Stations use terrible weapons

[duelchaos]

Stations use the worst weapons for what they are intended to do. Why are they covered in disruptors, autocannons, and neutron launchers? Why not weapons that actually have range or do damage? A handful (like 3) battleships can crap on a fully kitted citadel, because the citadel sits there doing nothing because it physically can't do anything, it lacks the range. Starbases are a massive joke and a complete waste of resources. The most they can hope to accomplish is kill like 2 corvettes before they are vaporized by battleships. That's if the corvettes can get into range fast enough. Or they get clapped on by frigates.

[Dark Sun Gwyndolin]

Originally posted by Oakshield:

Originally posted by Bardin Goreksson:

I don't want them to have MORE guns, I want them to have GOOD guns. Granted, I haven't played the game since the combat rework and the associated changes to the Guided slot, so I don't know what stations equip by default now. But I torn my hair out plenty of times because the station insists on filling half its Medium slots with T1 railguns when I have T3 lasers.

Being able to pick what guns go in which slot would solve this problem completely.

So design your own defence stations WITHOUT guns, but use lasers, plasma throwers, torpedos, missiles, hangars, point defence and flak instead.

The more targets you offer to an attacking fleet, the longer it takes that fleet to take your station out.
When setting your defence stations up to deal with long range (hangar, missiles / torps, L-slot weapon), medium range (M-slot weapons like plasma thrower, auto-gun / rail gun - no wait, not those as you didn't want more guns - laster) and short range (point-defence / flak, all the other weapons including missiles) you will be able to fight your enemies fleet at all ranges.

The short range defence stations will deal with the missiles, flak, point-defence and attack craft, as well as all ships set at swarm or picket stance;
The medium range defence stations will deal with the ships the moment they enter medium range, or stay there. Quite often the cruisers and destroyers.
The long range stations will deal with the ships set to attack from a long range; being cruisers, battleships and titans.

Considering there are - in Vanilla - some perks making it possible to have close to or even over 50 defence stations at a citadel class star port, it also means you are able to deal over 70-100K in damage with that station and its defence stations alone.
A number high enough for a lot of AI empires to think twice about attacking you. Especially if you got a fleet nearby dealing that or even more damage.

The AI checks the relative military power if it decides to attack you. I think star ports and their defence stations aren't taken into account. Which means, with a good setup of defence stations you are able to give the AI a very nasty surprise; which works in your advantage after moving into their teritory.


Thorin :)

I'm well aware of how defence platforms work. I want to design the station itself.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by duelchaos:

neutron launchers? Why not weapons that actually have range or do damage?

Neutron launchers have 120 range multiplied by station bonuses and absolutely decimate battleships as soon as they enter the system.

If you want range on your starbases use launcher or hanger sections. If you want damage you need to stack defense platforms, there's only so much a handful of built in starbase weapon slots can do. The starbase is mostly the tank, the platforms are the DPS.

[Wintersend]

I do agree that its a bit ridiculous that the station is the only thing in the game you can't fully customize. I understand that defense platforms are what you need to truly shine, but it does feel like stations definitely over-inflate their numbers quite a bit compared to how useful they actually are. Would be nice to just have more control over the size of the slots they use at any rate like small, medium, large gun modules to specialize in different ways with smalls obviously having more slots and large fewer.

[Mazey]

I feel like this whole discussion has missed the reason why it _feels_ like stations are underpowered.

The key things is that in almost all cases your enemy can see the station before they attack and, as such, aren't going to attack until they feel they can win.
The result of this is that your stations always lose. Not because there aren't battles they could have won, but because they are always denied the battles they can win.

As such, I like to use them as bait. Have a fleet a jump away then, when the station is attacked, jump the fleet into the system. The combined fleet + station combo will devastate the enemy fleet that was only strong enough to take the station alone.

[Buzzard]

The auto-generated station loadouts are much like the auto-generated ship designs. Sad.

As mentioned before, stations have the option to build buff/debuff utilities, like the range booster, comms jammer (for slowing down the enemy), and the Defense-Grid supercomputer (which massively boosts defense platforms)
Speaking of defense platforms, you can custom design your own, and build up some impressive and unpleasant surprises that an invader won't quite be expecting. You can choose to ignore what the station has for weapons, or seek to work with the default layout.

Yes, I would love to be able to refit, or pick out gun layouts for stations in advance. Barring that, I'll leverage what I can change to work with other options. Leaving a flock of defense platforms, combined with the station's bonuses, can give a slightly tardy reinforcement fleet some extra time to mop up the mess.
Station + platforms + even a small fleet = bullet hell for the other guy. If the AI truly ignores station power (as when choosing to attack, give it a nice 'weak' fleet to go after, right close to your handy meat-grider station.

[VoiD]

Have not played since the combat rework so I'm using old data.

But yeah, stations were always known to be poorly designed, their only real function was fooling the AI into thinking it couldn't attack, even though it would easily win if it tried, or baiting a moderate AI fleet so you could ambush and destroy it with your own.

Part of it seems to come from their large HP pool, which, for a sitting target, is kind of useless, but a great part comes from, as you said, inflated numbers from completely useless weapon choices that, most of the time, don't even get to fire.

