The Silent Destruction of a Starbase

Yep, that is why it is important to pay attention at all times. When you are attacking/being attacked by the enemy at a different gravwell the many messages you receive sometimes get hard to manage. There was an alert but it may have been hidden with all the other alerts you were seeing/hear.

That's a good point. So it would be in my best interest to make a habit of regularly reviewing the alert panels at the bottom.

Or just zoom out completely so you can see which planets are flashing yellow, indicating they are under attack.

Further, I advise that the Devs add custom map sharing to Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion.

On top of paying attention to alerts and zooming out to survey the situation, I've learned from Medieval: Total War something that very much applies here: Keep your front small.

It's not just a matter of having enough forces, but also making sure you have manageable numbers. The odds of the enemy skipping a planet on your frontline are pretty slim. So, you're best off keeping the number of frontline planets low. This means that you sometimes have to attack a planet that is less than convenient in order to reduce the breadth of your front in the long run. The benefits to making hard tactical choices are better strategic results and a wider base to the economy behind you.

Also, while Starbases are somewhat self sufficient, I usually keep a small support force nearby as well; I have found that a few of the respective repair/support cruisers for each race as well as 4-6 Flak Frigates help prolong Starbase life EXPONENTIALLY. Its a very small investment to protect the funds you have sunk into a fully upgraded SB.

Good point. There are some stationary defenses that can fulfill these roles, but the point is that repairs prolong your starbase's life and flak will keep your starbase from dealing with overwhelming strikecraft.

Indeed. Choke points are much better strategically than any other option. But only on the military front: at least in 1v1s I've noticed a tendency for players to focus on fortifying and defending their main front world while continuously expanding and colonizing in the other direction, even up until bumping into the enemy's civilian front.

It depends on where the enemy combat fleet is and how fast it could get to your other front-line worlds. If it can get there quickly, you're in trouble: if there are a few phase jumps in between often it's OK to have a "wide" empire front, as long as your combat front is limited to one planet or two.

That said, another possibility is to be continuously on the offensive in which case your front doesn't matter much... but that's a very risky bet, and you might have to be facing a significantly less skilled player to do that confidently.

Repair cruisers are almost essential, especially against the higher level AIs.

Flak frigates though? I'm not so sure. All they really kill is fighters... although they can act as a damage-soak for enemy LF.

Why not? That's less fire on the Star Base, and more time for your fleet to arrive.

When I mean small front, I mean number of planets, not distance between them. So we're in agreement still.

FYI--if two or more "event sounds" happen at the same time, one will play over the rest--most have a text prompt at the bottom of the screen as well even  when that happens but it's easy to miss.

That is a problem - I mostly fixed it for my game at least by replacing the event and unit voices with much shorter sped-up versions, while also removing the near-silences at the beginning and end of the .ogg. Now it's very rare for my game to miss an audio event announcement.

I think a klaxon or short, harsh sound works best, no?

Gwag?

Gwag to you too.

How rude...

Last night, I got to watch the starbase I rebuilt get destroyed by a very powerful Advent fleet. I had a fleet guarding the starbase consisting of 10 carriers (10 fighter/10 bomber), 20 heavy cruisers, and 3 capital ships. Their fleet was more powerful apparently and hit mine so hard that I pulled them back to a neighboring world. When they arrived, they were greeted by 10 more carriers I recently constructed. I merged them with the fleet. I also had two Dunovs on the production line. I like having two Dunovs for a better boost of shield strength, but also so they can boost each other as necessary. It's worked great for me so far. Once the Dunovs were constructed, I added them to the fleet, along with those 10 carriers (bringing my strike craft count to 20 fighter squadrons and 20 bomber squadrons) and sent them back to the gas giant. (I also have several Hoshiko cruisers who will be joining the fleet soon.) Meanwhile, I watched the enemy fleet, clustered around my starbase, ripping it apart like it was a brand new (downgraded) starbase. It wasn't. I think I had 2 points in armor, 2 in weapons, 2 in a fighter bay, and 1 in a frigate bay. Their firepower was such that they fried it very, very quickly in spite of my upgrades.

My new fleet arrived just as the starbase blew up and they jumped back to one of their planets. I was a little unhappy so I told my fleet to follow them. After jumping, I ripped through their planetary defenses, sent their fleet running to a neighboring world (they didn't even attack my fleet), crushed their starbase, and bombarded their planet. Yeah, maybe unhappy was the wrong word. I was ticked off. And that's where I saved before going to bed.

I just relayed this to one of my friends at work and he said three words: safety override protocol. I snapped my fingers. That would have been perfect especially given their tight formation around my base. He suggested that since I was going to lose the base anyway.

Good point, especially if you expect to encounter that again. I recommend sacrificing a fighter bay upgrade over weapons or armor.

As for their strength, it depends on what the sitaution was. Did they have any starbase busters? Is it a Hard or higher AI (they get research boosts)? There are a few reasons they could have ripped through it.

And yes, I and Ryat are also fans of the Dunov.

They actually are set to Easy, I believe. I'm trying to become a better player. If I'm playing a LAN or online game with friends then we kick it up to Normal or Hard, but when I'm solo, I set them to Easy. Eventually I'll progress to Normal and Hard.

I'm not familiar with those, so I couldn't tell you.

More -Ue_Carbon then me but I find them more useful then most.

The Advent use a starfish shaped vessel for their structure buster weapon/cruiser. Its so so against starbases but murder on weaker support structures.

https://www.sinsofasolarempire.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Great site to brush up on the basics of units etc

I saw one or two earlier, but my fighters took them out. They were a precursor to the large enemy fleet that arrived later, knocked my fleet back, and took out the second starbase. I don't recall seeing any in the ranks of the enemy fleet, but they might have been.

I did read a breakdown of every TEC ship, but I haven't read up on Advent or Vasari yet. I need to. To coin the popular phrase: know your enemy. Long ago, I briefly glanced at the other races and noticed that only two of the races have torpedo cruisers (TEC and Advent) while the Vasari do not. I understand that their mobile starbase serves that function. That was one thing that bothered me a little. Thanks for the suggestion. You inspire me to continue my research.

Agree completely but I think this was an uncolonizable gas giant so stationary wasn't an option.

A few points: Given the amount of resources you put into your SB in this situation, I probably would have kept the support fleet and just pointed your reinforcements to jump to this well upon construction. With your fleet backing the SB, you may have lost some ships, perhaps even a Cap but likely the loss at least from a financial standpoint would have been less than death of the SB.

Also, SB has IMMENSE DPS if you were at L2 Weapon upgrades so the ability to have your fleet soak some damage and have the SB dish it out is always a good synergy. The 20 HC's in particular can buy a substantial amount of time to lay waste to the enemy fleet. Maybe it's just me, if 10 carriers and 2 Dunovs made the difference in being able to destroy the enemy fleet in retaliation, I think the SB probably would have been able to roll the attacking fleet if you had merely kept your defenders around. Just a thought.

Finally, I have found the SC upgrade to be mostly useless unless you have Advent and are Maxing SC along with MD. For the Argo SB, I usually max Weapons, Armor and then it depends on the strategic location of the SB but on a frontline world where I have multiple enemy phase lanes, I will max Safety Override and then 1 level of Docking Booms or Remote Construction.