newbie frustration w/ starbases

The weapons and defenses you put on your starbases are for the starbase to defend itself. The mining starbase really should have the ring removed, as after the base is built it affects your entire empire, not just what's in the ring.

The military starbase could potentially help you out, assuming you built the correct modules. Anything that gives a ship bonus will boost that aspect of each ship in the ring - ie if you build a beam assist module on your base, each ship in the ring will have one extra point of beam damage added to the weapons on the ship itself.

Military starbases are only situationally useful. It's economically inviable to build them everywhere, but building a handful of really pimped-out ones with overlapping rings can let you park cheap ships in the area to boost your military rating. In other situations, you'd be better off building an additional warship or two instead of the constructors needed to build the base.

1) so the mining sb won't assist ships in the blue ring at all?

2) And the military sb only helps if the modules i put on there 'assist ships'? So if they are only attack / defending modules for the sb itself, it can't do anything for the ships i guess. That was probably my problem.

Its hard to tell from the modules if they are for defense of the sb alone, or they help the surrounding ships defend. And same goes for attack.

It seems its almost useless to try to pimp out an influence or mine sb. A good enemy comes along and destroys it anyway

The modules that help your ships have a small star fighter symbol next to the weapon type symbols, which easily denotes it as a ship assist module at a glance. They also have "Ship Assist +[X] Attack/Defense Beam/Missile/Mass" in the Module description and have a different thumbnail to the Starbase Weapons/Defense's. Ship Assists Modules are always further down the list than Starbase Weaponry, so you might have just not seen them. If you scroll down then you will find all of the ones that your tech levels currently have available to you.
Note that you can only add ship assist modules to your Military Starbases, Economic, Influence and Mining base's cannot build Ship Assist Modules.

Fate,

influence SBs should never get defense modules IMO, but it's a saft step with mining bases. these things are vitally important and you should max them out whenever possible. the reason it might seem like yours wasn't doing much could have been low attack values on your ships. if you had 1 module, you'd get +10% IIRC. so if you're playing DL, your ships would need a base attack of 10 to get a benefit, or in DA each weapon would need to have an attack of 10 to benefit (since in DA weapons fire individually). all fractions in GC2 are rounded down. but the bonuses from several military mining SBs as well as anything from political party, race bonuses and bonus point buys, as well as anomoly invesitgations, can make a very important difference in your ships' performance.

Just to tell you that influence SBs can be very, very useful: just finished 2 games in a row where I won using influence SBs to flip the planets of an entire race one by one.
I added defense modules to some of them (the ones closest to my enemy's home planet), which helped them survive an early attack; I didn't want additional warships because of the maintenance cost involved.

A mining SB gives you an extra edge (a few % to your economy or military can help a lot), and adding mining modules increases this bonus - don't underestimate these effects!

1. so if you have 3 ships protecting a mining sb (even though ship assist isn't available) - do those ships need to be right on top of the sb itself. I'm guessing yes - if they are somewhere else in the blue ring - even right next to the sb on 'sentry' - they won't be able to help?

2. I'm thinking a good strategy could be to put a military sb in a location where its ring encompasses the mining sb, and perhaps a planet or two if possible. Then build the ship assist modules. When the enemy comes to attack planets or the mining sb - the military sb would help the battle - even though its taking place at the very outermost part of the 'ring' right.

3. if a fleet of ships is protecting earth + mars, and its within the ring of a military sb, should that fleet be located 'on' earth itself (unlaunched) or must it be launched and in sentry mode to protect either planet?

Thanks for the help everyone!! Yes I know these sb's are important... I'm slowly increasing my understanding which will make for a much more fun game.

yes. when it comes to mining SBs, just forget about "the blue ring" entirely (which will be other colors for other interfaces - a more technical term is "area of effect").



IIRC, military SB bonuses don't affect ships in orbit... but i'm not totally sure. can anyone else verify or shoot this down?

IMO the best things SBs can do for you tactically is sensor coverage. the AI rarely builds fast ships, and it's usually much better to take the fight to them rather than waiting for them to show up on your doorstep.

It is somewhat misleading tech lableling, but all the modules that result from the "Starbase Defenses" tech branch actually don't defend the SB, they assist ships in an area of squares touched by an 8 parsec radius (which is not exactly the same thing as the area of effect estimation circle.)

Plus there are a few other "assist" techs like Fighter Drones, which I believe results from an early manufacturing tech.

drrider

The only way to get any of your ships TOGETHER in single battle is to fleet them (special exceptions for certain planetary improvements and orbiting ships, but that is a side issue.) You CANNOT fleet ships and SBs together (despite the fact that SBs have logistics values), so your ships will never show up on the battle screen with your SB (in the current version of the game, it might change.)

However, if your ships/fleets are stacked with an SB, an enemy attack on that square should 1st engage whichever element is 'tougher', in the arcane estimation of the game engine (actually, it does a pretty good job of calling this right.) If your fleet is stacked a hex or 2 ahead of your SB, the enemy AI often will go for the ships first, but it is capable of making a strategic decision to avoid your fleet and go for the base behind, especially at higher difficulty levels.

drrider

Yes, this seems to work well. I use it. However, be advised that I have never found any passage in the rules nor asserted proof in the forums to the effect that Military SBs assist other SBs. I have always just assumed it would work that way ('a battle is a battle').

It can be proved, of course, but it would require a fair amount of laborous cheat-game setup to compare the combat power with and without a supporting Mil SB in identical situations, so I haven't done it, nor run across postings from anyone who has. Your chance to make a 'forum name' for yourself .

