Overhauling Starbases
Edward wrote: “The home to everyone is to him his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose”
When we look at the state of STA3 we see many new additions flying into the game based on player feedback however we have to be true to our vision of what a strategy game is and must be. Often you have reviews where people feel that the races are not unique enough that nothing sets each races play style apart, this is not something I necessarily agree with nor do the other devs after all were bound to an engine and the rule of the base of strategy games, order through controlled chaos and that everything must be achieved through balance where possible hence we started to rework our defensive structures.
Star bases are one of those areas where its purpose is to defend their sides culture, their home and so the star base is a castle (see what i did there) As castles go, star bases previously have been vaporised so quickly they didn't feel like a worthwhile construction effort and that had to change.
Each star-base that you will see coming in our dev diaries over the next few news posts will show off its abilities, some are pretty standard abilities such as tractor beams and others take from their capital ship allies and each starbase is equipped with a titan level superweapon... or a game changer for that system it is defending.... OOOH thats perked your ears up i bet!
Federation Regula Class Outpost
The federation outpost is a power house being able to be set-up for defensive or economical gain, you as a player must choose your path wisely will you increase your overall system productivity while having weaker defences or will you arm it to the teeth with additional hull, weapons and special defensive equipment.
The outpost health pool has seen and increase in both hull/shields and mitigation making it much more deadly that previously however due to its stationary geosynchronous orbit in gravity wells it is a large target and while capable of taking large amounts of incoming fire is susceptible to long range artillery devices such as the federations own tricobalt long range torpedo cluster warhead
Federation Spacedock
The federation spacedock as seen in the movies and TV Series is the ultimate facility it can act as shipyard, tradeport, colony centre or alternatively can be equipped as defensive platform, if fitted correctly it can contain the Corbomite Reflector Superweapon (Subject to change) which reflects 100% of incoming damage to enemies attacking the Starbase.
as always these changes are not final yet but they do offer a glimpse of our vision for the mod, i hope you enjoyed this diary and ill see you all soon
this is Bane signing off!
Will be interested to see how it balances out, I thought the original ones firepower and durability was reasonable for what they were and what they costed, are the prices going to go up to scale with the new increases?
well currently you can pop a fully upgraded starbase in under 10 seconds if you chain abilities in the right way
Can you upgrade the amount of upgrade slots they have, just enough to designate it as fully defense or fully resource?
Just a question, idk if it is within the game engine, but is it possible to capture bases? For example, i am federation and i wanted to attack the dominion, could i take over their star base (then get all geeky and name is DS9)?
Having that starbases as actually useful defence will be awesome, finally the investment feels worth it!
The one problem I do have with this dev diary is that, in the vid, the engines on those dominion strike cruisers just didn't look right. They just look to big. I mean from the front its looks fantastic and then it turns around and its just uuuhhh.
I guess i don't like big butts and I cannot lie.
lol napalm ill mention that to max :P
will starbases be able to stand up to the borg ai now (as in cap ships)? ie. in a fight between max starbase and max borg cube who would win?
Also if i remember right the old fed starbase had maybe 50-60 000 health and now how 180 000. The old unicomplex had 100 000 health then does this mean it will now be on the order of 300 000 with a super-ability as well (will this be nerfed for players in order to keep the borg 'playable')? if so look forward to teaming up on that
they will be assimilated. resistance is futile.
they can stand up to a small fleet but not the kind of stomp fleet the AI sometimes chooses to send.
Just be careful you don't break the AI by having starbases super durable AND deal any noticeable amount of damage, its a rookie mistake I've seen made by a number of mods. The 100% damage reflect looks particularly problematic. While that is easy to avoid as a human player and basically just buys the starbase some time, the AI will suicide on it every time.
The point of starbases and static defenses in general ought to be to buy time to react to attacks that catch you out of position because your scouting was poor or you were playing a little risky. In your testing if you ever see a planet with maxed out tactical slots and a maxed out upgraded starbase stave off a significant assault by itself, the game is going to be pointlessly easy. Very annoying speed bumps is fine, not stop-signs. :)
any change that we make undergo's significant balance testing as this change is a game changer itself we plan to test this alot before release, we do make mistakes (scimitar shield mit) as an example but we try to correct those as soon as we find it.
the starbases are durable but not super durable, not if you use artillery pieces, which the AI seems to mix in relatively well now
don't you worry your pretty little head. we try to check things as much as possible, using both players and AI. We can simulate lots and lots of full games with only AI players relatively quickly.
As mentioned the changes are currently somewhat in flux. so will be balanced to what we think is acceptable as we gain more information from our testing process.
Feedback s always a good thing, and thank you for commenting. But once again, don't worry. Rookies we aint.
I got to say, the moon with the gas giant looks very cool. I wish there was a way you can have a moon around a M-Class planet and colonization both in the same gravity well or have M-Class/other class moons too. How about having more then one planet/moon around a gas giant in more then one gravity well but very close by "fast warp jump" with the gas giant as the back ground? Just like it was in the video.
My reaction- 3.bp.blogspot.com
;)
Can you upgrade their anti-fighter defenses because I can pretty much annihilate a star base with three carriers with out any risk to them.
Now that Starbases are more resistant to attacks in general they'll be bale to hold their own. Though I still advise to have a couple of anti fighter frigates about.
You guys should really look into diplomatic improvements also. Playing as Federation you cannot issue missions, so improving your faction's opinion of another faction does not increase. There is no point in sending envoys out if you can't improve both sides of the relations (making the uniqueness of federation moot). Otherwise this mod rocks.
You can give them resources which increases the rate.
that increases their opinion of you, but doesn't improve your opinion of them. currently the give mission tech is disabled for the federation.
I have found that the only real way to gain allies is to attack their enemies and by doing so it makes that enemy your enemy so when they attack him you like them better.
The borg starbase should be able to assimilate capital ships.
GO TO THE LAST PAGE OF THE FULL RELEASE DOWLOAD PAGE PLEASE FIX THE ISSUSE
By the way sweet game (never played because of problem)
Please post the bug in the bugs forum if you need assistance with the mod installation
Sorry i found the solution it was missing the .exe at the end of the name its fixed now :D
Best mod ever!!!!!!!! 11/10