Star bases are supposed to use a stack of 360 facing heavy mount cannons, front facing heavy mount beams, missiles (which fire in all directions) and one or two front facing topedoes. 360 weapons take more space, and most battles most ships are in front of the outpost. Beams have long cooldowns anyway, so you really only need a ship to fly in front of the outpost every 10 seconds or so in order for that beam to still fire regularly when the outpost is surrounded.

Hmmm... What I notice in my game seems quite different. Here is what I see on my opponent battle-station:

- 15 pd phasors (360)
- 9 Ion pulse beam (F)
- 4 Ion pulse beam (360)
- 3 Hv phasors (F)
- 3 Hv phasors (Sides)
- 4 phasors (360)
- 4 p.missiles (360)
- 4 p.missiles (360)

So if I go front, I'll receive 3 Hv phasors + 13 IPB + 4 phasors + 8 p.missiles
If I go behind the station: 4 IPB + 4 phasors + 8 p.missiles...

So all I have to do is go back to be out of range, recover my shield, and then go around the board, and attack the battlestation from behind... That looks like a trick for an easy victory...
What I see from the AI, is rushing its fregate swarm onto my battlestation (and lose some, but come on, it's just fregates... ^^), and then stays behind my battlestation...

You say "most battles most ships are in front of the outpost": I agree, that should be the case, but because of the weapons facing, it is not... making weapons 360 would force the ennemy to attack on the front side.
The price of "360" weapons is for a ship, which "can" turn over (so they can always hit a ship, it is hard to stay in the dead angle). For an orbital-defense, it cannot turn over, so the dead-angle is constant, so a "forward facing" weapons should be even cheaper because of that. Since we can not change the price of a weapon depending on the ship it is on, I think orbital defences should have more space, and all weapons 360 (or maybe 1 forward ? but not 75% of weapons)

Well now you've switched to the battle station blueprint, so of course it's different. It also looks like you're not using the base 5X blueprint. Are you using tactical mod?

Anyway, I can give a bit more space priority to the 360 weapons. I just haven't noticed it being an issue.

Yeah as I played the game, my opponent got Battle-stations on all its planets, so gave the battle-station details of the battle I faced, but I think the issue is the same ^^

I also just noticed orbital-batteries were all forward though, which makes them totally useless...

Indeed, I use Tactical Mod, and then realized the mod also plays with weapons-facing, with a discussion about it here. I'll invite its owner to join this discussion, to keep mods compatibles with each other

Heya! I saw your message so I'm popping in over here to add some context.

we can't make per race defenses so we have to make them generalist which leads to weakened defenses as inefficient weapons get mounted.

to your point about the weapon facings, the cost for all around weapons is very expensive in tactical mod because it allows ships that are slow maneuvering to ignore that deficiency. I can add more total weapons if I split facings. this has the added benefit of allowing the station to engage more ships overall.

I also made the rear facing of starbases weaker intentionally to encourage you to maneuver around them to exploit the weakness. the rationale being the base will have fewer weapons facing the planet its defending as attack from that angle isn't as likely.

same goes for the other defenses, though I wonder if it might be worth it to try to make them able to track targets.

overall defenses aren't intended to stop every invasion, but they do get quite powerful with ARU and later game weapons. I regularly see AI fleets failing to take them out.

Originally posted by RanDoM:

YI also just noticed orbital-batteries were all forward though, which makes them totally useless...

Must be a TM change. My blueprint puts some all facing weapons on there.

it is. the battery model only has the cannons forward on it so I made the weapons all forward firing

Indeed, it would be graphically strange if batteries could fire backward, haha.
But as I said, they are totally useless if all you have to do, is go around the map with your fleet to attack them on the flank.
What about allowing each orbital defence to turn ? For ships, we can see a "speed" and "turning speed" stat, so maybe we could set a positive "turning speed" on those defences, while keeping their "speed" to 0 ?
- Fast enough to lock target on a fleet at long range, which tries to go behind defences while out of range of Hv weapons (any ship is able to go around the map, whatever your blueprint, so this in not an interesting fighting strategy).
- Slow enough to make any "blitz ship" able to fool the defence on close-combat, without it being able to fire (this is an interesting fighting strategy, where you have to make your ships fast enough for that purpose).

I tried to get a drive on those defenses that would let them turn. Something about them being structures locks them off from any movement even if you do. If someone could get it working, I'd include slow turning for defenses.

I wouldn't call them totally useless but they are considerably weaker than missile bases. They can be dodged, but typically it requires a fair amount of micro to do so and if they are the only defense left, you've probably won.

Early game they are ok with races that get beam attack boosts because you typically don't have that great of ships and you can't counter as well like you can missiles, but after that point they don't scale well and end up fairly useless until late game and they can get better weapons to take on ships.

Originally posted by Spud Dastardly:

I tried to get a drive on those defenses that would let them turn. Something about them being structures locks them off from any movement even if you do. If someone could get it working, I'd include slow turning for defenses.

Ah, too bad... So we would have to ask to WhatIsSol then... ? :(

Originally posted by vaaish:

I wouldn't call them totally useless but they are considerably weaker than missile bases.