It just seems empirically like my mining SBs are tougher with a Mil SB nearby, and sometimes the AI will breakoff repeated combat with the frontier SB and shift to attacking the supporting Mil SB, so apparently the AI doesn't like that guy sitting there.

drrider

The Influence ring that you see on the map screen is not specfically the 'area of effect' of an SB's special purpose.

It is the area that is brought under your Influence by the presence of a SB. Althought the degree of influence within a SB influence area can be incresed, by racial bonuses and Civ-wide influence resource mining, and for Influence SBs by specific influence enhancing modules, the area covered by SB influence never grows. You can see this clearly sometimes when the Super-Influence random event strikes. Planet influence boundaries expand dramatically over a couple of turns, SB influence rings (that aren't temporarily swallowed up) don't change.

The SB 'area of effect' for its special purpose (military assist, production & trade boost, or influence boost) is approximated by the shaded area and animated dotted line that appears when you select (left-click) the base. The intended radius of that 'area of effect' is 8 parsecs. In practical terms, the area that will be affected is better stated as 'a pattern of squares that are touched by a circle around the SB 8 parsecs in radius.' If a square is just 'nicked' by that dotted circle, it gets the benefit.

drrider

If you want it to be counted as a fleet, you have to keep it out of orbit. Ships in orbit are never fleeted, or counted as a fleet, in comparing forces or fighting, except when there is an Orbital Fleet Manager or the Hyperion Fleet Defense present on the planet.

I think the ships in orbit will get the benefit of the Mil SB, but if attacked, they will be attacked individually unless there is an OFM on planet (and tiles are precious!).

For what its worth, I keep my defenders out of orbit most of the time so I can fleet them. You have to watch carefully for approaching fleets with transports, though, because the smarter AI's will attempt to slip past out-of-orbit defenders if they have transports with them. Of course, you can do both; fleet your good stuff to show the most combat power near your planets, but keep about 4 absolutely cheap throw-aways in orbit so that a fleet that slips by won't get to land transports until you can react with nearby defenders.

drrider

Don't ships get some sort of additional bonus if they are in orbit around a planet and under a SB? Or is that something I was dreaming? And thats ignoring things like the added HP structure or the Spin Control, I know those have to be in orbit for the bonus to apply.

I believe that planets themselves give a bonus to orbiting ships, although I don't know whether they just appear stronger or are actually stronger.

AFAIK, Military SBs don't help orbiting ships. Two Mil Starbases didn't help the Drengins' 2-attack Super Dominator Corvettes in orbit around Drengi when they were attacked and shot down by my battleships. But I didn't have enough espionage data to tell if those Mil 'bases even had assist modules on them at all.

I agree that the colored circle around Mining Starbases should be removed: their area of effect is unlimited.

The SB does increase stats for ships in orbit if its under the influence of the sphere, but I think it gets an additional bonus for just being in orbit as well, but I could be wrong on the second point.

i think what i'm hearing is that for a military sb - the only way your fleet gets a benefit from the sb is to be out and about within range of the sb. But when I had ships out there, and the enemy came close, the ships on sentry never engaged. Could there be a reason why?

Also if they don't engage the enemy, and the enemy attacks a planet w/in the sb's protection - and there's a fleet nearby - the planet gets no help. I have to send the fleet to attack the enemy manually right? There's no such thing as 'This is military sb #3 calling all ships in the area to go defend the planet X!' I guess.

Nope, Military Starbases never defend planets. How do you expect them to shoot the enemy when there's a big ol' planet in the way? That's why you have Orbital Fleet Manager buildings. When you build these on your planets, the ships in orbit automatically come together in fleets to defend the planet.

As for fleets outside of planetary orbit, yes, you have to point them manually at the target.

well that makes sense - sb's aren't orbital fleet managers too.

My only remaining question that when there are ships in sentry mode, they don't seem to go out and engage the enemy. If i'm not careful, the enemy can sneak up on me without me even knowing. Doesn't sentry mode mean my ships are supposed to seek them out when they appear?

Nope, and it never says that in the documentation.

Sentry = inactive and won't be focused on as the game cycles through your ships with moves left, unless there is an enemy or friendly alien ship within sensor range.

Guard = inactive and won't be focused on as the game cycles through your ships with moves left, unless there is an ENEMY ship within sensor range.


You still have to do the moving yourself when the ship gets focused on. And believe me, if you are using this feature for early warning with sensor loaded cargo hulls, thats the way you want it, because the ship that sets off the alarm may be a scout, may be afighter, or may be a fleet of 5 dreadnoughts.

There is no 'Strip Alert' standby status. Maybe there should be.

drrider

ships set to sentry do not activate when an enemy comes by.

you have to set them on guard.

you can also set your ships to auto attack but they pick their targets.

but this can only be used if there is an enemy with in sensor range.

That's right. I forgot about the auto attack option on the ship details. I never use it because it is too dangerous unless you KNOW you have an undefeatable super hunk ship/fleet. And you don't get to tailor your targets.

drrider

From the Manual, page 53:
" Sentry: This tells a ship to be idle until another ship - friendly or enemy - comes near."

drrider

I think you could justifiably file a bug report on that to better bring it to the attention of the devs to get it changed. If you move your fleet, the SB would have to automatically leave the fleet, but that doesn't seem like a particularly big problem.

this wasn't a bug AFAIK, it was a design choice.