I feel like I'm about to slit my own throat... did I use that expression already this week? :notsure: Anyhow, my terror star alpha strike has also been impacted by the starbase hike. Impacted in a positive, challenging way. Now I can't wipe out the entire galaxy in one foul swoop. It’s been a thrill to face this new situation. Of course 1.13 players are going to kick my butt with that 60k cap because they can finish games much quicker than a 1.19 player. All well... another challenge.

Stardock crew - I should confirm this: 1.19 is like 1.49 as far as logistics, right? I'm actually playing 1.49.

I see nothing wrong with the Cost of new starbases... we've just been spoiled by no cost to startup.. and as Frogboy has stated there is now NO maintanence for starbases so it kinda makes it more worth while.... Just remember to get rid of starbases that are no longer needed or turn them into movable bases and move them ( I myself think that that takes to long to move them arounds.. that its quicker to delete them and build again where you want..)

Don't Shoot me.. but I think that starbases should still have a maintance cost if they arn't built on resources or if they don't have modules installed to make money to offset the day to day running costs.. eg: if you only build culture or military modules it should have a maintance cost attached..

Question.. does it also cost the ai's the same as us.. to build new starbases... asking because they still have a lot of starbases and can't see how they can afford to get them (say 6 starbases real early in the game.. if they don't then they should... I've also noticxed that te AI's are now building starbases in groups of 2.. ie: on one side of a sector then another right next to it in the nexzt sector.. shouldn't they be building up their starbases instead of simply building another one in the next sector.. ???

Well, let me work this out. I've now got 70 starbases (all being built up, and almost all in sectors with my planets, no more than 1 starbase per sector - they're acting as industry, trade and culture boosters for those planets). Been playing for over 400 turns. I've been building them at a fairly steady rate, so this has probably cost me around 140,000 BC in maintenance.

With the new logistics, it would have cost me 496,800 BC to build them! And not a single one of my bases is being used to culture bomb in a foreign sector...well, never mind, I didn't need all that money anyway ;D

Geez, I guess I got it backwards, and if I really was paying attention, I would have realized that this was the intention all the way from the days of the "three parsec rule."

I'll have to re-think the whole thing. Maybe we could move the terror star building up to the beginning and call it "starbase construction" where it would take four constructors just to build the starbase (not terror star) infrastructure with the last one taking 5000 bc to complete. Terror star modules would then be just that - modules.

Bill

~SDC~

My biggest problems with starbases is they're so whimpy. Even with like 8 mods on them (mostly military) I am always very pissed off when one battleship can come along and knock out my 8 military 2 def modded starbase. The way I see it a major major starbase should take a small fleet of ships to destroy, that way it WILL be more advantageous to build up the starbases since they will also last longer. I always see like 2 corvettes moving towards one of my starbases and I'm like nooooooooooooooooooooooooo, but alas, I'm always too late.
BTW, this new penalty, does the cost still keep increasing if some of your old starbases get destroyed? Like is it based on the number you've built, or the number you have?

It's the number you have.

Bill

~SDC~

But you can still trade for AI starbases pretty cheap. Trading starbases doesn't seem to properly count for logisitcs.

The idea of limiting the star base number is good.

And I would not like to punish the modules.

These are my wishes:
1. The values should be tweaked according to the map size.

2. I like the idea to exclude ressource star bases.

3. Influence effect of culture star bases should not multiply any more. At most it should summarize or scale even less.

Thank you for this great game.

Why exclude ressource starbase IF cost tweaked according to the map size?

And if influence effect of starbase add instead of multiplty (ie. influence base calculated on the same base for all starbase in a same sector), it would prevent abuse of party palace.

I think it's actually a little cheaper in 1.19 than in APbeta. But I might be wrong (I never build more than 3 - 5 starbases anyway, and the games lasts a long time after them)



I agree they do seem to still have a lot of starbases. Specially the Arceans. I can still find some 5 to 10 of their starnases, with no modules installed, in one sector. The good thing about this is that when at war, I only attack their resource starbases: if they have to rebuilt them it's now their 14th starbase, and it costs a lot. Sometimes they don't even rebuild them! I guess they don't know how to abandon one useless starbase in order to minimize the construction cost of
of a resource starbase.




I agree: it takes agaes to make a fully maxed-out starbase, just to see it destroied by the one ship that survived the attack against my starbase defense fleet. Even when with huge defenses, they are still destroyed quite easilly.

Maybe during attacks, their defense factor should be fix, instead of a random number between 0 and it's defense value (I'm assuming that it works like the ships during battles). That would make them thougher.

Strange, from what I read, I was under the impression that the cost was based on the number starbases you own and not on the number of starbases you have created. There is perharps a "one turn delay" bug ...

So far, I haven't found any technologies that increase Logistics level... are there none or am I just not researching the right things?

In order to capitalize on resources within my influence area, I need to be able to build 4 to 6 starbases in a large galaxy. Right now, that is essentialy impossible in the early part of the game. In my current game, the Arceans control all the resources in my area except for 2. I only control 2 because thats all I could afford to build for starbases without crippling my economy early on. The Arceans have 8 starbases right now.. and they appear not to be having trouble with thier economy so I am guessing that the AI is NOT paying for extra bases like the Human player is. Just for comparison, the game I am playing is still in the first "Military push" phase and my economy is just now topping 100bc a turn. My economy rating is slightly lower than the Arceans so I am guessing they dont have much more income than I do.

I think this new Logistics/Starbase model needs a bit more work. Right now, I think it punishes the human player in the early game but it probably wont do squat to reduce culture bombing in the end game. Most likely, players will just SAVE UP for a bunch of turns before they send off the constructor stacks to insure they have enough cash onhand to crash build the bases they need for the win.

