SB poll: solution

I'm not sure what you mean. The stacking questing is mute as I rarely build miltary SB. 2 or 3 production, trade, and/or cultural SB per sector is enough. Cultural and trade bases stack better than miltary while production gets a hit.

What is really needed are more defensive modules (and a increase HP modules). I've seen Overlords destroy a def 80 SB without much damage. Excaliburs take no damage unless an Excalibur is guarding the SB.

SB really need Excaliburs defenses.
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I disagree. I like weak starbases, you have to carefully plan their defense.

I rarely get up to excalibur when I play so it's not relevant to me

Basically, what I'm saying is that basing on the rule of offer and demand, the more SB you build for something the less each one will be useful.

So if you bring more offer, each offer will pay less.

That logic works only for production SB. Cultural SB increases multiply each other: 3 party palaces in 1 sector give crazy bonus. Miltary SB increase just add up. Not sure about trade.
Getting to Excalibur isnt hard in a rare/huge galaxy.

What do you think about additional SB defense mods?

I believe that a starbase should always be weaker than the most powerful ship. Maybe if a starbase could only specialise in defense, but at the moment if you allow further defensive improvements then terror stars and cultural starbases become invincable. Not good.

Paul.

~SDC~

20 starbases can't fit in one sector anymore.. the most you can fit in without multiple resources is 9 and I think that compounding starbase+'s is good and now that the number of starbases / sector is limited I think that the compounding +'s should stay..

Starbases weaker than a ship? They should be 100 times stronger. Why would you (as a nation) invest so heavily in your trade, economy, whatever, only to have the whimpy tinfoil littl toy fall pray to a passing shark?

Truly, starbase modules are far too limiting. We need to be able to design as big and bad-aff a starbase as you can imagine. Modular ship and starbase design, that's what we need.

Oh yeah, and give 'em ranged weapons! pepper the blighters as they enter your space. Mind-melt the friggin . . .

I agree 100% Why should I invest 20 constructors in a SB instead of 4 Avatars.



I disagree. Starbases will never become indestructable. I'm saying that one Top-Of-the-Line ship should be able to damage but not destroy one T-O-L SB.

Since the vote is close, maybe have an option to use one rule or the other in the setup or menu ?

-Doug

Starbases should be much more powerful that any ship because of their vastly greater power generation capacity. Under attack, they could divert power from the Astral Spa and Casino to massive reflectors that invert attacking energy and reflect it back at the attacker.

Or not.
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Aldar, were you a fan of Star Trek Deep Space Nine?

What? Diverting energy from the casino? Never! If you do that, I'll sue you because I would have won when the power suddenly went down. You shut the starbase pretending a massive Arcean attack when it fact you just wanted to steal the 10000bc I was going to make. You'll soon hear from my lawyers.

But starbases are static!

They cannot avoid attack.

They cannot manouver.

Also, think of the game mechanics. Piling 20 constructors onto a single spot and building an invincible starbase with all cultural bonus' within a single turn would be a problem. How to defend against this if you're not at war?

I suppose I don't object so much to the idea of a starbase being more powerful than a ship, just the current effect on the game. Perhaps if every starbase module added to the maintenance, perhaps if starbases were not infinite in capacity and could only have x modules total, perhaps if starbases could only be expanded by 1 module per turn...

Paul.

~SDC~

I've built SB with Overlord II defensive mods only to see 1 Overlord wipeout that SB and lose just 50 HP! I am not saying SB should be invincible. A single ship should not be able to take out a SB.

Lets have a trial period for additional SB mods. If they add to the game then we keep them, else remove them in next build.

Would there be any way to implement it so that the bonuses would stack, but you'd get diminishing returns?

i.e.

Three starbases in a sector, each with the full accompaniment of (let's say) Culture modules. Each starbase would, if in separate sectors, would have a bonus of +343% (IIRC) to Influence. Here, though, the first starbase has the full +343% bonus, the second gets a 1/2 penalty (i.e. produces half the bonus), and the third produces 1/4 the bonus. The net bonus would then be 343*(1+1/2+1/4)=+600% under this method (as opposed to 343*3=+1029% under the current system).

Now, same situation, except one SB is lacking its Party Palace, and is +243, and the third is lacking both the Culture Palace and the Party Palace, and is therefore +193.

Total influence bonus: 343+243*1/2+193*1/4=+513% under this method, +779% under current system.

...actually, come to think of it, Solitair's proposal of giving SBs a finite capacity would work. Extending that further, how about the number of modules for starbases in a given sector being proportional to the number of systems (or planets) in that sector you control? (Empty sectors would get 4, enough to max out a trade base or build a culture palace. Resource mining modules wouldn't count toward the total.)

I think a party palace is more than 4. What about defense upgrades?
Terror Stars with no defense?

I agree the influence bonus needs fixing.

Blah. Hadn't considered that consequence.

In that case, I like my "diminishing returns" system better. I'm hoping Logistics would make this all moot, anyway.

What I said is this:
"the more SB you build for something the less each one will be useful"

It doesn't mean that SB should be more, or less, powerful. It only means that the more you bring of something, the less it is efficient. Of course, the efficiency curve can be different from one thing to another, but always under this rule. I guess it could be brang onto SB pretty easily.