I guess there is serious work needed there. The AI is much better than it used to be, but a bit of resources management code would be helpful for it.

A few days ago I played against a Hard AI (Vasari) on a small map.

They attacked me at 3 fronts with their light frigate spam and I had a hard time defending my planets. But then they made 2 big mistakes.

1. Instead of researching better units they researched Starbases and put one into every planets grav well. If they had put the money into better ships instead they could have finished me.

2.They sent a cap ship (Skintara) with full health and 5+ Light frigates to one of my planets. I had 1 repair bay and 3 beam turrets and no fleet. It was very funny to see 3 turrets killing a capital ship. The AI did not even try to retreat.

I played against a random AI and I really hope that it was the Fortifier type.

Btw. What are the differences between the AI types and what is the best/most dangerous AI type in the long run?

When I play against AI I tend to put a starbase at every planet, mostly upgrade it for the Auxilary Government upgrade (or other race equivelent) then I add 3 econ upgrades and 4 miltiary upgrades   It means I dont have to worry about any kind of nonsense raids which is the only way AI can ebat me at 4x speed.  Because I cant split my fleets well enough to coutner every raid.

Anyone here think starbase comes way too early in the tech tree? Theses monsters require a lot of resources to build and maintain, i think they should come after we have the economy upgrades to support them. The AI bankrupt itself building starbases while it could build more raffineries and trade stations...

Yes, yes, yes, I thought I was alone on this one. I personnaly would like to see starbases higher up the tech tree. Level 2 for Vasari is just plain ridiculus. Advent/Vasari starbases should be level 5 and TEC starbases should be level 4 (after all they're the one getting assaulted from 2 sides). I know there's no way the devs will change this because there's just not enough of us to ask for this, but I'm glad to know I'm not alone on this subject.

As I originally conceived them as juggernaughts of power that you'd be forced into fighting and would laugh at the puny efforts of your fleet, I'd think where they are in the tech tree is certainly too low.

As they've actually been implemented, they seem more like a very hardy support structure with the added and needed benefit of not allowing your far away worlds to just be crushed by a handful of units when your fleet is ages away.  I'd focus research on such trade and military bases far earlier than fancy superweapons any day if I were any of the three.  Thus the placement on the research tree seems great, especially considering stronger powers do require you to have more labs and aren't just allowed right after a starbase is first constructed.

A replay for you Sirs proving that Starbases come at just the right time.

I'd say that the problem is not about where starbases sit in the tech tree, but with the AI.  I agree with those who point to the AI 's poor resource management/ strategy as the root problem!