Once again, fully upgraded they give 145% bonus to attack and defense for all ships within ZoC. I don't think they need more than that, really. I'd agree with perhaps front-loading the bonuses a little more so they're more relevant early on.

I'd like this for more than just military SBs, tbh. I like to use star bases to produce a sensor net, but they're currently not worth it when you can build a major sensor stacker. Replacing the existing sensors with repeatable sensor modules that stack is aok by me - even if they removed the stacking on ships.

As for Node's suggestions:

I'd also strongly suggest dumping the preclusions. Having to specialize starbases is fine without the ZoC lockout, and the ZoC lockout is fine without having to specialize; having both makes certain starbase types a bad option. I'd rather have all the production buffs on my manufacturing world than have an influence or military base, regardless of anything else.

I don't think an MSB should stand up to a whole 25+ log late-game fleet - but it should be able to go toe-to-toe with the even the largest tech-equiv ship in the game fairly comfortably. That way, with a garrison fleet it should be pretty hard to dislodge, but if you catch one undefended then you can take them out.

My basic observations of starbases:

All starbases should have a clear purpose that is very distinct from the others and where their purpose is filled by that type of star base very well.

Culture = influence spread. I think this works well enough. Mining = mining, straightforward. Econ = econ.

My point here is twofold:

1. Non-mil SBs have so many basic Mil capabilities (weapons, defenses). You can literally build a shitton of military construction on the non-Mil SBs. I have to spend more than a full huge 24-construction module constructor to build all the Mil components on a non-Mil SB.

2. Conversely, Mil SBs are kind of neat but kind of meh. They have all the same core capabilities, and their only claim to fame are some support systems which, while useful, are not only non-critical, but they are on separate tech paths from primary weapons / sensors.

I personally would like to see Mil SBs become more relevant in the game. On the side one thing that the game is lacking severely IMO is zone control and control of the raw amount of space ... in space. This is an opportunity for Mil SBs to become very relevant and meaningful.

Once the problem is defined, the solution components seem obvious:

1. Enforce a ZOC around Mil SBs with an automatic heavy move penalty (like -60 to -80%). Mil SB should create virtual collision objects and force the enemy to take out the SB before proceeding in that area (or go around). This collision alone is enough. It enables fleet response to the threat. It makes open borders treaties more relevant. It can enable the Mil SB to actually protect other assets instead of being almost completely irrelevant atm until late late game.

Also, enable the SB range techs lower in the tree (at least the first one). The Mil SB ZOC needs to be able to cover space well, and waiting until the upper tech tiers is just too long, IMO.

2. Upgrade their raw HP at minimum to make them the equivalent of a huge class ship (for HP) and a medium class ship for weapon loadout. The Mil SBs shouldn't be "fortresses", but they should be threatening and more than a speedbump to take out. Remember, the player is spending a constructor to make one, more to upgrade it. All the while it enforces a 5-space alternative cost for other SBs.

The raw HP upgrade doesn't need to be passive. Make the "Mil ring" specific upgrade line for HP class. SB starts at ... small? (when player tech has tiny ships) Each HP upgrade takes it up to med/large/huge. Maybe one more tier at "supersize me" (when the tech level has huge class ships, I think it's legit for a SB to have 1 tier higher HP). So the SB HP tier is 1 higher than the ship size tier for the player.

3. Reduce the military capability of non-Mil SBs. A mining or cultural ring doesn't need Doomrays, Singularities, and class 9001 shields and armor. These are the equivalent of support ships -- weak and needing protection. They shouldn't evaporate to an enemy scout, but they shouldn't be very *militaristically relevant*.

I'd say allow non-Mil SBs to build the basic SB defense tree. Hell, enable them to buy the HP upgrade line too, I change my mind.

Let the Mil SBs be the ones to buy specific upgrades (beam, kinetic, missile, shield, armor, ecm). In other words, an Econ SB can be upgraded with "ye generic beam/kin/missiles" (Omega defense or w/e) and have "ok you're fat like a tank" HP, but be fairly weak due to its lesser damage output (no Doomrays bruh) and no defenses.

A Mil SB will have a full loadout.

