As we have all known since they arrived, there is really zero reason to build a Military Starbase. They are weak sauce. Their projection of power needs a serious boost. They need to say.."If you attack us near here, you will be hurt"
What can we do to make building a Military Starbase desirable? Ideally you should only have ONE per sector but I have seen in GC II the Drengin build 4 or 5 near their home planets. While this would be nice, in practice the bonuses did not appear to stack.
Also, getting a 'Military' Starbase effective is a HUGE expense and even a modest fleet will destroy it easy. This precludes me ever bothering to build one. When you put in that 2nd constructor and 'create' a military starbase there should be an immediate return which emanates POWER. Also they should at the very least rape the hell out of any one elses early fleets should they attempt to attack it. I know we have 'influence shown on our maps which shows are immediate area of influence. What would be (in my opinion) good but probably overpowered is if Military bases had a 'Power assist sphere that was double or larger than the current 'influence' or regular starbases. This 'area' is NOT influence and affects NOTHING except the owners ships in combat. Some passive bonuses would be helpful, like greater visibility to said ships or a 15% increase to defenses while in this area.
Just tossing ideas here.
Yes they are useless now.
I completely agree that their military projection range must be at least double the base range, and it should also be affected by map size.
With the current model for defense, base hp must double or triple.
Military modules should also give more starbase attack and defence and the first one should also project some power.
Starbases in general just need to be MUCH much more powerful.
They need to have 10x or even 100x the hit points they currently have. Military starbases should also be included in ANY battle that takes place in their area of influence.
Thus, if you built a military starbase and its area of influence includes three planets and a starport... the enemy could not simply destroy the starport and invatde the planets... without first taking out the military starbase. This would give me a reason to build them and spend time sending constructor spam at them...
Make these things fortresses Especially late in game when we have all the tech available to boost them and make them crazy powerful.
They need to be like the ones in Sins - with enough upgrades able to stand up to a sizable enemy fleet.
That and they need to be potent enough that they cannot be ignored. In exchange, you get what you pay for and they are static.
I can imagine having beefed up military starbases in order to support defense of a region, maybe around homeworld and major planets, maybe along my border with the Drengin. But often, when I voluntarily go to war, it is because I have a blitzkrieg force set up and I am going to push some battle line as far as I can get, maybe all the way to elimination. I can't say there is any one place in that invasion style that is key to the whole invasion. There could be an initial waypoint for ship repairs and defense while invading. I can envision a siege against a massive number of fleets, where there will be many battles in one area. But the truth is that hasn't come up in playing GC2 in all my playing. I haven't seen a mechanism yet that would seriously motivate me to build a military starbase, even a beefed up one. Now, getting starbases in general to protect themselves better, I might be talked into that!
Perhaps others experience their wars differently. If so, I would love to hear about it and how it arises. I'm really looking for good excuses to build military bases and thoughts on how to use them well.
I've argued military starbases need a serious defense boost myself, but this usually gets shot down by people would turtle arguments.My counter is usually, let them turtle, but make supporting high end military starbases expensive. Perhaps have some starbase class heavy weapons that can be mounted but are highly expensive.There you are, hopefully that saves some time in anyone replying
I think military starbases should project power! Like really big flashlights!
Cell phone towers broadcast EM radiation (radio waves), which are still just photons. Ergo, a tower is really a radio flashlight / floodlight, which broadcasts a beam.
Consider a newfangled Directional Military Starbase, whose ZOC is a pie-shaped wedge pointing in one direction Adjust so that its total area in hexes is equal to (or slightly less than) an omnidirectional starbase's hexagonal ZOC. It has no effect at all to its sides or behind it, but it can blanket a system far away. Then you might be able to build them early enough that they'd actually be useful to support an invasion.
Then invasions would trigger military starbase wedge duels like artillery vs. battleships, with carrier fleets as the swarms of gnats flying around like bugs. I'd spam constructors to see that!