Also, its true that starbases are too weak to invest in heavily anyway. They are no match for even a single Battleship. I say that a built up starbase should take 4 or 5 dreadnaughts to take out. Otherwise they are just to vulnerable to attack to invest all those modules into.

Rob

add defense to it

I think I have the answer for this behavior; I've seen it happen in several games. When the AI sees an open resource, it dispatches a new constructor to build a starbase there. If the player or another AI gets to the resource first, the computer doesn't recall the dispatched constructor back to home -- it just plonks down a starbase wherever it happens to be. I think that the AI manages ships by assigning "tasks" to them. When a ship "fails" its task for some reason, the AI seems to have a difficult time deciding what to do with that ship. You can see the reason for lots of illogical behavior with transports with this explanation. Plus the AI won't disband ships (at least, I've never seen it do so, even when going bankrupt because of support costs). I do wonder if the AI is really paying the same costs as the player on new starbases...

Seeing as the star bases now cost so much, I can't help but think it would be nice if on disbanding one you could get the constructors back. Obviously a sudden flock of constructors could unbalance things so how about making it so you can only remove one module at a time, and it could even take two or three months to detatch each module. (I've not bothered with 1.19, if it already does this I'll stand in the corner in my shame)

What is the pratical point of having the constructors back if it takes month to disband a starbase?
Better to produce them ...

It saves resources, also on a small galaxy where you only have a few planets it frees up planets for offensive production, alternatively in large galaxies it may be quicker to detach a module from a local starbase than to ship one half way across the galaxy.

Anyway it was just a suggestion, soliciting comments such as yours

With emphasis on the "Deep," which is closer to my problem with the 1.19 mod. Building DS9 should be a difficult endeavor. Building the international space station shouldn't be as hard.

I do like the reasoning behind it and my core woes might be lessened with a drastic reduction in the price of constructors. But it seems to me that if the goals were to cut down on the culture warriors, there's a lot of collateral damage.

I'd much prefer cost to be a factor of modules on the individual base, not construction of the base/number of starbases. After all, plunking down a space refinery shouldn't be that difficult, at least considering we're talking sci-fi. It's the refinery/space mall/death fortress that should be difficult. That with some possible reductions in stack power would accomplish your goals much smoother.

~SDC~

Playing on larger maps is not necessarily harder for building starbases than on a smaller map, because you tend to make more money from the planets you colonizing. 

As for extending range, class 14 planets are excellent for extending range.  Class 13 will do in a pinch and class 12 after I've got Habitat Improvement.  But then I also start with +7 PQ ability.

That's only true up to a point though Cari.

Let's say on a small map you have 3 starbases. You pay 200+400 = 600BC for those bases.

If the map was 4 times larger, and you had/needed 4 times as many starbases (12) (and 4 times as many planets), you pay:
200+400+600+800+1000+1200+1400+1600+1800+2000+2200 = 13200BC

i.e. 22 times as much money for 4 times as many bases, with only 4 times the income!

But you don't necessarily need 4 times as many starbases on a map that's 4 times larger. 

If you use starbases to extend range, you're not going to need as many because you'll have more planets available to colonize that you can get to before the AI can, particularly if you research propulsion and range technologies early.   So, on a gigantic map, range is not as big a deal in the colonization stage.  If you get into war too soon, it is a problem, but range extending starbases are just going to be easy targets at that point.

 

In my last 1.19 game, I park 1 or 2 Capitol ships on or near each of my starbases. Went to war. My 2 Dreadnoughts were overwhelmed and I lost my maxed defense/resource starbase.

I would like to see additional military/defensive modules. why do we need to park multiple capitol ships on a SB? surely a SB that took 20 constructors to build should be able to survive an Overlord attack, and repair itself and its defenders in 2 to 3 months. This should hold true for Excaliburs (in 1 game it took 6 AI Excaliburs to destroy my TS and its 3 excalibur defenders)

Personally I was VERY unhappy with the new starbase economics, but I do appreciate Stardock addressing why they've done this. I have never use the above-mentioned strategy, but I do see the imbalance in it. As someone who does find the "culture bomb" a powerful tool, I think the score penalty, whereby if I want to win by culture, I am penalized 40% of my score, is enough, thanks. For this reason I have begun to play for military victories of late.

As for the person who thinks 20 starbases is the same cost as before....
200 + 4 + 6 + 8 +1000 +12 +14 +16 +18 +2000 +22 +24 +26 +28 +3000 +32 +34 +36 +38 +4000 = 42,000 BC
Or approximatey 20 starbases (Double what I've ever built in a single game) for 210 turns.

And don't forget, if there are starbases you need to mine early, you will lose the game, as I learned my first two times - your early investment will cripple your economy, when you should be growing.


~SDC~

Peace Phoenix, you're right. What I meant is I only destroy their resource & big social production starbases, leaving all the little simple ones untouched. There were about 10 of them. So if the AI wants to rebuild the resources starbases I destroyed, it will cost them a lot since it will be their 11th, 12th or 13th "owned" starbase (even if in fact it is their 20th or 25th constructed one, since some were destroied before). In my current game my overlord took out 3 major resource starbases before being destroyed (which underlines the fact that they are pretty easy targets, even if THIS time I am not complaining )




Actually when DS-9 was build it wasn't such a Deep space station, since Cardassia was just a few hours away... It became "deep" when "we" took it from them

Much like the situation when I buy starbases from the major AIs. I frequently pay close to 10000 bc per starbases, I figure the price is well worth avoiding the tedius task of building the starbase up on a gigantic map. It will be an even better deal in the new version.

~SDC~