Where the vasari starbases would be the fastest (we'll call this 100% starbase movement speed)
Advent starbases would move at 50-75% of this speed,
and TEC starbases would move at 25-35% of this speed.
This would ensure that all starbases are useful in defending their gravity well. This also adds to the game's skill requirement as all the main defenses in the game aren't quite so static.
This would also be a way to start to balance the vasari rebel's phase jumping starbases so that the vasari rebel tactical advantage isn't so huge when they use their starbases in a gravity well.
I noticed. I'm always looking for things to be more complicated, but not for the sake of complications. It's just more interesting. You seem to be good at finding 1 little thing to change that will make things roughly right all around.
As another member previously said, the key difference between the Orkulus and the Argonev/Transencia Starbases is that the former is primarily for offensive purposes, whereas the latter two are defensive. The ability for the Orkulus to move should remain that way, in order to fulfill its role as an offensive unit.
During Entrenchment and later Diplomacy, my greatest fear was finding an upgraded Argonev at an enemy chokepoint. Orkulus starbases were easier to deal with; I often took on fully-upgraded starbases with my fleet, and won (Albeit with heavily casualities). On a defensive position, you can aim for luring the Orkulus away from is repair support, or when its on the attack, the Orkulus often had no support what-so-ever. I'm not saying they're not powerful- they are extremely powerful, but I feel that a fairly good player can take one out.
Now, I don't have much experience against the Advent (They weren't a popular faction after the Illum-nerf), but I certainly dealt with many TEC Argonev starbases. Those things are deadly not because it can charge headlong into a fleet like an Orkulus, but because of the Big Red Button. All too often, my opponent would build one at a chokepoint world and completely shut down my offensive; I'd have to occupy the bordering planets and build up just to find a way around it. When trying to take out the planet, there's not much you can do. You can try taking it headlong, but a supported Argonev is extremely tough to crack, and near-impossible with an Akkan parked next to it (Targeting Uplink lets it take out virtually everything). With the Button, you run the risk of losing everything to the one Starbase. I remember once early in Entrenchment losing and entire fleet of well over 100 ships to one "Boombase", it was terrible.
Of course, you can always park your fleet outside of the Argonev's range, but you still need mass Bombers to take it out. That takes a long while; a defensive world always will have numerous Repair Bays and other defenses. By the time you crack the planet open, the opponent has had plenty of time to bring their fleet back.
You could try to just bypass the planet entirely and move on, but Jump Destabilization takes out your entire fleet's AM and one-third of their HP. Finding a way to bypass and jump away from the Starbase can be both risky and takes time. Then half the time, the next planet has another Starbase or their fleet... :/
From my experiences, Starbases aren't used to actually fight the enemy. They're used as a bulwark; the Starbase's potential damage output is so great into deterring the attacking force from fighting for that area. Trying to deal with it or avoid it just gives the defender more time to move their fleet into either protecting their planets or for pushing more into your own worlds. There's a lot of strategic work in using a Starbase, even if they can't move. I have no problem with TEC and Advent Starbases being unable to move; their purpose is to be so scary and powerful to buy the defender time to either defend or move onwards to attack.
sareth you can't balance shit ... I'll buy you a beer if you promise not to try reach my level of trolling.
edit:
Now i would like to know the idiot who said the vasari rebel titan is too weak.
@ riddleking
I happily surrender your "troll war" to you riddleking, you win!
Now buy me a beer, I prefer Heineken.
@swordsalmon
You can attack with advent and TEC starbases. TEC starbases are actually quite good for this, they need only 1 red button upgrade to be very effective as a deterrent.
My proposal for starbase movement wouldn't make the advent or TEC So much better at offensive starbase use as to marginalize the vasari.
The movement speed of the two starbases wouldn't really threaten fleets, just dug in enemy positions. Considering the investment of resources, not being able to move even slowly is a waste of a starbase.
As it stands, building an immobile starbase in an enemy gravity well allows you to retreat somewhere safe, yet it promotes a stalemate style of play that is not nearly as fun as an active, action based style.
The only reason starbases need improved to add movement is because of titans. They throw the game off, and without this movement upgrade you will have a serious balance issue with ANY vasari player bringing two titans to battle(orky + other). If you have a prebuilt starbase, you should be able to kill a building starbase in your gravity well with your own starbase to maintain balance. In the case of the vasari rebels warping in a fully built starbase, well that is still OP, yet its not as OP as it would be if other racial starbases didn't move.
HOW DARE YOU INSULT OUR PREMIUM BEER SUPPLIER!?!?! HERETIC!
Epic vid though...
Err... No?
Mobile starbases are a vasari exclusive advantage, just like phase missiles. Just like Advent synergy, and tough as nails shielding, and just like TEC's economic prowess, and ships that are heavily armoured tanks.
the devs have been quiet hmmm ideas why?
@ axxo2
They are trying to fix the bugs no doubt. They are also, it seems, preparing to force changes on the beta community(without time to really test) and rely on their "private" group of testers. I call this a failure of a beta(since the game wasn't even ready for a beta, imo), as there are some glaring issues with this game's design decisions as is. Perhaps the minidumps were intentionally placed in the vasari patch(he that solves the issue can also put it back), so the developers would have a scapegoat if they released a game that wasn't balanced and had errors. I'm not ruling this as a strong possibility, yet the reasoning would make sense for any company trying to cover their ass. I've seen more despicable things that people/corporations do to cover their ass then this, so its by no means "outside human capability". If you personally think that stardock/ironclad wouldn't do this, I recommend upgrading your naivete. When a company has high ambitions, there are always "small" people like us who get stepped on, one way or another. That is why I like the federal system, too bad our country strayed from it years ago.
