There are no invulnerable defenses in Sins...if there were, stalemates would be common.  Starbases need to be supported by fleets.  Besides, the Loyalist ability to have 2 starbases is pretty huge in other ways than just defense.  It allows you to have additional capabilities off of the planet like manufacturing and trade as well as the defensive capabilities of a frontline starbase.  Novaliths are also very powerful.  Even when a planet is protected by a starbase from loss due to bombardment, the debuff is very damaging to the enemy economy if you hit enough worlds with them.  This just helps tip the tide in your direction as the late game TEC war economy grinds down its enemies.  But if on the other hand you have been losing and hiding behind your starbases all game while your enemies grow unchecked, you are going to have a hard time turning things around. 

My advice is to play Vasari a bit and see what it is like fighting good TEC players and decide if the grass is greener.

TEC Loyalists are meant to support large fleets and consolidate advances. Alone, TEC Loyalists fare very poorly. The way the upgrades and fleets are structured, they seem highly attuned to multiplayer battles, supported an allied fleet with a more offensive purpose. I've played before in matches with my cousin using Vasari Rebels while I used TEC Loyalists, and they do a very excellent job of allowing my fleets to stay alive long enough and cripple the enemy sufficient to allow us to win against enemy fleets 2x larger than ours. But this is also its greatest weakness. 

Its so good and attuned to supported other more offense oriented fleets and consolidated advances, that on its own it really suffers from all those support based dynamics. It doesn't have great offense abilities, which means that on its own it can't really advance as effectively as the other factions, which leads to problems as it can't continue the advances as effectively. The 2 SB upgrades are more of a platform to delay a potential enemy attack from the rears and flanks to allow u to pull sufficient forces from the main advance fleet to arrive and push them back. 

By number on paper yes. In reality I think that actually the Vasari have the best defense. Orky is murderous as it cannot be avoided for long. Just 4 Phase Missile turrets with Disruptor Nanites mean that your enemy wont have ANY regeneration for 5! minutes. Then they have hangar defenses that actually stop enemy bombers..... and of course the can build phase stabilizers... meaning no matter where there fleet is and where you attack them... they will be there in under 2 minutes.

Did I mention that they have sensors that can detect any phase jumping ship in the entire galaxy? Not like you can sneak onto them.

TEC Loyalist comes second with TEC Rebels close behind, who are then followed closely by Advent Loyalist and then Advent Rebels.

The main problem with the defense advantage of TEC Loyalist is that is isnt as large in real life as it is on paper.

Militia Armor.... the only tech that really makes a difference. Could use more levels in late game though.And come earlier with lower values. Below Tech level 5 the TEC Loyalist dont defend a single bit better than the TEC rebels.

Hardened defenses.... nice in theory... but in practise by the time you can have it it wont matter how durable those turrets are. Your enemy will be fielding so much firepower, they will die in no time.

Twin Fortresses: Awesome in theory... but in practise no sane enemy will attack a fully upgraded starbase directly. Let alone two.

Instead he will think of ways to destroy it from afar = bomber spam.

Now, if there is a second starbases... it just takes the double time.... but it still dies without doing anything but dellaying you enemy for a few more minutes. So there is not much of an Advantage in having two starbases instead of one. 

It might be a good idea to give powerful flak to the TEC Loyalist starbase. That way enemies would be forced to engage it directly or waste valubale money on anti structure cruisers.

Imho TEC Loyalist need a good defensive advantage from the early to the late game. What is there currently comes to late and is not enough.

Colony pods are an absolutely terrible upgrade. For the cost it takes forever to repay themselves. The TEC extra trade and Advent max allegiance upgrades are much better economic investments.

I disagree, I find the Vasari defenses the easiest to deal with on their own late game. The reason for this is they have the worst repair bay, and the Orkey has no area of effect abilities, meaning large fleets have a big advantage over it compared to the other Starbases. The big difference with Vasari defense versus others is that bombers have a much harder time with it thanks to those hangars you mentioned and that the starbase can chase carriers, but once you have a large enough conventional fleet they're not that hard to blast through.

no the colony pods go in the star bases away from the front not directly near the main battles

o darn i was hoping that what you said about repair was true it would make me feel better

Yes, but compared to Meteor Storm that can hurt an infinite number of targets, there comes a point when the fleets are so large that normal weapons are always worse than AoE abilities. This is the point when the Orky begins to lose ground, as it is only hurting a relatively small portion of your fleet at a time (I'd say its rare the Orky ever attacks more than 10 targets at once, unless you have corvettes flying everywhere, when its max is 20 with research firing on all sides), and it has no way to disrupt tanking and healing abilities. The Orky's advantage is that it can't be sniped, but if it actually has to engage a large fleet those AoE abilities are irreplaceable.

