We Really Need to Be Able to Customize Starbase Loadouts

[Calvax]

Heck, I'd be ok with them defaulting to equal numbers of Kinetic, Energy, and Missile weapons.

So very depressing to look at a T3 Orbital Ring and notice it went with all Archeotech Railguns again. Which sure, range is good, but they don't outrange Lances, and don't deal with armor or close in stuff like Energy weapons would.


And Starlit Citadel is a challenging Origin SOLELY because of the TRASH-TIER loadout of the base DSC. All Anti-Shield weapons and PD, when the attackers both have no shields and ignore shields. At the VERY least. BALANCE the PD loadout! You get 9 slots, they shouldn't all be flak!

Fully agreed. And I come more down on the RP side but I still think this is important: stellaris is a science fiction game and a huge trope of science fiction is a variety of exotic weapons. It buggs me that the citadel just fires kinetics at ships that aren't suited to them and that it has shields that just get bypassed (though the number of bypass weapons is a separate annoying issue).

At least we can refit them now without paying unity.

 

[Thiend]

I think at this point it may be worth considering replacing the current starbase implementation entirely if it's really that hard to add a designer for the existing one.

 

[Ranamar]

I think at this point it may be worth considering replacing the current starbase implementation entirely if it's really that hard to add a designer for the existing one.

Incidentally, if I were going to try to replace a starbase implementation, the first thing I'd do is put it together in a way that stood alone from the rest of the game systems. Then, once I was confident it worked, I'd look into swapping it into the existing things. (and then, with the way things usually seem to go, we'd discover that actually half the system management stuff is hanging off the starbase class and it fails horribly, but that's a different kind of issue)

 

[Zergor]

I really feel that the current implementation on citadels is the best way to deal with starbase. Have their 6 levels appear in the ship designer and allow to modify it of make new ones like the citadel. And allow to pick one directly like the citadel. The main difference is the weapon buildings. And that is probably the reason nothing is done.
Two options :
-Remove them as relics of the past and replace them with modules that give extra defense platforms (easy)
-Add them creatively in the ship designer (hard)

For that second option there could be 2 slots for each building type shown in a different color or clearly separated to show they are not garanteed that can be filled. I would probably make those 2 weapons "free" (no power cost) so that there is no need to calculate if the station has enough energy to add them. And each time you add a building, the set of chosen weapon will be added.

 

[Obblera]

Is the inital DSC not refittable to a new design? Regular ones are, is the starting one special?

 

[Obblera]

You know what they say about assuming.

At any rate there are 1001 ways that Starbases could be reasonably implemented that would mean making the change over to custom-designable an easy one.

There are also 1001 ways that they could be a frustratingly implemented mess that leaves the guy that did the work rubbing his forehead and going "Oh god, don't remind me".

The only evidence for it either we have on the issue are:

1) The feature has been frequently asked for.
2) The Devs indicated they also like the idea of the feature.
3) They've said it's not easy.
4) It hasn't happened.


Don't get me wrong I'd love to have designable Starbases. Heck, I think Deep Space Citadels strike me as a likely basis for moving towards that feature maybe sometime before Season 10. If it happens I'll celebrate it.

I just don't think the smart money is on the fix on being some super easy 1-engineer 1-day fix.

"Easy" does not mean 1-engineer 1-day as it has to go through code review, language translation, QA, and everything else.

In general in a large piece of software you're looking several hours of work for even a very simple change like highlighting a bar in a UI, assuming you can even build a release just for that.

"Easy" means you already know how to do it, where to make the changes, and they are of limited scope, so you can assign a junior to work on it, and you just have to wait for them to grind out the code, then do all of the boring stuff like translation, QA, documentation etc.

So when I say it's possible that it's easy but low priority, that's because it could use up a lot of hours.

 

[Red Earth]

I don't really want to design starbases, I just want them to not put shields or shield busting weapons in no shield systems.
Actually that's not true. I'd like to design a system that would make decent choices with a few of the expected variations. And that's why it's weird to me that the game doesn't do that. Because if I was working on the game you'd have to drag me away from that task. It sounds like fun!

 

[Deukallion]

We are half way there with Deep Space Citadel.

I do agree. They have said it would be a lot of time to code due to the way starbases are implemented, but I don't understand why they can't add other weapon buildings It would not need a ship design editor, just add new starbase buildings, which they have done before.

I won't lie, when I realized they added exactly what people (well, me, but I see not only me) wanted AS A NEW MEGASTRUCTURE instead of finally tackling that "insurmountable coding problem" that is apparently a starbase, it was just like adding insult to injury (injury being the entirety of 4.0). And that was enough for me to finally demand a refund on the latest Season Pass. Don't know, maybe if more people did that they would finally start ironing out such nonsense before rushing into another DLC?

... And yet I'm still a hardcore sci-fi fan and cannot live long without another Stellaris run :/ I admit my weaknesses.

(looking with sadness at my full T1 kinetic starbase when i'm already T3 in lasers and OF COURSE IT'S A NEBULA STORM SYSTEM)

 

[Drachasor]

We are half way there with Deep Space Citadel.

I do agree. They have said it would be a lot of time to code due to the way starbases are implemented, but I don't understand why they can't add other weapon buildings It would not need a ship design editor, just add new starbase buildings, which they have done before.

Heck, a 'district' just for weapon buildings and one for defense. But we'd also need to be able to set defaults and templates.

 

[Seyfried]

Would just like to add: why do Starbases put Reactor Boosters in their A slot while only using ~10% of their power output?

 

[Nithralder]

How do we still have no control over this after 9 years?

Paradox is too busy destroying the game (4.0) and promising performance improvements that actually make performance worse instead of actually doing things we want like have starbases that we can customize.

The same goes for the AI. Every wants good AI. Many modders have been able to make good AI Mods in the past, Paradox can't be bothered to actually improve the game.