These changes would instantly make SBs relevant for map control (solving a general game problem atm) and also make them actually relevant from a combat standpoint after 10 turns. The HP I think is one of the largest things to help them scale at least a little when fleets of a half dozen large ships start to get fielded.

Just like in an MMORPG or MOBA, a functional tank needs two critical things:

1. Enough *threat* to force the enemy to deal with it (in this case, the passive ZOC).
2. Enough defense/durability to take a hit from weaker attacks and let the team catch up (the HP upgrades).

I think that ultimately the MB accomplishes what it needs to, I think it just takes too long to get there.

1) The bonuses should be a bit more frontloaded.

2) Some of the techs (and the military modules) can be consolidated to provide the bonuses more quickly.

3) The bonuses can apply to the starbases own weapons and defense, ensuring it is the strongest of the starbases to take out.

Joeball and Naselus, Thank you. I did not do a cost analysis. Joe you are quite right on cost vrs outcome.

What are your thoughts on Sensors? I know that topic is a HOT tamale but I think a Starbase 'should' be able to see farther than a ship. In my case for MSB's is based on the fact that they are Stationary and do not have to have valuable room reserved for Engines and Thrusters (like on a ship).  I know there are modules which slow down and hamper enemies in AOE but I would like to see those earlier or 'built in' on some of the MSB modules.

Lots of great ideas.

• Front load offensive and defensive modules a bit early.
• Hit Points for all modules so that they take longer to take out. 10 hp per module sounds about right but testing probably is needed
• Possible increased AOE only for MSB and a lower/smaller one for Mining or Econo ones. The AOE here does NOT exude strong influence but 'enhances' attk/def of friendly ships in its AOE.

I consider station sensors to be a bit too weak despite mostly being very cheap relative to similar-tech ship sensors. I personally do not care that I can build a ship with a sensor range greatly exceeding that of a station; something which specializes in a particular task should be better at it than something for which that task is at best a secondary function given even remotely similar investment, and a station + perimeter sensors costs 69 manufacturing (cargo hull + construction module; you can get it to cost less later in the game) whereas a sensor ship with 10 Navigational Sensors and 1 Hyperdrive costs 141 manufacturing (10 navigational sensors at 9 manufacturing points each + 1 hyperdrive at 9 manufacturing points + a cargo hull at 42 manufacturing points). The investment in the sensor ship significantly outweighs the investment in the starbase; I therefore see no problem with the sensor boat being significantly better as a sensor platform than the starbase is, though I think the current degree of difference is a bit much early on; by the later stages of the game, stacked sensors on ships cost so much more than station sensors if you're using equivalent-tech sensors that I really don't care that sensor stations are considerably worse than sensor ships.

I would also add that ship sensor manufacturing costs scale much more rapidly than station sensor manufacturing costs, if you only compare the costs of the sensor components to the cost of the construction modules required to build the station sensors. Sensor component manufacturing costs are 9/9/34/65/123 for +2/3/4/5/6 sensor range, whereas putting the sensor modules on a starbase costs 27/54/81/135 manufacturing worth of construction modules. Additionally, while none of the station sensor modules increase the station maintenance costs, the last three sensor components on ships increase maintenance by 0.25/0.75/1.25 credits per sensor. If you look at the tech-equivalent sensor component for ships and determine the equal-cost sensor range for a station, you get 11/7 sensor range for 27/27 manufacturing (ship/station, Interstellar Sensors versus Perimeter Scanners), (6 or 10)/10 sensor range for (34 or 68)/54 manufacturing (Sensor Array versus Sector Scanner), (7 or 12)/13 sensor range for (65 or 130)/81 manufacturing (Field Detectors versus Surveillance Systems), and (8 or 14)/19 sensor range  for (123 or 246)/135 manufacturing (Subspace Sensors versus Thulium Sensor Arrays). By comparison with equivalent-tech ship sensors, the later station sensors are rather cheap for the sensor range granted. The total benefit of a station sensor is not very good by comparison to the total benefit granted by a ship which stacks sensors, but on the other hand any ship which stacks sensors of the same tech level as the station's sensors is going to be considerably more expensive to build than the construction ships required for the station sensors.

