This is the reason I do not bother equipping my bases with defenses or weapons. These are simply a waste of constructor points because a fully loaded star base is still just cannon fodder for medium or larger ships (1v1). I usually just protect them with ships.
That's the main complaint in a nutshell. Even if you spend a dozen or more constructor points on a starbase, putting in more defenses and offense, it's no match for weak fleets of medium hulled ships in the mid-game. I mean it would be understandable if that was a completely unprepared starbase with base level defenses, but to send 12-18 constructor ships to a starbase and not make it harder to kill? Very pointless waste of effort and time.
One limitation on offensive power of non-military starbases could simply to give the (4) starbase types (base, economic, mining, military) different factors in the XML.
Base (not yet specialized): normal
Economic: -25% offense
Mining: -25% offense
Military: +50% offense +50% defense +50% logistics
Removing a fully-built economic/mining starbase should be not be trivial - and removing a fully-built military starbase should be difficult, requiring two fleets of max-logistics if there is a defending fleet (one throw-away fleet to wipe out the defending fleet and soften up the defenders, the other to finish the job).
...
The problem with making the player use fleets to defend starbases are multiple:
- The computer is far better at the micromanagement required.
- The player cannot easily see an overview on the map of which starbases have what defensive fleets in place, instead they have to click on each starbase, then mentally add up the number and types of ships present and calculate multiple numbers in their head. The little green dot over the planet / starbase icon does not give enough detail.
- Hostile ships can easily bypass defending fleets, striking deep within your territory due to how cheap life support modules are and how easily they can be abused by stacking five or ten of them on a hull.
- There is no way to highlight hostile ships on the main map (and no way to dim out other map features that are not interesting).
- The current game design requires economic starbase spam, meaning 3x to 5x as many starbases as you have planets. Putting defending fleets on all those sites is very difficult / expensive.
Some of those problems can be fixed with UI improvements (better control over which icons are bright/normal/dimmed on the main map). Others are issues with game balance (ship +range and +speed module stacking, inability to automatically intercept a fleet within range).
What would be nice is if we could press a "show military power" key and have little pop-up windows appear over every single planet / starbase / fleet that shows offense (B/M/K) defense (B/M/K), logistics strength, fleet speed, and range in place of the normal icon.
