The argument seems to boil down to moving the starport back to the planet or defending the starport.  When the shipyard capability is moved back to the planet, will it be ignored like in GC2?  When the planet is under siege, will the defending planet be able to continue to produce ships?  Don’t you think in the last several wars that the opposing forces targeted manufacture centers?  We did it in WWII.  The larger ships (i.e., Cruisers, Battleships, and Dreadnaught) just boost into orbit from the planet surface (trying to remember sci-fi move that has happened in). 

Or, the starport has better defenses to protect itself.  When the shipyard was on the planet, didn’t the opposing ships have to take out the ships in orbit before attacking the planet?  Graphically, GC3 is trying to show the starport, but it reality wouldn’t be on a lower orbit allowing the planet to better defend it?  That one spaceport represents the planet’s ship building capability.  Why can’t the AI have the attacking ships oppose the ships in orbit; it at least buys some time to get more forces into place.  

The US also at present has the most powerful navy in the world and no nearby powerful hostile neighbors, with Russia being the physically closest state which springs to mind and fits that description. Nor, for that matter, have its shipyards been seriously threatened by any opponent aside, perhaps, from the Confederate States of America in the 200 or so years since the War of 1812; Japan and Germany in the Second World War were arguably the closest to being able to pose a serious threat to US shipyards, but WWII-era submarines are at best poorly utilized if ordered to attack shipyards and Japan never really came closer than Hawaii and the Aleutians to any major US shipyard.

Beyond that, the US coastline, particularly in the vicinity of major ports (which are also the regions where many of the major shipyards are found), was fortified during the 19th and early 20th century, including through WWII. While most such installations no longer exist, it is possible to find some preserved in state or national parks or at some naval bases, and which included weapons of calibers up to that mounted in the main battery on WWII-era battleships. Moreover, a significant reason why such installations for the most part no longer exist is that at present static defenses are considered inadequate for the purposes of defending against the kinds of attacks that a modern state could launch against the installations.

I would be rather surprised if it were even remotely common to find private shipyards defended by significant military forces in any state, except during times of war. I would be incredibly surprised if any military forces so utilized could be expected to defend against any large assault undertaken by a proper military force for a significant length of time without the aid of relief forces dispatched from other military forces stationed nearby.

I have only two issues with space-based shipyards (at least, for the moment): the situation that Gaunathor presented, where you have a hostile neighbor in very close proximity who has access to weaponry much earlier than you do, and the situation whereby an enemy launches a surprise attack that takes out most or all of your shipbuilding capability, especially if that enemy can then keep you from recovering that shipbuilding capability. It isn't possible to defend everything all the time, and if that ridiculous expel-everyone-from-inside-hostile-influence-upon-declaration-of-war rule from GCII's United Planets council is in effect at any point during the game, at the very least a human player is capable of abusing this to wreck a computer opponent. Failing to commit enough resources to defend something is one thing; being prevented from defending something by idiotic game mechanics is something entirely different (expelling the shipyard along with the warships is also ridiculous, though at least it wouldn't necessarily leave a high-value target completely undefended, but on the other hand could leave its sponsor worlds very exposed and could significantly reduce the shipyard's value through the distance penalty for production and its expulsion from the location that I wanted it to be in). I'd be perfectly happy to see a compromise where a planet could produce small ships at some kind of efficiency penalty (e.g. a higher production cost to represent the trouble getting it into orbit and not really having the proper facilities for this kind of work, or not being able to make use of one of the ongoing projects or build a standard improvement) and still keep the dedicated shipyards for larger ships and mass production of small ships.

I will also say that I'm a bit ambivalent on the addition of defenses to shipyards, not on any grounds of whether or not the addition makes sense (and a case can be made in either direction, as far as the sensibility aspect goes), but more because the starbase defenses in Galactic Civilizations II were barely worthwhile from the middle of the game onwards. I don't really see the point in having the option to arm the shipyard if GCIII station defenses turn out to be as pointless as GCII station defenses were (though I feel that a large part of the problem for space station defense in GCII was that it was in its own separate branch of the tech tree, rather than being incorporated in with the ship weapons and defenses portion of the tree or as a secondary bonus of the other techs which added starbase modules - between having the tech for it being only applicable to starbases and the number of constructors you'd need to add all the modules, I just don't feel GCII starbase defenses were worth what it cost you to add them to your stations).

So I got a chance to do a little more playing and started a few quick games as Drengin and Terran.

Personally, I think a mountain is being made out of a molehill.

