ATT and DEF of starships built at that planet. It doesn't seem to be a direct improvement (that is +33% Starships doesn't cause a 33% increase in ATT and DEF), but it does work.

Starbases do not appear to carry over the 'home planet' of the constructor that built them, but since they only have a DEF of 1 (barring high Defense ability), it would take a pretty extreme bonus to affect it by more than a point or two anyway.

~SDC~

Thanks again.

For some reason, I thought it would be hit points, but the description wasn't very clear.

I wonder if it's modifying the base values separately from the global abilities, and that's why it doesn't appear to act directly on the final values?

But there are no defensive ships to protect a star base later in the game. Battle Axes suck against Overlords.

And you can't place any capital ships on guard duty since this would piss of the AI in adjacent sectors and even your allies declare war on you (:(

I always have my best ships protecting my most important starbases (economic and military abilities). Their defense is essential, since they help all ships in my fleet. And I haven't noticed many problems with other AIs. Of course it depends on where the SB is located, but I wouldn't build one in one of their homesectors: it would be impossible to defend.
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Hi Nastavnik

on which difficulty level do you play? On maso they do not only get pissed of in their sectors but in adjacent sectors as well.

When I have a star base near by my ally I still can't protect it with a ship because my ally would declare war on me. Or did this change with 1.2 :notsure:

By the way, does anybody know what exactly is "their sector"? Is it where they have a planet or where they have the most influence?

Hi Walldorf

I've played all levels, climbing the ladder... Recently It was tough, crippling and 3 attempts at maso (one of which succesfull). Ot is true that in the maso, at first I only had one starbase in my homesector (where sol is). By mid-game, I took over two resources military and economic, and sent as soon as I could deathknights, then rangers and finally overlords to protect them. One of the resources was in an adjacent sector (of one of their planets) under that civ influence (their sector for me).
In the other game I have in mind I had 2 military SB in one sector, with a huge fleet to defend it. But i did not had very good relations with the neighbours... But allies have never turned on my because of THAT. (i.e. they have for other reasons)

How can you tell that? I did not even got a notification. I just realized that my income crashed and it was because of the lost trade with my ally. Then I realized that their fleet was already on the way.

It was hopeless. I had to reload the game and remove my ship. This time everything went smoothly.

I had this problem more than one time and read from otheres in this forum that they had the same experience.
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Well, what I meant is, it never happened that an ally attacked me, without reason. However I did get ally's entering in a war against me, in one of their other allies were at war with me. But I also had the case were they would break their alliance with the other civ and help me.
Are you sure you just didn't miss the information window? Sometimes I click to fast, without paying attention, and miss some important info. I was under the impression that there is always an adviser telling you that they joined the war, etc. In another maso I plaied, and lost, the Yor attacked me, then every two turns, one civ would declare war on me: "your war against the Yor puts our economy at risk, so we must attack you, etc". I got that message 7 times (once every three turns or so). Every one declared war on me, including Carinoids
Considering what you said now, I'll certainly pay more attention, even if in that latest case, I did not have one single ship, so that wasn't the reason...
However I did noticed sometimes, and in other levels as well, that relations would sink rapidly because for instance I'd have a huge invasion fleet (defense fleet when the other civs would enquire about it ) in one of MY sectors, and suddenly for some reason the sector change color, and "belongs" to another civ, that will see the fleet as a threat. But then I get the warning message about the build up in sector x,y.

I think that the balance of power does account for something. When I'm far behind anything is cause for a drop in relations. However even if nothing changes in the placement of my ships, if I catch up and become the most powerfull (in the graph at least) then things tend to get better (after getting worse for a while, during the catch up)...
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What I had in mind for a logistics social project was not a global boost, but something like 4 "logistics" social projects give you a free starbase. (reduce your total starbase count by 1) That would help balance out logistics for map sizes. I wasn't thinking of a social project that worked like the achievment - a % dicount on all starbases.

Ahhh... then I've mistaken your point, sorry.

