Defense stations seem too OP

[Ashitaka-san]

After getting into building defense stations, I've come to the conclusion that they are far too cheap for what you can get. I've built a defense station that cost me around 15 million, and it can easily take on entire squadrons of capital ships and fighters. I haven't seen anything even coming close to scratching it so far. It took a K down in about 30 seconds once it got in range.

This seems to be due to the cheap price for all the stations as well as the high amount of turrets hardpoints, especially large ones, on them. It makes creating a fairly inexpensive station that can take on entire fleets very easy. It also seems like regular production stations have quite a bit too much hardpoints on them. However, as they are all medium, it tends to be less of an issue.

It seems to me that these defense stations should be increased in price as well as have reduced large turret hardpoints on them. This would help to bring them more in line with the expenses needed to create comparable amounts of ships. Obviously, as the defense station is immobile, it should be more powerful than ships. It just seems to me that it is too inexpensive for the amount of firepower you get on them.

[Axeface]

Yes they are and player built ones are ridiculous. The fact that turrets require no energy and generate no heat and that we can build hundreds of them on a station is very depressing. The AI can literally do nothing against a player that builds even a small defence station.

[grapedog]

I'd be fine with starting off cutting hardpoints in half... just to see what happens.

[dholmstr]

Are you talking IS or OOS? Problem isn't really the ammount (tough it is easy to build just a buttload of turrets) but the AI who just drives itself ontop of 50 turrets and dies. This is a real problem for Xenon and the turrets only aproach, with short ranges. And then ontop of that the IS/OOS conundrum doesn't really make it better.
Factions can, and sometimes even does shoot from far enough with main L guns to win, however rare it is . Xenon again should be using the swarm tactics. 1 K should have like 30-50 N/M's to just be a royal pain in back and shoot/distract turrets. Then have 4 od these K's go for the station, I'll promise it'll die fast.

[Treycore]

I’d be fine if they just doubled the amount of resources required to build turrets

Or added some sort of upkeep necessary to run the turrets, would make you think twice about stacking so many

Really no downside other then the lag to stack turrets and time/materials to construct them

[Falcrack]

They are ridiculously OP for their cost. In my next playthrough, I am giving myself a "No Defense station" rule. If I want to defend a position, I will do it with fleets. It is just too easy to build something that no AI fleet can ever crack.

This is one reason I advocate for maintenance costs for stations, defense stations in particular. If you build something that ridiculously OP, I feel you should have to pay dearly in order to maintain it.

[A2G]

Costs are rarely a good balancing tool, as any developer who took a squint at any game knows. Players always get to the point where game resources become a non factor. Balance should be done through combat power. They need nerfed in my opinion. Just like the Asgard does. What a ridiculous ship. I get it, it's a single player game so nerd power fantasy it is then. But if you are going to put ridiculous balance breaking assets into the game, at least have an AI that isn't the stupidest in gaming. Invincible assets, and a wholly incompetent AI code is not a good combination.

[Falcrack]

To give a good idea of how OP defense platforms are, I built a defense station with 4 bridge defense modules and 4 disc defense modules, for about 10 million credits. Bridge modules have 4 L and 8 M turrets, and disc modules have 8 L and 8 M turrets, for a grand total of 48 L turrets and 64 M turrets. The whole thing, fully outfitted with shields and turrets, only cost me 9.2 million credits.

By contrast, the chassis alone for a Behemoth Vanguard, with nothing else added, costs 10 million credits. Fully outfitted, it costs around 20 million. But it only has 2 L and 14 M turrets. And a couple main guns.

48 L and 64 M turrets for 10 million credits, vs 2 L and 14 M turrets and main guns for 20 million credits.

If a single defense module cost as much as a claytronics production module (~10 million credits), it would be closer to being balanced. As it is however, a single disc defense module with no outfitting costs only 331,000 credits, and ~1.5 million more or less for fully outfitted depending on which weapons are chosen.

[LameFox]

I am pretty sure they are balanced around the AI's use of them. They are probably meant to be hardish to kill because if they weren't the wars would be a lot less stable and Egosoft does not seem to want the wars to tip one way or another without player intervention. You as a player can build a ridiculous one just like you can build a ridiculous fleet if you want. Or like you can take any random ship and use it to >10x the effect the AI could. Or even the way you can build super mega civilian factories the likes of which the AI would never contemplate. I don't think this stuff is likely to change as your freedom to be excessive has been a part of X games way too long to be accidental.

[Dreez]

A playerbuilt defense platform with 7x7 squares that uses an admin-center doesn't only cost 10 million to build,
you have to factor in the cost of all the resources that goes into building one of these monsters and that it's almost
impossible to build one without an already HUGE industrial power attained through several factories.