If a player was Drengin and was in an adjacent system to another player or AI, within 4 turns he or she could reach that player with a Bomber M1 by rush-buying the ship on the first turn.

As Terrans, a player can build a variety of stronger military ships after researching the first military tech and then rush-buying a ship, which can be done in 5 turns.

So if a Drengin player was able to direct a military vessel in the right direction on the first turn and go straight toward an enemy, that player could destroy the enemy's starport before it was able to be defended.

The difference in the time it takes to develop a military is one turn.

That being said, I'm still not sold on the idea that starports should have innate defenses.

I don't believe it will solve the problem.

First, my question is how much defense would be enough?

Would a 1/1/1 defense be sufficient? Or a 2/2/2? If one player starts immediately next to a Drengin player, even if a starport had defenses built in, that Drengin player could pump out a ship every 4 turns or so. At the same time, that player would be hard pressed to improve military tech and develop stronger ships. If the non-Drengin player doesn't solely focus on military research and production, the game could be lost because they have no starport. That is true. But if that player does focus on military production and research, it could go either way. Or if that player focused on creating colony ships, they could easily have starports out of Drengin range by the time the Drengin military has reached their home system.

Again, how much defense is enough when a player is determined to rush another player? The aggressor sets the tone for the game (i.e. it's going to be war from the start), and if the targeted civ doesn't follow suit and outwit the aggressor, game over.

Also, much of this has little to do with the starport having innate defenses or not, because a non-Drengin player can be in the same position (constantly barraging other players) within 6 or 7 turns of the beginning of the game--just a few turns behind the Drengin. So regardless of which race you choose, within a handful of turns, you can seek out and destroy the enemy starports and provide defense for your own. This is mostly an issue of player style and strategy.

Besides, I think players should be able to find other players and declare war on them immediately, then attack them relentlessly. That is one style of play among many.

I don't think adding a small amount of defense will prevent players from pursuing an aggressive strategy.

And why shouldn't players have to build strategies to counter aggressive players? Isn't that part of a strategy game? I think there are probably many strategies to counter aggressive players. For example, as a countermeasure, non-Drengin players can colonize outside of the Drengin range, build a starport (out of range), and continue colonizing while their home system is besieged. Set the home system to research only and let the other systems pump out ships. Such players may not have their home system producing ships, but while the Drengin are busy building military vessels, the other player can be building an infrastructure that will quickly overpower the Drengin.

However.

I do think other factors will have to be tweaked in order to make an aggressive strategy take a little longer to pursue. A couple suggestions for balance (I'm not suggesting all of these together, just that some combination of them might provide better balance):

1. Because Drengin start with military, give them one less move point by default relative to the other races so it takes them longer to get to the other civs.

2. Increase the size of starting weapons and/or starting life support so the military vessels that the Drengin start with (and those other civs can build early on) have even smaller range, but not so the Drengin colony ships are affected.

3. Modify the algorithm that places starting planets to always keep players a minimum of two systems from each other so that the Drengin will always have to colonize first before attacking (unless a player encroaches on their territory). This would force the Drengin to pursue other techs (colonization) or, if they wanted to focus on building a massive military first, they could not colonize but be well-defended, then instead of colonizing, they could simply expand through conquest.

4. Make military components more expensive at the beginning so a civ that chooses to build military ships instead of colony ships will not as easily keep up with those that are spreading and developing more production/research. In other words, if the most basic military ship takes longer (say, 5-7 turns at max starting production) and colony ships take a little less time (say, 5 turns instead of 6 at max starting production), a civ that is colonizing can have a couple colony ships out before the Drengin player can destroy the starport. Now the other civ has twice as many planets as the Drengin, and only a couple are within the Drengin's reach.

These are just a few ideas I came up with quickly--I'm sure there are many other solutions. I like the idea of starports being vulnerable because it enhances their strategic importance and forces players to develop innovative strategies. And I'm fairly confident that adding innate defenses to starports will not solve the problem. But limiting the initial military power of the Drengin (and other civs that initially pursue military), I think, would create better balance.

I don't think that was such a bad move. Quite the opposite actually. It was a good distinction: if you want better ships, go that route, if you want stronger starbases, then go that route. The actual problem, in my opinion, was the sheer number of defence modules (28 for most races), and that they were all over the place. Some were in the weapons and defence branch, some were in the hulls branch, and some were in the starbase branch. It made upgrading starbases defences unnecessarily complicated for both the player and the AI. Heck, you could go straight for Starbase Fortifications and not be able to use those modules, because they required Battle Stations, which was unlocked by Space Weapons.