If there were to be code changes though, it might be simpler to just add a factor into the equation for galaxy size. Currently the cost is determined by a forumla something like this:

Cost = 200*((# of existing bases) -1)*((100-Logistics)/100)

So, what if each galaxy size were assigned a value, let's say ranging from 2 at Tiny down to 1 at Medium and 0.25 at Gigantic, and then that value were added into the forumla like so:

Cost = 200*((# of existing bases) -1)*((100-Logistics)/100)*ScaleFactor

This way, construction costs would be double normal in a tiny galaxy, and one quarter normal in a gigantic one, with appropriate scaling in between. Obviously, the actual numbers are just taken off the top of my head, but I think the idea is sound...

In my last game I got the logistics hability to 40 I think (2 or 3 achievements). By then, the SB didn't cost that much anymore.

Edit: of course, for huge and gigantic maps, the question remains -- but I cannot tell: I never play those galaxies so I have no idea how crucial star bases might be, or not.
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What about the gigantic tax income that comes with the number of planets you have in a gigantic galaxy? Doesn't that already make up for the fact that you have more resources to grab? I know that in my current Huge game I've never run into a situation where I couldn't just turn spending down for one turn to get the money for the starbase I wanted.

~SDC~

I just switched from the demo to the registered game a week or so ago, and got my but wipped in my first game using my old strategy from the demo before I ever got started. Now I've started a new game and have gotten to the stage of building starbases, and thus Logistics (nothing about it in the manual btw.).

After reading this thread, I started thinking of how it's done in Masters of Orion II, there each ship needs a number of command-point based on the size of the ship, command-points come from three sources, 1 the empire, 2: starbases, and 3: tech. (or a combination of 2 and 3).

Considering the importance of SB's in GalCiv, I would like to se some relationship between the number of owned planets (or stars) and the number of "free" SB's or a social improvement as described by fsk+

In the AP beta anyway, you get free starbases equal to the radius of the galaxy. Thus if galaxy is 12 sectors wide you get 6 free starbases. Then the cost depends on your logistics capability. There is at least one galactic acheivment and a wonder (I believe) that increases logistics in the early game. And a couple more later in the game.

yeah, when i made this thread, there was only 1 improvement for logistics, and it wasnt scaled for map size, and it was about 4x more expensive (i.e. after your 5th starbase, it cost over 1k credits to make one). It made getting an economy going near impossible, but it has been fixed in recent builds.

Martin the Dane, in MoO2, Star Bases *increased* your command points. And so did *mobile* star bases, Doom Stars.

Ships did cost 1 command point per ship size (below Doom Star).

Great idea. But it made the bigger the hull better/more cost effective... A Medium (size 3) ship was more cost effective at 3 command points then 3 Tiny (size 1) ships... 3 Tiny ships could never take out a Medium ship when tech level was similar. Just as one Tiny (size 1) ship and one Small (size 2) ship, costing 3 command points), also could not beat a Medium (size 3) ship (given near tech levels), even though both forces cost the same command points.

Sorry for being a bit vague in my last post. What I meant by my reference to MoO2, was that I would like the logistics ability (maintenance/build costs of SBs) to have a relationship to some planetary factors similar as to what ship costs had to SBs in MoO2.

Lets say for each planet (or each 10 planets the exact number is not important here) you get 1*N "free" SBs, where N depends on the technology level, galaxy size, and some social projects.

(By free I mean with no penalty costs.)

My preferred system (I think) would be where each base, including the first, cost a few bc in maintenance cost and any SB above your logistics ability would cost an increasing number of bc each turn.

An example:
Say your logistics ability is 4 (you get 4 "free" SBs) and the base maintenance cost is 5 bc/turn. And the penalty multiplier is 2.

The maintenance cost for a SB would then be
5 bc/turn for the first 4
10 bc/turn for the next 4
15 bc/turn for the next 4
etc.

If you then have 12 bases they would cost you 20 + 40 + 30 = 90 bc/turn in stead of 0 + 200 + 400 ... + 2200 = 11200 up front.

So after 125 turns of my system you would have payed more than with the current system, but it is still managable.

This way increasing your logistics ability would have an effect on the cost of your existing SBs not only on your ability to build new ones.

If certain wonders/trade goods/achievements lowers the base maintenance cost this system would make SBs useful again but still prevent the insane number of bases problem.