What's wrong with Turtle tactics?
Starbases used to cost money if you built too many of them. I suspect this will be back. Just make ALL starbases count against the cap. The player will decide if mining bases/economic bases/Influence bases/ or Military Bases are more important.
But make them worth building. right now there is little reason to build a lot of mining bases. building a lot of Artifact bases is almost brokenly over powered.
The rest... are just sort of there...
Make them all worth building and then let us chose to build them... or not
Well the argument also included a long debate about constructor spamming starbases (the micro required), we had some good ideas to limit it though, or at least the micro attached to it.
This is an excellent Idea and would support having the 'Starfleet' Starbase line as described in several Star Trek episodes. Used as a projection of power and as a prelude to invasion they 'should' give significant benefits to fleet to fleet combat.
Ideas include...
Drastically slowing enemy fleets with ward snare fields (reducing the tactical speed greatly)
Adding defensive bonuses to owning players/AI's fleets either defending or attacking.
Providing additional fighters (this is already overpowered)
Penalizing enemy fleets on attack values but 5, 10 or 15%
Drastically speeding up fleets owned by the player/Ai.
Now all of this is already in game. However the Pie shaped LONG RANGE projection now makes Star Bases an offensive tool as they should be.
Considering the fact that SB have a population of over 2 mil, I think you should be able to add 4-5 fighter modules to defend. Of course this would include what ever balancing of fighters that occurs in the future. I can't imagine a better place to have scores of fighters swarming. They should be almost impervious to beams and missiles considering the amount of shields and point you could add. Kinetics should be the way to take out a SB since armor seems to be more limited
Just a few mundane thoughts compared to some of the suggestions I do think SB are grossly under-powered. At present it seems that they can take off some hit points but nearly any attacking force will take them out in the end.
Absolutely. I think everything should (optionally?) scale with map size. Trade in Galciv2 was a chore on the largest maps because nothing scaled.
Well, the carrier tech will let people add a module that gives a starbase three fighters to help defend it. Maybe some more along those lines could be an idea.
Why should military starbases be offensive tools? Regardless of the shape of their area of influence, a military starbase is only going to be offensively useful in a very narrow window of the game, before and after which they're back to the current situation of 'wasted investment.'
Additionally, military starbases are analogous to fortifications. They're relatively costly investments of resources (and time, if you don't have the ability to pump out a lot of constructors quickly) that make an area (theoretically) easier to hold and are only offensively useful if your offensive gets bogged down in an area long enough for you to build up a starbase in the region as a kind of "siegeworks" (this situation is the siege/trench warfare analog of Galactic Civilizations - fleets fighting back and forth in a system with the balance not really swinging to any particular side enough to either drive back the aggressor or allow the aggressor to achieve the goal of invading planets). At the moment, they're fortifications that don't really boost the defenders sufficiently to be worthwhile and which are perhaps excessively vulnerable to destruction.
Penalizing the offensive power of an enemy is more or less the same thing as enhancing the defensive strength of an ally. Pick one, don't go for both. Also, penalizing the attack scores of an enemy begs the question of how, especially if it's not hampering your own vessels similarly. Unless you're more or less right on top of the starbase, jamming and other electronic countermeasures would presumably be more effective if they're originating from your engaged ships than from the starbase, while some kind of magical laser inhibitor field probably shouldn't be capable of distinguishing between friendly lasers and hostile lasers, nor do I see a good way to justify a field which selectively drains kinetic energy from mass drivers.
