my starbases I simply trade these technologies from an ally and got to war.
Interesting. What 3 or 4 modules produce a +90 attack?
Parking ships on a starbase doesn't really do you any good because you've still got a bunch of money just sitting there. Instead, you keep the enemy from getting there in the first place by blasting them on the front lines.
The table on the wiki shows you can get 93 attack with seven weapons modules. So unless things have changed that drastically in TA...*shrug*
The most you can easily get with four constructors is 39, 13 in each type. Couple that with the Thalan defense tech (24 in each) for a fast 5 constructor defensive stronghold. My guess is that he had quite a bit of military bonus and was giving effective numbers rather than base numbers.
The other alternative is to not arm it at all and park a few dozen 1 point tiny hulls on top of it. The point is not to defend it, but to force the attacker to kill each tiny separately, giving you time to get there with a real fleet. Once that resource is no longer on the front line, move the fodder to the next threatened location
Or do it the real way, and defend actively. Get Eyes of the Universe and kill them before they get in range.
Or just a bunch of cargo hulls with a zillion sensor modules on them. Not as efficient as EotU perhaps, but effective nonetheless
After you researched the starbase defense to mark III you need one constructor for actually the base, one for weapons add +1 on all systems, and after that you can add +30 attack modules.
so 5 constructors give +93 attack
in my last game I saw the Altarians send their whole military to a far-out mining base, day-by-day their ships got wrecked, I send a constructor to add +20 HP occasionally.
I really believe the power is in starbases. If you choose evil alignment you don´t have to pay even for upgrades.
My previous comments were for DL with the old tech-tree.
Although in the bonuspacks it might be the same although I played with 2 races yet.
Last time (with the Yor) 4 military starbases with full-equipped ship support assured my enemies not to declare war to no time - even I did mine Ascention Crystals.
Because I had 30 tiny fighter (in 2 fleets) at a spot where the influence of all 4 military bases intersects. These tiny ships were equipped w +1 attack & +1 shield but with the support of the starbases their attack altogether was +1600 defense +800 too much for my enemies.
There´s a side fact I`m not so sure about. I researched Xalax-defense and Thulon-weapon focus, and added 2 ships with each one of them to my fleets. It should have added 20% increase in both attack/defense, but didn´t. The only thing was added was the support the ships had from the starbases....
Maybe this bonus-attack/defense is only used during an actual battle?
btw these 30 tiny fighter did cost me 30bc each day, and that was about the only military I had in the game besides in the start where the bases were not completed yet...
there´s another funfact. Enemies can´t travel more then +3 through Yor-space, and the militarybases take them ánother -2, so even when I go to war to ensure my opponent is focusing on military production and not on a Tech Victory I leave a planet unprotected for which my opponent will rush for... of course that planet is in the center of my military starbases and once he entered my "Tholian" web may tiny little fighters will have a field day with em.
well, tiny fighter have just 5 HP and get destroyed as well, but they can be reproduced on a daily basis, so even under bad luck it doesn´t really matter until my opponent has reached the open planet another just-made fleet is right there
one time I played I focused generally on big warships choosing Drengin and warparty etc. However, it took my economy down right from the start, and I was the first to go in that game, the Torians gave me hell.
What a damn shame, defeated by some food errr neigbours....
What´s this with the starbases that mine the ascension-crystals - can they be upgraded? The info-field shows me "0/5 modules installed", but no constructor I sent to it would be taken in.....
Some very interesting ideas in this thread that I have never tried before. Nice!
The fleet modules don't act on the bonuses you are getting from the starbases. You were getting +20% bonus to the 1 attack and 1 defense that was actually on each ship, which of course gets rounded back down to 1.
That is one of the tricks in this game that works against the AI, but is absurdly easy to get around for a live player (if multiplayer existed, of course). That speed limit doesn't apply to ships that start outside the starbase effect and outside your influence (or even inside, if they are launching from a planet). A single ship with one weapon and maxed out engines can fly in, pop all the starbases and then eat your fighters for breakfast. Or just run a high speed transport through the array, laughing the whole way while taking the undefended planet from 30 spaces away. The AI won't build a starbase array like what you have, but this is standard operating procedure for fighting the Yor.
They cannot be upgraded at all. No additional mining modules are allowed and you can't build defenses on them. The info field is apparently wrong, they were intentionally designed to not be upgradable. Teror stars are the same way.
In DA, there are three 30 attack modules for starbases, one for each weapon type, and three 16 defense modules, one for each defense type.
If I decide to arm my bases, I generally use the two 30 attack modules that work best against the enemy defenses and the one 16 defense module that matches the enemy weapon type.
Looking back at it, yeah that makes sense. In TA the techs for starbase modules were rearranged quite a bit, and getting to those modules is the equivalent of researching to the end of a weapon or defense line in terms of time and cost. Add in that about half of the tech trees don't even have those techs and it is not hard to see how it gets overlooked.
True, well, but they do it. That whole system is built to exploit some weaknesses in the AI´s way of playing (likewiese a ZYW or a Swindle et al would also not be possible against a real player....); however, because I don´t know what the AI´s had in store took some precautions for defending my starbases. First, as the Military Bases were the backbone of my military might they have been fully developed in attack/defense. They never were attacked. Second, I placed a lot of SensorShips around the Array, so I can muster incoming enemy forces. And the AI focused his strong warships only on these (unarmed) SensorShips, once locked on I withdrew that ship to the midst of the array, where it was destroyed...
I do still use this technique in ToA, although it`s harder to do... But some races do lack the SCC; thus a few MSB with 1/1 tiny´s can boost one military graph that might keep the AI from declaring war. A clumsy way, yes, but it works.
Interesting. I previously didn´t consider this for my starbases. I wonder if the AI´s do take this into consideration - e.g. if a starbase is more likely to be attacked if the sum of attack/defense is lower but more accurate? Could be both advantage/ disadvantage....
Willy - #18
Yes, it's the same in DA, the end of a long research path. However, in my current Suicidal strategies, I try to delay wars until I am ready. I end up researching just about everything I need and simply leave some research coming in late, and I research those techs then. Meanwhile, I am assembling the invasion fleets, etc.
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