That being said, while stations are nearly useless and only really function as a scarecrow/FTL inhibitor (which gets ignored by the only real threats of the game, the endgame crisis), platforms aren't as you could chose proper, useful weapons for them and create a massive alpha strike as soon as an enemy fleet enters your system if you have enough stacked bonuses and ascension perks/traditions for them.

[Dark Sun Gwyndolin]

Originally posted by Mazey:

The key things is that in almost all cases your enemy can see the station before they attack and, as such, aren't going to attack until they feel they can win.
The result of this is that your stations always lose. Not because there aren't battles they could have won, but because they are always denied the battles they can win.

Losing a station because the enemy had a stronger fleet is fun. Losing a station because the auto-designer is an idiot is not fun.

Originally posted by VoiD:

That being said, while stations are nearly useless and only really function as a scarecrow/FTL inhibitor (which gets ignored by the only real threats of the game, the endgame crisis), platforms aren't as you could chose proper, useful weapons for them and create a massive alpha strike as soon as an enemy fleet enters your system if you have enough stacked bonuses and ascension perks/traditions for them.

Whenever I was building a combat station to sit on a chokepoint, I would fill it with Hanger modules. There's only one type of fighter with ever-increasing power (barring the Amoeba and Preytheon sidegrades), and with the new combat rework, fighters launch immediately when the enemy enters the gravity well.

[Supply Slut]

As much as I like the idea of customizing the base weapon slots and what weapons your modules put on there, I think it would probably make starbases too strong without other balancing.

These things are meaty, and if you could get even one L slot on there on even a star fortress you could probably stop multiple battleships for far, far fewer alloys then it takes to build those battleships. This would make it extremely easy to fortify systems even with lower tech. Either ai would use this too and the early game would be slow af with fleets unable to kill any upgraded starbases, or the ai would never do this and it would just be a gift-wrapped advantage to the player.

[Dark Sun Gwyndolin]

Originally posted by Supply Slut:

As much as I like the idea of customizing the base weapon slots and what weapons your modules put on there, I think it would probably make starbases too strong without other balancing.

These things are meaty, and if you could get even one L slot on there on even a star fortress you could probably stop multiple battleships for far, far fewer alloys then it takes to build those battleships. This would make it extremely easy to fortify systems even with lower tech. Either ai would use this too and the early game would be slow af with fleets unable to kill any upgraded starbases, or the ai would never do this and it would just be a gift-wrapped advantage to the player.

If giving starbases fully-customizable slots would make them too powerful, then nerf the durability or slot count to compensate. But balancing through stupidity is inherently unfun.

[Druitt]

One of my favorite Stellaris events so far was when I put my chokepoint in a pulsar system -- all shields nullified -- and created platforms that target armor/hull. (In addition to torpedos and hangars as modules.) My neighbor declares war on me, and just after that I lost a starbase race with my entire fleet in that system, so when my other neighbor won (and had closed borders with me), my fleet got hyperspaced and I had no fleet until they reappeared.

On top of this, the enemy had a pretty potent force (for early game) that dwarfed my fleet anyhow. So I zoomed in to watch the battle, and my starbase tore them to shreds. They lost the war right there.

On a more serious note, I've found fleets plus well-built/upgraded starbases are pretty potent combinations against AI. Sure, as a player, you can snipe down a starbase with three battleships, so in multi-player I imagine it's frustrating. But single-player i've never had the AI do that to me and starbases do shape the terrain favorably for my battles.

[Stormwind]

Building walls in space is expensive. It would be nice if we could get the wall to be paid for by the very people trying to bypass it. I am sure they could be convinced to do so.

[Mjr.Death]

Originally posted by Stormwind:

Building walls in space is expensive. It would be nice if we could get the wall to be paid for by the very people trying to bypass it. I am sure they could be convinced to do so.

Being a barbaric despoiler really makes them pay for these things.

[❤ Sly Succubus ❤]

Originally posted by Ragnarr Loðbrók:

*builds a wall in the space*
*Attackers just fly over/under it* xD

The Phanon Great Wall would like to know your location.
It and its silly amount of 34 surface mega structure turrets.


Yes this is a thing, its from Ancient Cache of Technology and its literally a system-spanning terra-rank mega that effectively uses 3 rings each with I think 9 mega-turrets on them, each turret having 20 weapon slots which can be even more silly when upgrade to maxed out at 40 with 5 x-large and 2 titan slots.

wont matter what your fleet is, every Phanon great wall I've seen whether its under AI control or a player makes fleets regret entering the system with more lasers firing at it then the deathstar mk 1 had on its entire surface.

[❤ Sly Succubus ❤]

Originally posted by sans Of Borg:

What mods are those?

Ancient Cache of Technology (Its DLC Beyond the Gates and Secrets of the Shroud)

At War 3.6 (Basically reworks the entire combat system from the ground up by adding new weapons, armors, shields and station defenses

Gigastructures (In context the Asteroid Defense Cannon is worth its weight in gold sometimes)

And while I would say you can ignore this one due to its size, NSC2 Season 7

Giga
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1121692237

ACOT
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1419304439 < Main Mod
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1481972266 < Secrets beyond the Gates
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2820330517 < Secrets of the Shroud

At war 3.6
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2506923529

[Mazey]

Originally posted by Shizune:

Gigastructures (In context the Asteroid Defense Cannon is worth its weight in gold sometimes)

You talk about the asteroid guns but don't mention the Maginot defence planets?