One of the issues that I feel that military starbases currently face is that in order for them to be useful, you still require roughly the same fleet commitment to an area that you would have without the starbase - you still need to have a ship or two at every planet to prevent unarmed transports from making landings, and you need at least one fleet in the area to protect the starbase and handle any combat fleets your opponent sends in to clear out the ships you have guarding your planets against invasion (alternatively, you can have enough fleets in the area and enough of a buffer zone that it's very unlikely for an enemy to be able to slip a few transports on to unguarded planets). You'll probably never be able to drop that mobile fleet, but a starbase that can allow you to pull the ships you have sitting on planets? That has the potential to be a worthwhile economizing measure, at which point you really just need to balance out where it becomes worthwhile to use a starbase to provide the planetary garrison fleets as opposed to using real ships for them; you could also have this point shift around based on the size of the garrison fleet, with starbases being more attractive the larger the garrison fleet you wanted gets. Conveniently, this would also give you a reason to go after the starbase rather than ignoring it; after all, if the starbase is a single point of failure for a number of garrison fleets, it could be more worthwhile to commit forces to removing the starbase than it is to commit forces to wiping out each garrison separately.
It'd probably also be good to give them some kind of bonus which applies regardless of whether or not there's fighting in the area, perhaps an approval bonus due to the government's demonstrable commitment to protecting the area, or enforcing a minimum approval level within the starbase's area of effect, or maybe a bonus to the amount of production going to any shipyards in the area of effect (e.g. if there's a shipyard in the military starbase's area of effect, then that shipyard has its production rate increased as though all the planets within the starbase's area of effect were contributing 5% of their unmodified production to the shipyard; this probably should not be something you could stack), or maybe ships passively gain experience within the area of effect or some such thing. The bonus production for shipyards thing and the approval bonus thing might cut into the role of economy starbases too much, of course.
Likewise I think that Military Starbases should help defend already secured territory, a way to free some Fighters and assemble these to regions which require maneuverability, like when planets are conquered & re-taken etc.
I also like the idea that they should do something else than just military related stuff, this would make them also reasonable to build in times of non-war, or if the chances are low that the region will see an invasion at all.
TBH the way starbases were designed in GC1 seemed best to me, there was no distinction between econ, influence or military. Frankly, if someone builds something that huge in space there will very likely be the space left for all 3 topics, and it will also strategically be wise to do this (needs only 1 time the defense as if you'll have to defend 3 separate stations)
That starbases are hard to balance is because of fleetbattle. If starbases are able to withstand versus a well-balanced fleet then single ships/interceptors don't stand a chance, although a strong fleet will always shoot it down on the first try. Regardless how you balance their strengths, there will thus always be situations in which they are either totally weak, or uberstrong. In GC1 there was no fleetbattle, and starbases seemed well balanced there. They could be quite strong if you added them proper defenses but still they could be taken down if being attacked by more ships in a row. They also provided all modules for influence/assist/repair etc for the whole sector in one station.
For GalCiv3 I'd like to see an additional way to conquer them, just like planets cannot be taken over by normal ships weapons-fire. I doubt most lowtiered weapons will actually be able to destroy a giant collosus of metal. It's like trying to destroy a skyscraping by shooting at it with a pistol or rifle.... what could more work is boarding with intent to sabotage the reactor core or other critical systems.... such a alternative gameplay could level the playing field of ship/fleet vs spacestation. Although I have no idea how to get this running in a TBS sounds more like RTS to me^^
I'm still of the opinion that "typed" starbases are the problem.In Gal Civ 1, "military" was a module you bolted onto a starbase, not a "type" of starbase.Now, I need to have multiple different types of starbases to do the job, and for some strange reason can't bolt them together.Don't like the field effects overlapping? Don't make em overlap.Otherwise, are you trying to tell us there's not enough space in ... space?Suspension of disbelief, suspended.
I disagree with the assertion that military starbases are useless. With just a single-file line of starbases with fully upgraded range and stellar wake generators (a 5 module cost), movement along the line costs only 1/8 of the normal cost (since all nearby tiles are in range of 3 starbases), so a 5-move ship travelling down the line can move 40 hexes in one turn. Upgrade to a double line of starbases, and ships in the middle will be in range of 5 starbases at any given time, reducing the move cost to 1/32 of normal, so a 5-move ship can travel 160 hexes/turn. Give those same starbases the 2 movement-impeding upgrades, and ships need several dozen move just to reach them from outside their range in one turn - and if they can't get there, you can reinforce the position with ships from anywhere on your defensive line.
