Is it even worth building defensive Starbases?

[Liberty Prime]

I really don't see the point of building defensive Starbases. The naval cap, ship building speed, and energy income are far more valuable and my border rarely gets crossed by the enemy anyways. When I actually do want defense (once I had a wormhole directly to an AE in my territory so yeah I'll defend that) I just parked my fleet there, no need for defenses. Is there a point at all?

[IPWIW]

Fleet move too slow without jumpdrive?

[Sir Crashalot]

If you have chokepoints, then a fully upgraded Citadel there would be invaluable, if cheesy.

In the system with the wormhole, a Defensive Station would back up your fleet stationed there, providing buffs, debuffs and generally providing support.

A 40k power starbase is far cheaper to maintain than a 40k fleet.

[Liberty Prime]

Originally posted by IPWIW:

Fleet move too slow without jumpdrive?

That's why I just park my fleets in chokepoints. They're already where they need to be. Plus I could just use defense platforms for something weak like pirates.

[Liberty Prime]

Originally posted by Sir Crashalot:

If you have chokepoints, then a fully upgraded Citadel there would be invaluable, if cheesy.

In the system with the wormhole, a Defensive Station would back up your fleet stationed there, providing buffs, debuffs and generally providing support.

But would it be better than an anchorage star base which lets me use more ships, which attack and defend, plus there's just basic defense platforms too.

[Sir Crashalot]

Defensive bases at points where they would be useful, anchorages and trading stations everywhere else.

[Cian]

I generally only use them on very important choke points. Like I had a 1 system connection to a fallen empire that I intended to attack. You better believe I built up that starbase first - 23 defense platforms and fully upgraded starbase. Thanks to the 40k power starbase my two 25k fleets were able to deal a lot of damage to their two 55k fleets, and due to the offensive and defensive auras almost all of mine escaped while I killed a third of their fleets. I was able to quickly rally my two fleets and intercept the stronger of their two remaining fleets in a black hole system, just about completely wiping it out. After that they only had one 35k fleet left. Without the defensive starbase to start things off, I would never have won that war.

In another case I set up a defensive base in a black hole system, which was the only connection between the galaxy arms to my fanatical purifier neighbor. He had "superior" fleet power, but after fighting my full fleet plus starbase in that black hole he was "Pathetic."

I generally use all but a couple of mine as energy sources, the trading hubs are just too good to pass up.

[L37]

Early-mid game they are kind of usefull, they delay enemy while damaging him and give enough time for your fleet to arrive.
Late-game... they get stomped by big fleets rather fast and do not provide any noticable defence. The best defence engame IMO are gateways in key systems and fleet or two sitting somewhere near a gateway. Starbases can be filled with anchorages, but since there are unused building slots there anyway things providing buffs/debuffs will be helpfull too.
Also, they are quiet vulnerable to specialized fleets and their fleet power reported seems to be much higher than it actually is. I was building specialized fleet to deal with crystals in "100% shield nullification" system, and it turned out that ships filled with armour and plasma accelerators we able to take down starbase with 2x fleet power with minimal losses.

[templar0122]

Like everyone else is saying, I usually use mine for important choke points, in a game where to get to my capital there are only 2 routes so have them blocked off in both of those places.

Question on this for some of y'all.

is the pulsar's shield nuliffaction bugged or effects less than I thought it did? I was in a recent war and had a pulsar choke point, customized my DPs there to have no shields/weapon damage to armour(beams/missiles/hanger) and it didnt seem too effective against their fleet, my choke point had roughly the same fire power has their fleet.

[Isokon]

Originally posted by templar0122:

is the pulsar's shield nuliffaction bugged or effects less than I thought it did? I was in a recent war and had a pulsar choke point, customized my DPs there to have no shields/weapon damage to armour(beams/missiles/hanger) and it didnt seem too effective against their fleet, my choke point had roughly the same fire power has their fleet.

Did it have the same fire power or simply the same military power? There is also the question how much your opponent relied on shields and anti-shield weaponry.

[【Ｎｉｃｅ Ｈｉｓｓ】]

They are dirt cheap in comparison to fleets and can easily make a system hell to get through.

So yes.

[templar0122]

Originally posted by Isokon:

Originally posted by templar0122:

is the pulsar's shield nuliffaction bugged or effects less than I thought it did? I was in a recent war and had a pulsar choke point, customized my DPs there to have no shields/weapon damage to armour(beams/missiles/hanger) and it didnt seem too effective against their fleet, my choke point had roughly the same fire power has their fleet.

Did it have the same fire power or simply the same military power? There is also the question how much your opponent relied on shields and anti-shield weaponry.

might have been military power. their fleet was at 3k roughly and my choke point was around 3k has well. This was early game with destroyers and corvettes only. their corevettes had missiles tier 2, and i think it was first tier distruptor, had 2 shields and 1 armour i believe. Destroyers had point defense and i cant remember what else for weapons. Balanced between shields and armour.

[bison]

I feel they can be kind of useless because you can just fly around them, unless there is an ftl inhibitor which you dont get very early on.

They are still useful for the ai though.

That said you always need a layered defense so their probably should be a fleet their anyway at such an important choke.

[Trip Fisk]

Originally posted by butters:

I really don't see the point of building defensive Starbases. The naval cap, ship building speed, and energy income are far more valuable and my border rarely gets crossed by the enemy anyways. When I actually do want defense (once I had a wormhole directly to an AE in my territory so yeah I'll defend that) I just parked my fleet there, no need for defenses. Is there a point at all?

normally, you're right, its not really necessary

but there were 2 situations I found defensive starbases were useful:

- when a stupid pirate spawns. usually you don't need a starbase for this, but after it loots and flies out of your territory, you can build a few defensive platforms or a starbase in the lane it'll use to come in your territory and hopefully die.

- I ran into a crisis and was forced to build starbases defensively. I don't know if the starbase system is unbalanced intentionally, but defense platforms seem to turn to ash without firing a shot and the starbases sort of die quickly unless they're citadels. Even as citadels, they soak up damage, but can't defend themselves against a bigger fleet with battleships in it.

so if you're going to use a starbase defensively, you have to build it a bottleneck (as in the enemy will be forced to go thorugh the system). If you can build it up to level 3, give it at least 3 shipyards, and build crew quarters, fleet academy, and communications jammer. Park one or all your fleets there to murder anything that tries to get through then heal, reenforce. If happens to be the citadel is by itself and getting attacked, the communications jammer will buy you some time in getting a fleet closer.

this was really useful in dealing with the prethoryn scourge.

[MightyFox]

You don't need defensive starbases if you don't want them, but they certainly don't hurt to have. From the sounds of things, you haven't yet fought a war on multiple fronts or with multiple enemies. If you can defend your empire by just parking fleets where you want them, good on you, but I find a nice citadle or two protecting my most important systems allows me some flexibility in dealing with aggressive empires that have made a lot of freinds. (The Ai seems to have had a lot of xenophobic materialist focus lately for my spritualist egalitarian games)

[Dogtown1]

Originally posted by Sir Crashalot:

If you have chokepoints, then a fully upgraded Citadel there would be invaluable, if cheesy.

In the system with the wormhole, a Defensive Station would back up your fleet stationed there, providing buffs, debuffs and generally providing support.

A 40k power starbase is far cheaper to maintain than a 40k fleet.

this

its because of this I was able to hold off a great khan with 2 waves of 30k fleets at a choke point