Auras are useless if star bases lack any staying power. I am not suggesting to make them as impregnable as fortress worlds, far from that, but yes a star base properly outfitted for combat should be able to hold a comparable or perhaps even slightly superior fleet in terms of power. This would allow for a more viable defensive playstyle focus while still requiring players to keep a (probably smaller) fleet for support as static defenses would not be invincible.
It wouldn't, because equivalent fleet power fights largely stop happening after the early game, ie the period where starbases are viable.
As snowballing kicks in and starbase/tech boosts fleet capacity, empire fleet strength potential starts to differ widely, and the nature of the Stellaris snowball is that stealing more resources lets you afford more alloys for larger fleets
and more tech for more efficient fleets.
And that's my problem with them. The multi-year siege affair you are refer too later in your post is already present in the game. They are just too difficult to take unless you are willing to spend years and thousands upon thousands of soldiers to take them.
Why is this a problem for a defender, or on a game-level perspective from restricting military snowballing?
The alternative to being able to stall invaders for years and/or costing them thousands of resources would be to
not be able to stall invaders for years and/or costing them thousands of resources. Which would mean
faster and cheaper conquests, letting non-pacifists grow even faster relative to pacifist-defender archetypes.
Is defensive play too strong, or too weak? Because this is an objection that it's too strong.
They counter fleet power in the air AND on forces the ground. I don't think planets should be usable as such, not to that level.
Why not? You complained that it was an unreasonably costly investment that no one would use to give up a productive planet, but now you're claiming it's too good. Which is it?
Moreover, if planets can't be what stalls fleets for years, why should anything?
Again because it would allow those who would wish to focus more on static defenses rather then a bigger offensive force (Pacifists for example) to have a viable alternative (and in the case of pacifists become more viable themselves).
People who want static defenses already have a viable alternative for stalling the enemy- that option is fortress worlds and habitats.
You can build star bases. Planets such as they are, are a rare commodity. In my view this would open up alternative paths of competitive play, rather than the mandatory: build the biggest fleet you can and crush all opposition.
Your stated views are self-contradictory, and neither address habitats, which can be placed wherever the player would like to place a defensive chokepoint, or address how expansionist empires would be the
best placed to exploit defensive starbases in competitive play, being able to afford more and more investments into them.
On the contrary, I do. Fortress worlds have TOO MUCH staying power. It's a bad mechanic in my opinion and should be ether changed or removed. Star bases could fill a similar role (albeit maybe not to the same extent) and represent a significant investments in terms of resources and upkeep while also representing an opportunity cost in term of offensive capability (perhaps by unifying fleet and star base capacity under one single mechanic that would require you to make more strategic choices).
You're not justifying your opinion on mechanical grounds, or explaining why your alternative would be better. Be specific. To start, how long should an enemy fleet be able to be stalled by a starbase that is unsupported by a fleet? 1 week? 1 month? 1 year? 1 decade?
That is the goal. All the suggestions made in this thread aim to open up possibilities, to make more than one path viable towards victory. Why couldn't a more pacific rout be competitive, for example?
Because in any competitive mechanical analysis, Stellaris is a 4X economy game based on pops, and the best way to expand your resources is competing for the other party's pops, not your own. If you fight to not lose your own pops, your economy and ability to sustain growth is at best maintained; if you fight to acquire other peoples pops, your economy base can expand.
Any analysis that fails to understand why pops are the base of the game economy is fundamentally flawed in its proposals.
You may agree or disagree with those suggestions. But considering the direction in which 3.3 takes us with changes like unity cost and sprawl becoming somewhat relevant again, I believe that the development team has similar objectives.
Maybe, but your proposals are counter to those objectives.
Giving wide empires
even greater advantages over smaller empires- as they will have more starbase and economic capacity to spare for chokepoint starbases that can't be breached- does the opposite of favoring a defensive strategy- it favors early expansion most, before the defenses can be made overwhelming, and then then cements those gains against counter-attack. Any defense system which is justified on grounds of 'and it's better the more resources you throw' is going to favor the side with more resources to throw, which is wide, not tall.
This is especially true if you negate the use of fortress worlds. In the current model, starbases stop being lynchpines but fortress worlds are an opportunity cost- they are worlds that could be economic productive, and the wider your empire is, the more worlds you likely need to dedicate into fortress worlds to protect access to your core. If fortress worlds can't stall, but starbases can, then those wider empries can just rely on their superior number of starbases for stall, and dedicate those worlds to economic productivity- meaning
even more resources than a tall-turtle empire, which means more alloys, more science, and faster traditions for even greater economic scale and efficiency.
