The Problem with SpacePorts

[Mutwe]

So I've been repeatedly noticing a troubling trend in wars. Spaceports are far too vulnerable considering the discrepancy in fleet travel-times. Let me create an example:

I go to war with a relatively equal enemy force, i have 3 spaceports, all defended by a single defensive station; my fleet is docked at one of these spaceports, but NOT the one my opponents first attack. By the time my fleet/a portion of it moves to defend, the spaceport is eliminated even with the single allowed defensive station in the area. As time goes on this process continues until i run out of very expensive spaceports.

Now i realize the topic of spaceport upgrading/awesomeness has been discussed a bit already, with the 2 sides generally boiling down to, "Spaceports should do more damage to an attacking fleet," and, "spaceports are supposed to be vulnerable/are not military stations." I think that there is merit to both of these schools of thought; so here's my proposed assessment/solution:

I don't think it's true that space stations should decimate(reduce by 10%) a large enemy fleet. Or that they're completely meant as a sort of orbital dry dock(because they are at least somewhat defended). I do however, think they should be able to survive long enough to at least allow for some kind of intervention from relatively near by. The obvious problem: they don't upgrade tech, I have a feeling this problem is already on the backlog to be addressed so i wont waste time on it. But as you upgrade the station with modules, i think the station should become noticeably stronger, both offensively and defensively based on given tech. This is because the station is effectively larger, and thus, should be more well equipped in general. It makes little sense that you would walk into an army barracks and there would be no one guarding it, or that there would be no soldiers present; It's equally unlikely that you would by able to fly a small force into a naval yard - no big deal, just because there's no large military fortress 2 miles from the base.

Consider Pearl Harbor: even a relatively defenseless naval yard needed to be attacked by a significant force, not because the Japanese were worried they would be overwhelmed by the yard's offensive capability, but because they wanted to deal maximum damage, to cripple the enemy before a counter offensive could be mounted. Keep in mind that even despite PH being effectively "undefended," the Japanese still lost 29 aircraft and 5 subs.

I think this same mentality should be reflected based on size/tech scale-up. My concern when attacking a based even without a fortress next to it, should be can i hit this and get to a safe place before they can get ready to defend, I think that should be part of the strategy involved, not a given anytime i ever attack a spaceport, regardless of size/tech level.

 

[LeibSSolmai]

You can´t really compare Pearl Habor, the Japanese didn´t have nuclear tipped missiles and Railguns, otherwise they would´ve send a single bomber. Since the invention of nuclear weapons the armour development is way behind the weapons.

And this 10% rule doesn´t really make any sense, 10% of what? 10% of a 100k fleet is 10k, means a single space station could singlehandly kill a 20k stack. 10% of 1k is 100 that is the damage a space station already does.
It´s at least somehow balanced because the KI doesn´t like deep striking operations and for humans it´s very hard to figure out the important shipyards. But I agree that the synchronised defences module is just completely useless.

 

[TallTroll]

I'm pretty sure a future update will allow you to do more with spaceports military capabilities. Just adding some new modules, and/or upgrading the stats as weapon / defensive techs increase would let them scale better with fleets over time, but tbh I suspect that their design is explicitly expected to make them less useful over time. They put a soft cap on early wars, no chariot rush here, thanks

 

[ShichiNoBushi]

I would at least like to replace the initial weapon module as my weapon tech improves. I don't want to be stuck with just Red Lasers on my station until they get destroyed eventually. And maybe I notice that my lasers aren't working out as well as I hoped against ships with heavy shields, and now I want to arm my station with missiles instead.

Also, as I'm defending my station with defense platforms, I would like to know how close I can get them to each other such as an aura as I select my construction ships. Otherwise, I have to right click everywhere and see how close I can get and the "Build Military Station" option becomes available. On top of that, upgrading, replacing, and possibly even salvaging defense platforms would also be appreciated.

 

[panotesaechiew]

I think instead of add more capability to spaceport (which is good in itself). We should consider implement some kind of mechanism to create front line or strategic defense position.
It's not make sense that attacker can select to attack everywhere they want on enemy system and bypass all the protection to attack deep to enemy territory (I think FTL snare is not enough)

Attacker have too much advantage.

 

[mangalore]

I'm not sure why defense stations have such a big exclusion zone given a single station in the mid to late game is easily outmatched by a fleet so it really needs help from neighboring stations if you want to fortify a system enough to slow down an attack.

Subspace snares are kind of advantageous to a fleet atm as it pulls you right into the enemy defenses so you can destroy them faster. They probably should be put as far out of the system as possible.

 

[X3KJ]

You can´t really compare Pearl Habor, the Japanese didn´t have nuclear tipped missiles and Railguns, otherwise they would´ve send a single bomber. Since the invention of nuclear weapons the armour development is way behind the weapons.

And yet Railguns and missiles are countered by shields and armor in Stellaris. So no, the relative power in weapons and defenses is the same.

 

[Mutwe]

I hear the complaint about the decimation example, my point was not to suggest they should always reduce an armada by 10%, just that they should at least be capable of doing something(primarily surviving long enough for backup at higher levels). I'd really like to hear other cases of people's experiences in wars, especially on the defensive. I know there have been some criticisms about the cat and mouse nature of combat; what kinds of spaceport related problems/successes have people been having? Has anyone discovered a mechanic that makes this system work really well that others and myself have failed to consider?