If I were to suggest a change for ship and station sensors, it'd probably be to drop the ship sensors to +1/2/3/4/5 sensor range per sensor (without changing the mass, this reduces the sensor range per unit mass invested by 50%/33.3%/25%/20%/16.7%), or alternatively boosting station sensors to grant +6/12/18/30 sensor range (which makes the later station sensors, which are already considerably cheaper than a ship with equivalent sensor range using same-tech components, much cheaper). If the two changes are combined, it makes the station sensor ranges 10/16/22/34 and roughly equivalent to a ship with an equal investment in Interstellar Sensors (27/54/81/135 manufacturing points can buy 3/6/9/15 Interstellar or Navigational Sensors; at +2 range (current Navigational Sensors or Interstellar Sensors using the revision suggested) per sensor a ship would have 8/14/20/32 sensor range with that many sensors, or 9/18/27/45 sensor range using the current Interstellar Sensors; as for why interstellar sensors, they're the most efficient sensor component in terms of sensor range per manufacturing point, though in terms of sensor range per mass each sensor component is strictly superior to its predecessor). I'd stay away from stacking penalties as the game only understands very simple stacking (additive multipliers and additive flat bonuses), and I feel that adding a -X% stacking penalty on sensor components with the game's stacking is a solution which is worse than the problem it's attempting to solve.

It takes no more than 5 construction ships to fully upgrade a station's sensors. That's no more than 5 turns of construction, and if you've gone up the starbase line in the Pragmatic tree, it's no more than two construction ships (i.e. no more than two turns of construction - 1 free module from Builder 3 + doubled construction points from construction modules) if you're building the station from scratch for sensor coverage or three if you aren't, and if you use a construction ship that has more than one construction module that goes down. No, I do not think I'm overvaluing the manufacturing cost here; you can build a starbase with fully-upgraded sensors for less than it costs to build a single Subspace Sensor (proof: Subspace Sensors cost 123 manufacturing. 2 construction modules at 27 manufacturing apiece provide 4 construction points with Builder 5 + 1 free construction point for Builder 3 + a cargo hull for 42 manufacturing says the total cost of the sensor post can be as low as 96 manufacturing points, the starbase costs only 1 credit per turn in maintenance while the Subspace Sensor costs 1.25 credits per turn, and a station with fully upgraded sensors has a sensor range of 19 before bonuses while a ship with a Subspace Sensor has a sensor range of only 8, despite costing roughly 25% more before even factoring in the hull cost or anything else at all that you might want to put on the hull, and that's for only a single sensor).

To which my response may be summed up as "so what." Starbases are not intended to fight fleets on their own. Starbases are supporting infrastructure (yes, even culture bases); they exist primarily to enhance your other stuff, not replace it. If you are sufficiently concerned about fleets which can destroy your starbases with minimal losses, then protect your starbases by keeping actual military assets in the area (or far enough forward to prevent enemy fleets from reaching the starbases), don't rely exclusively upon their defenses.

The only part of the starbase's cost which is unlikely to be lower than that of the fleet is the construction time required; maintenance is likely to be trivially insignificant by comparison, and it's unlikely that the manufacturing invested is going to be any greater.

If you are unable to maintain control of a region of space, you should not be able to guarantee that all of your stuff is safe. If you are able to contest control of the space, you should be able to punish attacks or raids which take place within that space. If you are able to assert control over a space, your stuff should be largely safe from attack by anything that wants to survive the raid - yeah, sure, maybe that fleet wiped out a few starbases, but if they lost the fleet, who really lost here? Regardless of the difference in time invested in creating it, a fleet is more valuable than a starbase. Fleets project power, they can defend a region, they force your opponent to take adequate steps to respond to the threat (usually, this means bringing in one or more fleets to counter the threat of attacks by your fleet, and it is entirely reasonable for a single ship or fleet threatening an area to require a significantly greater commitment to fend off the threat than was required to bring the threat into being), they can seize control of an area. Military starbases can do none of these things without fleet support, nor should they to any significant extent since you can combine starbases and fleets, but they do offer a considerable advantage to your fleets within their area of effect. Military starbases are lightly garrisoned fortresses by late game; without additional forces, they should not be able to stand against a full-scale attack and shouldn't really be much more than a speed bump. Garrisoned well, they are considerably more, and on top of that they offer considerable advantages to any of your fleets fighting under their influence. The current setup adequately models the advantages of the attacker (who can require the defender to make a significantly greater expenditure of force to protect everything in the threatened area) and defender (who has an advantage in unit quality due to fighting from what is effectively a fortified position and so will not require quite as many units in any given battle to match or overpower the attacker despite needing more total units to protect everything), though it uses a land war model rather than a sea war model.