I'm not disputing this, as I said against carriers Vasari clearly have the edge. I'm just saying if you attack a starbase with a fleet (probably not a good idea but sometimes time is of the essence), I find the Transcendia is by far the most dangerous, and the Argonev can be the hardest to take down. Any Starbase is a good Starbase to have on your side, but I find the Orky does not do anything near as well in this situation, probably a good thing given a VR starbase with AoEs would make them better than titans.

Also, I don't know the OP so I'm not sure if this is directed towards single or multiplayer. If it's single player, the Vasari weaknesses become far more pronounced.

The Orky however has one of the highest armor ratings, debris vortex and frontal deflector shield. Also dont forget Regenerative Hullos for VL and Armor Restoration and Shared Shield Tech for the VR.

A fully upgraded version of frontal deflector will only allow half of your damage trough..... thats better than the highest level of group shield. Now if you manage to surround the Orky to negate the thing it can make full use of all banks, bringing its effective firepower to terrible levels.

Also note that one weapon group is phase missiles... you can easily double the infocard value for damage for them.

Actually this is another weakness of TEC Loyalists.... it is somewhat dfficult to have more than 1 side of a stationary starbase to target an enemy fleet moving in for the attack. So two starbases more often than not just dish out the firepower of 1 starbase being attacked from two sides.

Which is still nothing to sneeze at... mind you..... but still somewhat dissapointing.

IF you want to fire on the enemy with more banks... you need to increase the distance between the starbases.... which is bad for defending this starbases.

But back to the Vasari.

Yes, a lone Orky is somewhat less dangerous than a lone TEC or Advent starbase. However when supported by tactical structures its imho easily becomes the most powerful.

The Orky is an starbase entity and it can move. Many abilities do not affect starbases for balancing reasons against TEC or Advent starbases.  But this also means that many abilties cannot be used on the "super ship" orky. #

Exactly.

And that is exactly the problem.

"Can" hurt. Not does, but can.

Dont get me wrong.... a very large fleet attacking an Transcenia will indeed show terrible performance. The problem with Meteor Storm is that is it somewhat overrated.

750 damage may sound like a lot.... but considering the cooldown and shields and armor it doesnt add to very high DPS.

On the other hand, there is nothing to stop the enemy fleet from leaving the range of the ability.... or disabling it alltogether.

Now the best fleet killing Advent SB is 2 points meteor, 2 points mass disorientation, maxed out armor and one additional hangar or weapon upgrade.

But it remains a very slow killing... one that the enemy can interrupt.

Even with maxed out abilities.... you wont get more than 3 or 4 meteor storm out before the enemy can leave the range. Only the fragilest of ships dont survive that. And this is assuming you have Mass Disorientation on it... without it make that one - useless -l meteor. 

Ever since the relase of rebellion there is a new danger to your starbase... an enemy Titan pounding it.

Now Mass Disorientation has the - not well known - effect of disabling all weapons on non capital ships. This is the sole reason why the Transcenia can survive absurd amounts of enemy frigates....  because they may not fire for quite a while. On capitalships weapon damage is lowered, further helping in durability. But that increased durabilty is all the Transcenia has against enemy cap ships and Titans. On the other hand having maxed out weapons on a TEC or Vasari starbase is a more common and interesting choice, as it will help against both large fleets and fewer hard targets.

Imho the Red Button is the best AOE a starbase can have and it is a shame they nerfed it, especially for the TEC Loyalists.

- Good range

- Cannot so easily be disabled

- Immediatly effect

- Kills strikecraft

If your enemy is directly attacking your starbase I agree about the Orky being weakest.

TEC

Advent

Vasari

However, any non direct attack - which is far more common as nobody wants to loose his fleet to a starbase - change the ranking to this:

Vasari: A very powerful battleship.... its lack of AOE abilites also means that there is very little you can do to lower its damage output. Combined with a phase stabilizers Vasari worlds are nearly invulnerable..... Fleet + any SB = though... fleet + Orky = unbeatable

TEC: Big red button and high durabilty save the day.... if nothing else.

Advent: Meteor storm worthless against larger ships, Mass Disorientation prolongs the battle but will not win it under most cirumstances. Also both abilities can be disabled... a single Kortul and your starbase is out of abilites very shortly. 

Yes... with mostly frigate fleets you could use it more often.

Agreed. This also sadly makes the tech Twin Fortresses mostly lackluster.

I really think that the TEC Loyalist... and only the TEC Loyalist starbase should get

- range increase

- anti strike craft ability

Nope it doesnt. And neither does Repulsion affect Orkys.... ever since Titans were introduced repulsion has lost a lot of its power.... sure its awesome against heavy cruisers..... but that about it.

EDIT:

And then there is the awesome way of using the Orky first offensivly and then defensivly.

There is very little... if anything actually your enemy can do against an Orky being "rushed" on him. Actually I really think we should put a very hard nerf to the weapon and armor upgrade time in hostile gravity wells. Right now, once the thing started building your pretty much scewed until lategame.