The amount of shieldcomponents, turretcomponents and other speciality-components required are insane.

So if you want a player-defense station start exploding to an I or 2 K's jumping in, after spending 48k Turret components
on securing a gate, then you can just stop building them, because doing that to defense stations would destroy the game.

[Y-llian]

The issue with defence modules isn’t so much their power but rather that the AI doesn’t field fleets with sufficient variety and size to overwhelm. They are not difficult to destroy at all and pretty light on hull. What they make up for in guns they lose in durability. I suppose Ego could see if this balance still stacks up as their durability was slightly increased a few versions ago because folk were complaining they were being killed too easily.

To my mind, the whole point about defence stations (the ones with admin and guns) is that they should be harder to take out because they denote sector control. They are, in effect, a military installation. So, both the player and NPCs should commit decent size fleets to remove their opponent’s ability to control the sector. Problem is, right now, only the player does this meanwhile, slaved to their suicidal code, a single K will bravely wander to a defence station only to be obliterated - you can just hear the military officers giggle ‘stupid machine…’

Now, the player can, of course, build stuff that no NPC fleet, no matter what size, will be able to overwhelm. But that’s a choice the player makes and not something that warrants Ego to make a change. You can choose to put zero or a 1000 defence modules dependent on how risk averse you are or not.

So, instead of changing defence modules’ potency or increasing production costs, that will also require a root to branch economic rebalance… Why not just fix NPC fleets so they’ll be a little smarter?

[Meme Turtle]

I'd be fine with starting off cutting hardpoints in half... just to see what happens.

How dare you impose limits on others? viewtopic.php?f=146&t=441739&start=15#p5077531

VRO already reduces number of L turrets on defense platforms by half but it doesn't fix anything. The game has a fundamental problem of letting player scale indefinitely, which is ok for casual, sandbox gameplay style, but break any notion of game balance for strategic players. If you want to fix defense stations you need to have a uniform system in place that would limit all player assets. Or just don't build those OP defense plats, I guess?

[Clownmug]

Do people keep forgetting this is single player game or something? Are we looking to get another thing f'd up like mining and player shipyards?

[Ashitaka-san]

The issue with defence modules isn’t so much their power but rather that the AI doesn’t field fleets with sufficient variety and size to overwhelm. They are not difficult to destroy at all and pretty light on hull. What they make up for in guns they lose in durability. I suppose Ego could see if this balance still stacks up as their durability was slightly increased a few versions ago because folk were complaining they were being killed too easily.

To my mind, the whole point about defence stations (the ones with admin and guns) is that they should be harder to take out because they denote sector control. They are, in effect, a military installation. So, both the player and NPCs should commit decent size fleets to remove their opponent’s ability to control the sector. Problem is, right now, only the player does this meanwhile, slaved to their suicidal code, a single K will bravely wander to a defence station only to be obliterated - you can just hear the military officers giggle ‘stupid machine…’

Now, the player can, of course, build stuff that no NPC fleet, no matter what size, will be able to overwhelm. But that’s a choice the player makes and not something that warrants Ego to make a change. You can choose to put zero or a 1000 defence modules dependent on how risk averse you are or not.

So, instead of changing defence modules’ potency or increasing production costs, that will also require a root to branch economic rebalance… Why not just fix NPC fleets so they’ll be a little smarter?

Funny, I was just about to start another thread on that issue...

Regardless, from what I see I have seen thus far with defense stations, they are still too cheap for the bang that you get.

[Ashitaka-san]

Do people keep forgetting this is single player game or something? Are we looking to get another thing f'd up like mining and player shipyards?

Other single player games get balance updates all the time. If something truly isn't balanced, than the devs of said game should consider changes to balance those issues.

[Y-llian]

Regardless, from what I see I have seen thus far with defense stations, they are still too cheap for the bang that you get.

I’m not sure I agree for the reasons I’ve outlined but respect that we may have a divergent opinion on this issue. Like I said, perhaps a sanity check on balance (durability vs weapon output) might be warranted as there’s been quite a lot of changes since defence modules were last changed.

[humility925]

Defense Station can't moved, and spent lot of time building defense station than buying and upgrade ship, defense station should be very effective for cost and time you build, we don't want useless like useless to put gun on trader in x2 threat or any trade ship for that matter.
If Defense station don't do job, then it's pointless to put credit and time of building, might well removed it from game when no one want to use defense station when it's useless, so I rather had very useful than useless. Sometime there is choice, Useful (overpower, people would love to build because it's useful) or Useless (nerfed and no one want to build it)