 

[mangalore]

I hear the complaint about the decimation example, my point was not to suggest they should always reduce an armada by 10%, just that they should at least be capable of doing something(primarily surviving long enough for backup at higher levels). I'd really like to hear other cases of people's experiences in wars, especially on the defensive. I know there have been some criticisms about the cat and mouse nature of combat; what kinds of spaceport related problems/successes have people been having? Has anyone discovered a mechanic that makes this system work really well that others and myself have failed to consider?

Space ports could be seen like mining station aka mainly civilian installations in orbit for production etc. The weapon choice when building a bit silly anyway since you cannot design its defense set up like you can do for a defense station.

I think overall the issue is that static defenses are worthless. There should be some way to fortify your system that even mid/late game stacks cannot waltz into every system. Make it costly in minerals to build up but e.g. mining an entire system and cover your frontier spaceport with defense stations should at least force losses on an enemy. Currently you plainly can't get a tight enough defense network going that those stations can survive a fleet attack long enough to at least chip at their shields and armor. Not sure the proximity mine field is even working, or its damage is not scaling with tech which is bad.

I don't expect static defenses to win any dedicated attack but I would at least expect that the attacking fleet gets sufficiently bruised (if the defenses are dense enough) that it won't want to pick a fight with an equally strong relief fleet. Aka its overall health at least reduced to some noticable degree.

I tried defenses several times but overall its always just one platform facing the entire fleet so it may slow the enemy down but is otherwise pretty fruitless for anything but trapping reinforcements and transports. The stations are currently just buffs (if not bugged ) for a sufficiently big defense fleet which only works if your outnumbering the enemy because currently doomstacks are the only viable strategy so if you are the smaller guy you will need your fleet mobile to pick at the enemy and not sitting in your one fortified system while he waltzes all over you.

 

[victorexach]

I want to bring in an example in defense stations on this game: Sins of a solar empire. Space bases there, when fully upgraded, are capable of ruining your day at any given time.

I believe for the most part, a pretty big/strong fleet is/should be capable of tearing up through *everything*. But a well-defended system with fully upgraded space bases should not just stop, but stand its ground as first line of defense of a given system. My 2c.

 

[Surimi]

I think the compromise position is that spaceports should be capable of being militarily valuable at least to the extent of other miltary stations, but doing so should require them to be upgraded in that direction at the expense of ship production or economy boosting modules. Right now, there aren't really enough defensive modules to make spaceports a viable defensive structure on their own.

I think the direction the game has gone in, making defensive structures fairly costly and unlikely to make a huge difference in combat, is generally pretty understandable. Having an enemy be able to just turtle up and resist all attacks might sound cool if you want to be that guy, but when you come up against it is just annoying and could drag out the (occasionally already quite slow) wars. But I think perhaps it's gone too far.. right now the only meaningful way to defend planets is to build loads of defensive armies on the ground.. defensive stations seldom seem to be worthwhile even as a speed bump.

 

[Mutwe]

I think the compromise position is that spaceports should be capable of being militarily valuable at least to the extent of other miltary stations, but doing so should require them to be upgraded in that direction at the expense of ship production or economy boosting modules. Right now, there aren't really enough defensive modules to make spaceports a viable defensive structure on their own.

I think the direction the game has gone in, making defensive structures fairly costly and unlikely to make a huge difference in combat, is generally pretty understandable. Having an enemy be able to just turtle up and resist all attacks might sound cool if you want to be that guy, but when you come up against it is just annoying and could drag out the (occasionally already quite slow) wars. But I think perhaps it's gone too far.. right now the only meaningful way to defend planets is to build loads of defensive armies on the ground.. defensive stations seldom seem to be worthwhile even as a speed bump.

I would argue that there's a pretty large grey area between defensive stations that become essentially useless mid-late game and having the ability to turtle up and lock down every single system, effectively making invasion almost impossible. Making defensive stations/groupings of defensive stations AMAZING would be a game and fun breaking idea, because you could never get anything done as the aggressor in a war; but as it stands, there is simply no incentive to building defenses at all. They are extremely costly, have a massive build-prevention radius, deal almost no damage, and take about 20 seconds to destroy with a marginally sized fleet.

 

[Mutwe]

So in last week's Blorg stream(The final blorg stream ). It was mentioned that the dev team is aware of the spaceports being under-powered. Given the acknowledgement of this balance issue, I wanted to resurrect this thread to see if anyone has any cool ideas or thoughts regarding the issue. What I mean to say is, What do people think are the major issues causing these problems, and does anyone have any cool/interesting ideas on how to fix the issue aside from general buffing/allowing upgrades based on tech level? (I specify because I think those two are pretty obvious at this point).

 

[victorexach]

Make spaceport building modular, i.e., you can build them like legos with a given number of spaces/slots to fill out. That way balance would be whether create a ship-building starbase or an orbital planet support structure.

 

[ShichiNoBushi]

Another issue is that once you chose a starting weapon and started building your space port, you are stuck with it. You can't upgrade it or replace it if you want to change to a different type or even add additional weapons in the other slots. That itself can be changed to improve the combat abilities of a spaceport. For example, if I chose to build my spaceport with laser weapons and I researched the higher tier technologies, I could replace them with blue, UV, or X-ray lasers or even replace them with disruptors or throwers instead for different attack modifiers if I wanted. Or even switch them with explosive or projectile weapons instead. Another potential module to attach could be hangars to launch fighters.

 

[Dalinski]

Yah know, splitting your fleet into 2 or even 3 groups would actually do what you are looking for I reckon. Secondly I hope you are not putting subspace snares on those defense platforms because they will certainly speed up the death time of your Star Base.