I've been playing now since a long time, and I've came to a conclusion that star bases are quite underwhelming.

They struggle to destroy fleets, and Im not even talking about advent base, which outputs barely any damage at all i bet a fleet of jaruns migrators would be able to take it out. 

Once i did a small test, I placed 4 starbases at a star, where they would need to stop reinforcements coming from one planet, guess what, with the rate of production of one human owned planet with 2 shipyards, basically couple of cruisers every minute 4 fully upgraded vasari starbases (with all the research done) were not able to eliminate the coming ships. More than that, those ships went accumulating, and after some time the bases started to suffer considerable damage.

In my mind, a starbase should be a force to reckon with, at the moment, they are not, limited to be damage sponges, if ever, because with some semi serious fleet you take them out in seconds.

Something that is more like I guess a starbase should be - are the ancient starbases, that can output lots of damage.

That might be OP to be equal, but current damage is negligeble, only able to keep pirates at bay and maybe some week fleets of 10-15 frigates. 

As a constructive suggestion, I would fantasize to make starbases stronger, much stronger in both damage giving and receiving at the cost of maybe limiting the maximum amount of bases buildable. That would involve rebalancing planetary defences (also not very effective) as a whole I understand.

I'm curious to know what others think about it?