I must be missing something... From what I see, orbital-batteries ARE totally useless, since they don't even shoot once. All you have to do is to keep being out of range of it, and go to its flank. This too easy, and I feel like cheating when I do so...
I understand your vision, to make beams front-facing, this is indeed natural and have a strategic interest. But for now, it is only interesting for ships, which can turn around. For defences, this is an all different point. The weakness it implies is too big, I don't think any planet would build defences that cannot fire once to any ennemy (except dumb ones comming from front).
It's a good point to give a "medium" advantage to smart fleets, but here, it gives "big" advantage to not-smart fleets, which is imo not desirable.

So, for now, I see 3 solutions (from worst to best):

• keep the idea of slight weakness on sides/behind. If we admit the fire-power to be 100% on front, sides would be 80%, and back would be 70% maybe ? So a fleet comming from the flank or from behind has a slight advantage. But a downside to this is for swarms of ships, the defence wouldn't be overwhelmed. I remind the MoO2 intro, where a star-forteress has many small antaran ships turning all around the forteress, a feeling of "canons don't have enough time to aim well, there are too many turning around !". Here, a swarm surrounding a defence would trigger different canons, so the defence would handle them well, where it should be a pain... That would give the station 250% fire-power... And actually, from what I see, this is almost the actual blueprints (100% front, 50% sides, 30% back, so 180% if you have a swarm turning around the defence). So with this solution, the only good thing to do to destroy a defence keeps staying behind it, and only receive on 70% damages. If you're confident you can go front, but never try to overwhelm it with blitz-ships, you would regret.
  
• make beams/canons full 360 (with maybe some Hv Front ?), and add some space to defences bluprints, to handle the 360 facing cost. This would make maybe 100% firepower on front, and 80% on sides + back ? The benefit is that swarms/blitz-ships won't take more damages than classic ships that are in front of defences, and we keep the idea of slight weakness on sides/back
  
• send a request to WhatIsSol (here it is) to make orbital defences able to turn around, and then, the best solution would be something like 100% front, 20-30% flanks, 10% back maybe ? It would not be that easy to stay behind the defences, since they would try to look at you in the eyes, and blitz-ships would have a real advantage, but would require a good micro-managment. A fleet should also not be able to keep behind the whole defences, because if you are behind the battle-station, turning around it, the orbital-batteries would easily be facing you. You wouldn't be able to be behind the battle-station AND the orbital-batteries at the same time. This sounds an interesting strategic-choice to me and would give the orbital battery a good strategic interest while defending.

Hope you agree, I try to be as close as what real(-futuristic)-life would be, to make strategic decisions relevant.

I can guarantee you that the orbital batteries will shoot. I see them do so all the time. They really aren't that strong though. They do best against larger ships that can't easily get behind them, especially later in the game when they have much more powerful weapons. That said, I could look at boosting them a bit more.

Overall, I've been fairly happy with the strength of orbitals. They provide enough defense that you can kill a few ships or hold off small probing fleets, but they do require support to win. I would like to see more options like per race blueprints to better tailor them to faction prefs, fleet wide BA and BD boosts to make supporting with a fleet attractive, and the ability to rotate to make them more dynamic. However, all that would require UCP changes.

How can the orbital battery shoot, if you keep out of range, and then get behind it to destroy it ? I don't understand...

you can do that for sure, but that's a benefit of manual control, smart planning, and being willing to spend the time to maneuver around the edges of the tactical map. most battles don't play out like that.

the only fix for that is to extend defense ranges so you come under fire immediately leaving no gaps and make defense weapon strength equal on all sides. the result is zero maneuvering as there's no benefits and the shortest distance to get in range is charging directly at the station. it makes the battles a touch boring.

well, destroying planetary defenses when they don't shoot at you is not that fun neither.... ^^
Indeed, as you say, what is fun is to be able to out-maneuver the defences thanks to your smart strategy and ships design. Going to the edge of the tactical map is not "that smart", and you can do it with any ship. If it allows you to not lose any ships, I would do that every time, and I would not have to design a specific ship to do so, so it's not very interesting.
A smart strategy would be to design a part of my fleet to be able to kill planetary defences. Let's say I have a fleet of 2 battle-ships, it would be interesting to design 5-10 destroyers, expert at killing planetary defences, around my battle-ships (where my battleships are expert at ship-killing, and would die if they try to destroy planteray defences). So the destroyers would be fast enough to get behind the planetary defences, not too weak to stay alive while getting behind the defences, and stay behind while shooting.
If planetary defences had a turning speed, that would make this kind of strategies possible, and interesting.
A "normal" player would just have the same ship design in its whole fleet, and would have to attack the planetary defences from front (since his ships are not fast enough to stay behind the defences), and would need a much bigger army to win the same battle.
This is the kind of strategy which should be rewarded. It requires specific ship design, planning, and micro-management with manual control.

So for now I think I'll stop going to the edge of the map (since it's too easy), and try to destroy defences comming from front, to be fair with AI, because that's what he does when attacking me.
And if/when WhatIsSol makes drives available on planetary defences, planetary tactical combat would be way more interesting ! So hope he can do that !