If a reasonably large raider can kill three or four of my stations but is in turn killed by my fleet, I consider that a fair trade; dealing with that raider by making the potential targets too strong to attack would (and should) require a significant commitment of my fleet, and destroying that raider frees up any forces committed for such purposes to be put to other tasks. There has to be some risk to leaving a region without defending fleets, and if a starbase requires a sizable fleet to take down even without a supporting defensive fleet, that risk just isn't there to any significant degree.

This, utterly this, totally this and all the this. Let's not forget it. Military Star bases are there to make it easier for a fleet to hold an area. They aren't there to hold the area themselves. They're not meant to defend a planet, though again they can make it easier for a fleet to defend a planet. It is not a unit. It is a target that must be defended with units. Ultimately, the starbase is a force multiplier - it is not a force in itself.

While I think MSBs need a buff to make them immune from individual ship raids, I do not want to see them becoming single-handed denial-of-space units like some players seem to be asking for.

The number of tiles observed by an object with a sensor range of R is equal to 3R^2 + 3R (+1 if you include the central tile, i.e. the tile containing your ship, station, or colony), not pi*R^2; we're working with hexagonal grids, not circles. As an approximation, it's not terrible to approximate via circle, but the formula isn't that difficult to work out and it's not that difficult to use. This gives an area of 3997 covered by a ship with a sensor range of 36 and 1141 tiles covered by a station with a sensor range of 19 (these include the tile containing the ship and sensor). Furthermore, you are computing area per manufacturing point, not sensor "length" per manufacturing point, when you divide the area covered by the manufacturing cost.

Beyond that, I would question whether or not you actually care about how much area is observed. The primary thing that matters about sensor range is how much advance warning you can get, and for advance warning it is mostly the sensor range that matters (granted, because this is a turn-based game, you more or less need to be able to observe the tile in which a ship ends its turn in order to detect its approach, but this is still more a question of having something close enough to the tile to observe it than a matter of how many tiles are observed; two million tiles observed that aren't in the right place are worth nothing, except in that they provide knowledge of where the enemy is not). It is sensor range, not total observed area, which determines the minimum number of moves required to be able to attack a target without the target having any warning of the attack. It is sensor range, not total observed area, which determines how many turns of warning you have before an attacking fleet hits the observer (i.e. how much time you have to respond to a threat). It is sensor range, not total observed area, which determines how many observers I require to provide a target point with a minimum effective sensor radius*. It is sensor range, not total observed area, which determines how wide the outer edge of the sensor bubble is and thus how likely it is that a ship will pass into my observer's sensor bubble. I could not care less about having up to date information on every unoccupied tile within 5, 10, 19, or 10,000 tiles of every game object I own. I care about whether or not I detect an oncoming hostile fleet in time to react to it effectively, and for that it is sensor range that matters, not the total observed area. Even for exploration it is not the total observed area I care about so much as the length of the leading edge of the sensor bubble (which, under the system used in GCIII, is 2R + 1 tiles), as the maximum number of tiles I can reveal per turn while exploring is equal to the product of the number of move actions on my exploration ship and the length of the leading edge of its sensor bubble.

The later station sensors are unquestionably dirt cheap in terms of sensor range per manufacturing point; your counterpoint of "but manufacturing points per observed area is similar at best" is immaterial because observed area simply isn't something that you should care about. Total area observed is mostly immaterial; sensor range determines how many observers you need to monitor an area, how much advance warning you can get, how close you need to be to another empire's worlds or area of influence to monitor what it does within the region that the computer doesn't want you to send ships through or build stations or settle planets within.