And then there is the fact, that the Weapons ability has no effect on the attack-value of starbases, and that starbases only have one attack per combat-turn.

As for the starports, I wouldn't have anything against adding defences to them. Finding the right values is probably going to take some time. Adding weapons, on the other hand, is something I would object to vehemently. Remember, starports are mobile. If they had weapons, you could use them to attack enemy ships that get too close, or undefended starbases. It just doesn't make sense to me, that a construction yard could be used a combat vessel. A slow moving one, but still a combat vessel.

How are my suggestions 'malices'? This is alpha and none of the values are set, so reducing some aren't 'malicious'.

I'm suggesting some of the existing techs and components be modified for balance. You are saying Drengin are overpowered, so I'm suggesting reducing the overpowered features for balance.

Maybe offensive values could simply be set to zero when unanchored...

The drengin aren't OP IMHO. I just don't like cutbacks of any type. It's a personal thing.

I do think that life support is already a bit low so I don't support it being even less. The algorithm idea was good, I will say. The rest were too raise the price of weapons, the size if weapons, and slow a race down. That doesn't solve the issue it just delays it.

But again I have a history of lobbying against ideas that want less as a solution, I just hate changing the balance of the game for the start when a better simpler solution could be implemented.

And Paul did a great job balancing on the first public tech tree IMHO.

DARCA.

That's what I ended up doing in Autumn Twilight: combining the Starbase Fortification and Starbase Defenses techs, reducing the total amount of modules for both, and increasing the power of the defence modules.

I'd call it quite unintuitive that you can research better weapons and defences for your starbases, before you are able to use them. The same can also be said for the ability to research more advanced versions of a module (Battle Stations II-IV), before you have the base-version. I understand how the former happened (the overhaul of the tech tree(s) in TotA), but that doesn't make it any better. This is basically a trap for new players and the AI. They are wasting time and money researching a tech that doesn't provide them any benefit, because the requirement to use it is somewhere else.

Maybe "distinction" wasn't the right word. "Distinctive" would have probably more fitting, but anyhow. What I meant was, that separating the combat-modules for ships from the ones for starbases made sense to me. Ships don't work the same way as space-stations, so it only makes sense, that you need to come up with different ways to protect them.

Is the current implementation perfect? No, not by a long shot. Could it be done another way? Absolutely. As I said above, I changed how the starbase defence techs work in my mod. However, not all possible ways to implement them would work in GalCiv 2. Especially due to the 100 modules-limit of the AI. Even if that weren't a concern, you'd still have to find a implementation that is fun (or at least "not frustrating"). The easiest way, in my opinion, is to make the starbase defence modules independent from the weapons and defences techs for ships. However, if you have a better idea, I'd really like to hear it.

That could work, but I'd rather not see anything that would require hardcoding. We had enough of that in GalCiv 2.

It depends on how combat is implemented. If there is a turn-limit, then the starport could theoretically "win", if it survives long enough.

That would probably be the best way to handle it. Although, I still stand by what I said about hardcoding.

Yes; we are an opinionated bunch.

Quoting trumpeter87,

reply 41

I agree with you, overall. I think the vulnerability is in light of the Drengin beginning with military tech, which is why I used them as an example. But as I've also mentioned, other civs are only a few turns behind the Drengin if they pursue military right away. The original post is about adding defense to starports due to their vulnerability, and I agree that it isn't necessary since ships can already defend them.
I do think, however, that there is valid concern over how if you start next to the Drengin, you may not be capable of creating defenses for your starports in time, i.e. they are too vulnerable (in this instance). But I think this should be solved in other ways than adding attack to starports (which would be the only way for them to survive an attack).

Quoting trumpeter87,

reply 41

Quoting parrottmath, reply 37

My concerns are that it will force me to play the start of the game the same way each time. i.e. rush weapons so I can defend my starport.

In GCII, opponents early superior fire power didn't mean the end of the game, they could wreak havoc, but unless they had planetary invasion you could recover. Now it all changes. Loose your starport and its all over.

I don't agree with nerfing the initial range for military ships. That's like putting the Drengin on a leash!

Why can't I put basic weapons and defense on my starport  just as an initial deterrent if needed.

What if starports had upgrade 'slots' similar to starbases (upgradable through research), weapons, defense, productivity, cost reduction, etc.

You could decide what was needed depending on the threat level. No constructors needed for upgrade just divert resources internally.

Why should the star port have weapons?

Soooo... how is this different when there is no space star port and the building of ships is on the planet instead?