Base Improvements revisited

## Note I posted this topic under the thread started by Chrys regarding base improvements - I reposted here because these ideas are far more inline wih our current understanding of the game##

Its interesting to revisit this topic a few months later. My understanding has changed a fair amount over that time.

The cloaking and anti cloaking for bases actually works quite well, however that technology makes the use of all of the other station defenses obsolete.

The main issue with using the tech tree to improve bases is that there is no easy way to balance technology based HP and Attack values against economic based Attack and HP. THat is, ships and bases work on two different systems, and how do you know what the economy of a player is at a certain tech level - it may vary widely. So at the moment ships will always be able to destroy bases easily.

There is ONE way however to balance these two mismatched systems, which is to use a hybrid system.

Missiles and fighters on stations are already a hybrid system, and this should be extended to HP, Attack, and Absorb and Accuracy values.

With fighters and missiles they have a CREDIT cost. THis is an essential way to balance tech against economy. THe issue with fighters and missiles at the moment though is that they are 100% expendable, which makes them too expensive - also at the moment regardless if you kill the attacking ship(s) your station is going to get destroyed. So its unlikely players are going to use those systems.

Here is a hybrid style system for bases that will balance economies versus technologies, when I say hybrid I mean its part technology and partially economic based.

For base HP your base gets its starting HP (100 billion?). Then you may PURCHASE additional hit points (armour plating) for your station at a cost of 20 HP for 50 credits. Station Armour tech can then either be left exactly how it is, or you can change it to be +2HP per 50 credits - effectively its the same anyhow.

For attack you get the standard base attack value (20 billion I think), but you can purhase an additional 20 attack per 50 credits. The structural integrity scanner increases attack by 15% - again you can just leave it as it is, or say its +3 attack per 50 credits for each increase.

For absorb and accuracy, the technology based idea is ok. This is because these are not linear open ended values, they have hard caps - it makes them easier to manage from a tech point of view. Still, the cost to increase shields and accuracy would need to be revised - along with the base values - at the moment the base values are too low, and/or the cost to increase is too high.

For fighters and missiles, these could be left just how they are - which means no-one is likely to use them, because they would be able to purchase attack for their station now anyhow. So an alternative for these is to have them work differently from the station attack - giving them a utility function that players might wish to employ.

My suggestion for fighters and missiles is this. Fighters and missiles would automatically attack unfriendly targets entering the system. They would remain as one use items, making them fairly expensive to employ. IF your base uses fighters and missiles, then the enemy may counter attack on your station regardless of your cloaking, however their first two fleets will be engaged by misslies (fleet position 1) and fighters (fleet position 2) and possibly system fleets (position 3) if you have them - your base would be in the last fleet position for example if you only had fighters, no missiles or system fleets, then your base would be in fleet position 2). This would make it tougher for the enemy to destroy your base, particularly when you can pump cash into its hit points. Maybe this might make it too difficult to destroy bases - so some testing would be needed - if its over powered then your base could be put in fleet position 1.

So you would then have an option to use them to control your space and cause havoc on fleets entering your systems.

If this method is employed you would certainly need to warn players entering the system before they warped in. Id suggest that a scouting report would be produced.

For example; "WARNING - You are about to warp into hostile territory, controlled by (ID#) "PlayerName". Long range scanners indicate a fleet of xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx AAF fighters, and xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx missile batteries are deployed in this star system. It is also patrolled by a domestic fleet of xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx fleet power. Do you wish to proceed?"

One additional constraint would be to allow automatic defenses only if the owner of the station, or an alliance member was parked at that base - this would do two things, flag that an enemy fleet was stationed there, and also reduce the number of bases that would auto fire. The rationalization for that could be that you need a commander there to issue the order to attack.

Due to the advances in understanding, and the fairly different approach of this suggestion I re-posted as a separate thread to the one that Chrys started long ago.