With the ability to expand the range of effect of starbases, I believe the minimum distance between starbases should be reset to 5 hexes (instead of the current 4). See the starbase effect near Earth (below). To be honest, making so many starbases on an insane map with thousands of stars would get very tedious.
My thought is, "Why would you build so many in such a small area?" While starbases are useful in strategic areas, such as near a large planet or collection of several planets, key defense areas, etc., to build them all sprawled out like your picture there is indeed a waste and tedious. Not that I wouldn't mind a minor range increase in base range.
Lots of overlapping starbases is the key to unlocking a really good planet's potential, along with military slingshot arrays. In GC2, you could get 24 bases affecting a single space, which could turn a single ship in the sweet spot the combat power of an entire fleet (for scoring purposes) and give it +72 movement points for one turn. Use for planets depended on where it was in the sector, but you could get at least 12 bases affecting one planet, and up to 24 if it was in just the right spot. With that many economic bases affecting it, a high manufacturing planet could crank a high end ship out every turn or two.
As for OP - while there's no hard cap on starbase numbers (yet), it would quickly become ruinously expensive to do that to every planet. Limit them to the very best planets.
Quoting Ryat, reply 1"Why would you build so many in such a small area?"
Packing in the economy starbases is the only way I can get my morale up to 100% on worlds (multiple bonuses to wealth), and it improves production a lot. Earth has 8 economy starbases giving it +200% to wealth, +200% to manufacturing, and +125% to research. That allows me to focus most production on manufacturing and research, keeping just enough in wealth to maintain a 100% approval rate. I can produce a huge ship every four turns, and that is without Industrial Sectors.
I think their should be a diminishing return on overlapping starbases.
The first one with full effect, the second one with half effect.
The thrid one with quarter effect.
Picking the strongest effect first etc.
This would avoid the starbase building spree. Possibly, even don't allow more than one starbase effect on a planet. Doing so would force the player to find the "best" spot rather than just cram space... This would increase the game enjoyability : building starbase should be important, but right now it is just "too" important : using most of ones resource to build starbases should not be the most efficient way. If starbases are a bit less deisrable, one will see many less constructors in the end game.
Then, the minimal distance might even be irrelevant : you could build a military starbase close to a cultural or economic starbase. But idealy, starbases should probably not be specialized as they are now: I don't see how this improves the game in any serious way.
I vote for no change. The 4 range is important because it allows the starbases to overlap without any range increase. Starbase bonuses are not so large that stacking them is OP, and starbases provide an important late game money and manufacturing sink.
Quoting peregrine23, reply 5I vote for no change. The 4 range is important because it allows the starbases to overlap without any range increase. Starbase bonuses are not so large that stacking them is OP, and starbases provide an important late game money and manufacturing sink.
I wonder if there is a way to tie this to the size of the map. 4 hexes would work on a smaller map, but larger maps could end up having hundreds of starbases if the minimum distance is still 4. I personally like stacking starbase effects because it makes me more competitive at higher game difficulties since the AI doesn't usually stack starbase effects. However, on an insane map, this would create a lot of micromanagement.
Both of these issues will be fixed. The AI as you know is a placeholder. When the AI gets coded actually for the game I pretty sure it will do exactly what you are doing here.
Which leads to this....
Currently there is no economic penalty for that many star bases. There will be. The simple solution is to spiral up the cost of so many star bases that it begins to outweigh their economic benefit. This way you still can put as many as you like or whichever ones you feel are needed but they will begin to drain the coffer (substantially) after X amount in a given sector. A straight % of total income vrs a fixed amount would fix this really fast.
Yes, but that kind of solution seems not logical. Why on earth should a starbase cost me, say 10 when my economy makes 1000 and 100 when it does 10000 because I now have 9 oter planets absolutely unrelated to that starbase ???
This hardly fits.
It might be associated with logistic (indeed, keeping many starbases working may be a work of logistics), there might be a diminishing return on benefits (after all, they have to share the same ressources coming from a given planet ; there may be some synergy, but pure addition is a bit too much.)
On the other hand, apart from just preventing the spread of starbases, the 4 hex limit looks quite artificial ; why I could not build two starbases at a few light-days of each other is beyond me! Fixing this problem with something as artificial is not the way to go!
For my part, I think the best choice lies around logistic. I would define the cost level to maintain a starbase by something like
(base cost+distance)/logistics + k . encompassed economy size)
base cost: a base valuedistance: the distance to the closest colonylogistics: the logistics level in the researchencompassed economy size: the income from all planets that are within the starbase radiusk: a fixed factor to determine (see this as the cost to manage the shuttles to and from planets : the bigger the economy, the larger this cost)
the income from a given planet should be calculated independantly from the empire settings (say like all setting at at 1/3), and modified by the number of starbases that hold the planet in their area of effect. Something like:
(m+1) * economy / (m+ number of starbases)
where m is to be determined (at 0, there is a perfect sharing between starbases, the greater, the more it overrlaps. At infinite, its like now...
A simple formula like this accounts for many factors at once, makes your distant starbases costly to maintain, makes your rich starbase more costly because busier, drain your treasury in a somewhat logical way, makes stacking starbases around planets a not so good choice (especially since less developped starbase will begin eating profits from these which are not yet fully developped), so that the 4 hexes limit is not a problem anymore.
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