How do you feel about defenses in the Enhanced 4X Mod?

I sympathise in defensive structural weaknesses. I want to iterate I don't have problems defending my planets, but defensive structures seem to usually be a waste of resources sometimes.

To put matters into perspective if you play TEC Loyalists and manage to apply the defensive bunker complexes and inter-planetary defences onto any planet, it is still very weak even at its fullest level with the autocannons and missiles. The same can be said for the Bakuran complexes minor-faction ability where, despite their credible investment - are usually barebones helpful to besieged planets. Damage output is usually atrocious and seem to only throw away raiding parties unless they have a capital ship with them.

Combined with shield and armour regen values with capital ships and their levels, all you need is one strike force, unless the starbases have the terrifying ancient fortress relic, which makes them impenetrable as a result.

Supposedly the only good thing that comes out of defensive structures are their numbers, but there's nothing unique or special even remotely trying to construct bastion-type planets. Though it may be a balancing issue at a core, some factions simply steamroll anything standing regardless of the defences built up. Others will remotely die at the sight of a starbase that's from the base game (star wars factions, primarily.)

With that being said, maybe they should be given some specialisation upgrades by choice so as to expand their capability. Maybe even the development of new turret designs so, for example, TEC gauss turrets are replaced with rapid fire missile tubes, or the Vasari phase missile turret can be given a specialisation upgrade in firing out waves at a higher rate of fire, but less range. Tactical slots are precious but they're usually producing meat-shields to face against a large fleet designed to buy time until reinforcements arrive. You need rock-paper-scissors for defences, but each faction only has one choice that goes in a straight line.

Sins of the Fallen had a really interesting set of ideas regarding capturable moons on planets that act as mini-stations and frigate factories. They can't move, but they provide some nice fire-support at long range and are usually quite sturdy. Different moons had different ability layouts. But, their upgrades were ridiculously expensive (you're making a moon-battle station with all things considered.)

ANYWAY - these are simply ideas or perceived areas that I feel E4X hasn't touched just yet. But the options for the mod are currently limitless, so I look forward to anything planned in the future regarding defence structures.

First to say, this could suffer a bit of objectivity because the use of "Max starbase upgrades" mod and playing mostly against Cruel/Vicious that gives AI a massive early buff to economy and stats(early "free" advanced research).

My apologies for any (if not too many)grammatical errors

Defenses seem to be on a mid point, sometimes they are just good enough to defend a planet but seems to be easily overpowered bit a small focused fleet that can counter it in those cases they are not event worth to use because the waste of massive amount resouces to loose against a small fraction of them, on this point some both vanilla anti-structure frigates are too effective, but usually the problem turn that is almost imposible to counter them without a considerable size own fleet to take them and figthers are most of the time innefective to take them.

Figthers seem to be a bit useless from time to time, specially when the enemy overextend on flak frigates and/or own carriers and with the 50% (or bigger) construction speed penalty, however only some factions, (TEC and Rebelion) have somehow decent defences against figthers and bombers but Advant and Empire really lack this, even the inclusion of the Golan-I just give a early defense but not an effective one since cant provide a effective defense against any number greater that 2 per defense.

Bombers are decent/good in their job, probably too good when in big numbers made enemy figthers to not be that effective here probably would like a rebalance to made them a bit stronger but slower(of get a damage debuff when under attack to resemble their inhability to get in position to freely attack) So they get properly punished by figthers but are freely to do decent damage against nondefended targets (add to the raiding theme) and leave when necesary.

On the other hand, sometimes defences are just to "strong" sometimes when your fleet is not big/strong enough (low level ships) any moderate defence can take a considerable number of ships(frigates) before going down, that work for both sides at least on early, but to late defences are most of the time to delay the enemy but due some circunstances some are better (in some ways) that other, Rebels and advant win because the AOE shield/regen that they gain, making Civil/non weaponized buildings to not take (or really low) damage from indirect fire (side weapons) or aoe, thats because on other factions repair facilities often waste AM/time targeting other less important structure. Small note: also the "summon" an aclamator is kinda useless to be effective specially at that tier.

In a side note, AI get a massive advantage in the passive phase jump delay vs the active phase jump disable because the phase jump delay "disable" the ships for all the time period, while the phase jump disable, stop ships of enter in jump formation so they can stil turn and figth or move.

to summarize:
-Nerf endurance to anti-structure frigates
-Remove fighters construction penalty and make them more effective to take frigates(small targets)
-Buff bombers "possible" damage while nerfing endurance/speed
-Buff/Nerf defenses endurance against ships that should't be really effective against them (small frigates) while making them less tanky against "neutral" damage while taking into consideration all the former points.

Playing Interregnum, I have only seen defenses as a stopgap measure. The fact is, that even with max upgrades only starbases can even really hold a candle to truly stop a fleet in its tracks. Plus the ai will bypass fortress planets more often than not, and gravity well generators or phase jump inhibitors have such removed range you have to play a guessing game to figure out jump vectors or pay a high tac slot cost for wide coverage.

To be honest, defensive platforms are kinda superfluous against me, as I never roll out a fleet that has been stymied to the point that I need to actually put together specialized measures. Most of the Interregnum titans can evaporate or ignore them outright, and anti-structure bombers are basically a win button that you can dedicate like 2 carriers to. It's less a problem in E4X than Interregnum, but honestly making fortress worlds seems kind of pointless, as most of the time I end up needing to have a defense fleet anyway. I often have the research trees maxed out, with maxed tac slots and all the bells and whistles with mini-mods, and it still doesn't feel like it has much impact. As for minor factions like Balmorran defense guns and such- I can't even tell if it's making a difference tbh, the results just arent very visible.

I Wish I had more options or better ways to force engagements against fortress worlds. Maybe add the ability to spawn a defense coordinator craft from your starbases that have more options? Maybe a second tier of starbases, upping tactical cap or adding more research options? New types of defense assets, like Long range guns, Phase jump minefields (that slow down approaches), or planetary "Upgrades" that increase the quality of defenses (or perhaps other things too)