@ asmosdeus
Read my response to this line of reasoning, I shoot it out of the sky.
Advent shielding is rarely "tough as nails"(getting it to that point takes a lot of very expensive upgrades and certain situations). I would call vasari and TEC hull armor to be as "tough as nails". The advent synergy is very expensive(and usually not preferred considering you gimp your fleet firepower), you need multiple low durability advent capital ships, and very expensive guardians. TEC economic prowess is actually relatively balanced long term with the other races. The TEC achieve their endgame economic incomes first(this is their real economic advantage), so they can press that advantage upon their opponents.
So they are crippling the game on purpose and if anyone thinks otherwise, they are naive?
You truly need your head examined.
@axxo> the devs have been quiet on this particular non-issue, cause they dont give a shit about Sareth´s ideas. Simple as that. Cant really blame them, LOL
Ah there you go, not reading with understanding timmaigh. Should I explain my carefully constructed script to you, to teach you a few more things? You really are quite an ungrateful, hopeless student, so I hesitate to do so because any energy I expend in your direction would be a waste of everyone's time.
2200 views Sareth, yay. You're aiming for 3000?
I'd prefer OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree with sareth that mobile starbases should be available for the TEC and Advent, if nothing else, just so they can be repositioned. The argument about the "mobile red button" is moot if the station is moving as slow as is being suggested (OP said 25%, but I would be happy with %15). If you are REALLY gonna let a starbase lumber up to you and go boom, well then...you deserve it. I rarely use that upgrade unless there is a GREAT strategic advantage to it (choke point, near worthless gravity well on the front line etc). But I do believe the "reb button" needs some sort of "warning" if it is manually triggered. Some sort of visual effect for 10 sec or so before the station goes boom. Again, this would just be for manual detonations. But starbases should be mobile, but advent and tec should be so to a far less degree as the OP stated (no more than 25% of Orky, probably less).
On a somewhat similiar topic of mobile starbases, when I first started playing the Rebellion beta (I had skipped the original SOaSE when it came out because I thought it was a turn-based game...which I regret now) I was playing as the TEC Rebels I think and I was being attacked in one of my own gravity wells when I told my starbase to attack a specific target and the stupid thing started moving, then turned on its side. I was like WTF, I didn't know these things were mobile. Turns out they are not but if you biuld your starbase extremely close to another structure and give it a manual attack order it will, for some reason, try to move away from the structure invading its' personal space. Problem was, I had mine surrounded by defensive structures so the only thing it could do was "roll over" on its side...funniest shit ever for something that I didn't expect. Dunno if anyone else has had this happen. I will post the screenshot I saved...as soon as I figure out how...(new to this forum)
EDIT: Do I need to resize this? Looks weird to me on this forum....
Nice pic
This was something I can remember discussing way back when Entrenchment was in beta, the vasari base being able to move is a unique touch i think. Besides star bases are effective if you place them right. Its just a reality that static defenses are not as capable of holding ground against a mobile force as another mobile force.
Though the idea of being able to reposition them, with deathly, painfully slow, movement speed wouldnt be to painful, but it would be a pain in the backside with the TEC loyalists who can have two bases
Vasari SB should stay the same but other races should move but not be able to phase jump. This makes it so Vasari SB is still 1. an offensive weapon and 2. it makes it so the other SB are actually able to defend inside their own gravity well. As it is right now, Vasari can spam SB way too easily and make it so other races SB are useless anyways. At least let other races SB move to provide a temporary defense against one SB of the Vasari while they continue to spam SB anyways.
I would actually go the other way, since Rebellion is out the Visari Starbase should have it's movement ability removed.
It's a STARBASE for christ's sake not a Titan.
-Æ
Another idea would be to make the movement for the advent/tec starbase an ability with a cooldown limit. You can give it a single move order then must wait X seconds before you can move it again. This keeps the vasari advantage while not leaving the advent/tec at such a disadvantage
I'd rather give the TEC an upgrade with tractor beams which can pull otherwise-out-of-range ships into DEADBEEF zone, additionally disabling the locked ship's skills and doubling weapon cooldown. Higher levels would give it more tractor beams.
Advent should have a teleport ability with a looooong cooldown. Could have a 'confusion' blast on departure/arrival on higher levels.
Or give constructors a 'tow' ability which can move structures around, albeit very very slowly.
I like this idea. Station remains immobile by itself but can be "towed" to a new location...fucking brilliant. On the same line of thinking, I think the TEC construction frigate should be able to phase jump as well (or at least be given a research option in the defense tree to do so). why? Because the TEC is the ONLY race that cannot mine non planet (colonizeable) grave wells. The Advent have the Drone host which can launch mines and the Vasari have the ruiner. The only workaround as it is now that I have found is using the capture ability of that ugly new TEC battleship to capture a ruiner or drone host. My suggestion would be to be able to take control of a construction frigate and phase jump it to a grav well astroid field, space junk etc) with the ability to deploy mines like it does in a colonized grav well. The construction frigate would NOT be replaced at the colonized grav well it was taken from unless it was destroyed so the ability to build/rebuild structure at the grav well would be reduced. Another option would be to give the TEC carrier the ability. I would just like to be able to NOT use that damned battlecruiser in order to be able to mine, with someone elses tech, one of these other grav wells. Don't mean to hijack this thread, will create a new one for this if you guys would like. To recap tho, I do like the "towing/teleport" ability for the TEC/Advent.
Yet relying on weak constructors for towing would in the end mean that your defense depends upon a very weak unit. A weak unit that can easily be sniped by a few fighters/corvettes very quickly. Not really any way to keep balance, and vs a titan the defense would be just about useless as these constructors would die very fast.
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