Meanwhile, give those starbases the three general military-boosting upgrades, and they'll each boost all weapons and defenses by +4. In the AoE of five such starbases, a Tiny ship would get +20 to all weapons and defenses. I'm not sure if this affects carrier fighters, but if it does, it's a very worthwhile bonus.
Reading Joeballs reply got me thinking again about the 'power projection radius'. Suppose you drop a Military starbase and you station a fleet or ships there at the base. What if it now 'protects any planets in its influence and if said planet is attacked or invaded that planet uses all the ships and defenses of the starbase instead? ....This would make you really think about Star base placement and reduce the amount of ships you have to build in order to garrison at each planet.
How does this idea sound and is it feasible and is it 'fun'?
Many good Ideas here, let me add more:
In the spirit of ideologies:
Modules that add free "system ships" that appear whenever a battle is done within the influence of the base. They also appear when transports try to invade unprotected worlds so you have to escort those transports with combat ships.
4 modules that add: 1:1 small, 2:2 small, 3: 1 medium, 4: 2 medium. Designs are based off your most recently updated design.
The military starbase slingshot is a valid strategy, but it takes ages to set it up.
Also don't forget offensive base building, If I'm matched with tech and I want to take that jucy class 20 world from the AI in the middle of his empire in GC2 I just bring a couple of constructor fleets with the main fleet. The amount of aggro that this generates when at war with him pulls all enemy fleets right into my buffed fleets.
I followed this first part of the post and think the chained speed boost is quite clever.
This confuses me. I see several references to combined military bonuses in various discussions. I don't see how that works. Isn't the AoE of five starbases actually just one single hex? Or at best a small focused area in the center of a ring of starbases? Why not take out the ring of starbases first rather than that central reinforced location? I don't think I want to surround a single planet with military bases, I would rather have economic bases if I can.
Anyway, can you describe how you would fortify a significant area with 5 starbases? Maybe I am missing something obvious.
If some day GCIII includes stable jump gates, which allow two way traffic to known destination(s), then a military starbase/ fortification might be the foundation of your defense if the other end of the jump gate was in enemy territory. Of course I am assuming some version of a much improved military SB as suggested above. I second the suggestion to have some super heavy weapons available to build on SB since size and energy consumption could be much greater than on a starship. If the game thinks "fighters" are Tiny class, then huge hulls are not really that large. Maybe only 6 times bigger or so. Is the supercarrier of today, or the battleships of WWII, only 6 times larger than a fighter?
I like the idea of military star bases being able to protect planets within their radius. Perhaps they could be equipped with long range weapons/fighters that would do a very small amount of damage each turn to every enemy ship inside their radius. That way enemy transports couldn't move in until the military star base was destroyed.
Edit: You could justify laser/mass driver attacks at that range lore wise by saying the star base was launching drones.
Yes, I agree.
Similar in function to what I suggested above, but perhaps a military star base could maintain mine fields around planets, shipyards, and star bases within its radius. Mines could damage ships (and/or destroy cargo hulls). They could also remove a percentage of attacking troops (the troop modules hit mines on the way down).
This confuses me. I see several references to combined military bonuses in various discussions. I don't see how that works. Isn't the AoE of five starbases actually just one single hex? Or at best a small focused area in the center of a ring of starbases? Why not take out the ring of starbases first rather than that central reinforced location? I don't think I want to surround a single planet with military bases, I would rather have economic bases if I can.Anyway, can you describe how you would fortify a significant area with 5 starbases? Maybe I am missing something obvious.
With the two range extender modules, a starbase has a 9-hex radius for its AoE. Thus, if you have a double-line of starbases, a ship near the line will be getting boosted by at least 5 starbases at any given time.
I guess I am not using extended range properly. Something to explore!
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