I will also add that you did not compute the sensor range of the sensor ship correctly. Cargo hulls (and, for that matter, all other hulls) have a base sensor range of 2, to which the sensor range bonus is added. Therefore, the sensor ship described has a sensor range of 38, not 36. This is nevertheless immaterial since your assertion that it is the total area observed rather than the detection range which matters is nonsensical. The total area observed has very little to do with how much warning I have of an incoming attack and thus how much time I have to respond to it; since it is how much time I have to respond and over how wide a front I have at least this level of early warning that I care most about out of all the things that sensor coverage gives me, and since even for those situations where I care about how much area is observed (i.e. observation of the activity of foreign empires, for which what matters most is how close my observer needs to be to the targets of interest rather than how much total area my observer can cover, especially since if I require more than one observer to perform my surveillance it is the sensor range which most directly determines the number of observers needed), it is sensor range, not total area observed, that I care about.

*If you wish to make it so that a central tile has an effective sensor range of R with R being uniform in all directions, you will need your observers to be spaced around the central tile in such a way that at least two thirds of the tiles observed are observed by more than one observer, and of the no more than one third of the total tiles observed which are observed by only a single observer, only half will be on the far side of the observers when looking from the central tile, except for those tiles covered by an observer at a vertex of the ring. A nonuniform effective sensor range around a central point has the advantage of offering greater coverage for the same investment, but does not increase the minimum detection range relative to the central tile (it does increase the average detection range, but you're still looking at a function of the sensor range of the observers, not of the total area observed).

This is trivially false. A sensor platform, be it a ship, colony, or station, is only at maximum efficiency if every tile it observes is uniquely observed by the sensor platform and observing the tiles provides valuable information; otherwise, its ability to observe those tiles is redundant (in the case of tiles observed by multiple observers) or unnecessary (in the case of tiles where up-to-date information is not of any significant value), and its sensor coverage is therefore not being used at maximum efficiency. Furthermore, while a sensor ship can be relocated so as to provide coverage where it is needed, it cannot be relocated instantaneously, and it will not always be able to move to its new location by way of a path which allows its sensors to continually provide unique information. Even if it can be moved in such a manner that its sensors will provide at least some unique information on every turn that it takes to move the ship, doing so will not always provide information which is valuable. I have no need of knowing about the present state of tiles 200 tiles from the nearest opponent; it is quite unlikely that there is anything there of any interest to me, so even if moving my sensor ship in such a way that it can observe those tiles while relocating is possible, it is not worthwhile unless doing so does not divert my sensor ship from a reasonably efficient path to its new location.

Even taking 'maximal efficiency' to mean hitting some efficiency target less than maximum efficiency, you still cannot guarantee that a sensor ship will always be operating at 'maximal' efficiency. There are always tiles where turn-accurate state information is of little value, and it's not unlikely that a sensor ship in the process of being relocated will be observing many of these tiles. It is further possible that there will be constraints preventing you from using a sensor ship at something approaching 'maximal' efficiency; perhaps you are disinterested in offending the Iconians by parking a ship in their area of influence despite the optimal placement for your sensor ship being some random point in deep space which for some reason is considered to have a predominantly Iconian cultural identity, or perhaps you're in the process of relocating a few ships and so several of the ships are not going to be providing information on tiles whose state was unknown to you but for those ships, or perhaps you've secured an exploration treaty and alliance with a faction which renders your sensor ships in a certain region entirely unnecessary for the foreseeable future and thus in a position such that they will not be providing valuable information for some time.

I'm not keen on having mutual-exclusives on star bases while they have geographical mutual lock-outs. One or the other I'm fine with, but not both.

MSB should have IMO

1) A great sensor upgrade tree that can come close to current sensor boats with enough investment.

2) Bigger range for all of their abilities by default? (I'm a little torn on this one)

3) 500 HP when fully upgraded. (Still very, very destroyable)

4) Have a great repair aura.

I would then need/want to build one before any major invasion and certainly on defense. I'm not going to get into math, I just think the above would FEEL right to players. And ultimately that is the criteria most people are going to judge things by, not their actual mathematical efficacy, but how it "feels" to build/own/use.

This is in fact one of the two ways to use a defending fleet to protect a starbase. The other way is to use the defending fleet to intercept inbound hostiles at some point between the time of detection and the time at which the inbound hostiles become capable of attacking the station or stations being protected.