How do I build a military starbase array?

While I haven't used this tactic myself in an actual game, I have experimented quite a bit with the placement. At first, I wasn't sure it was possible-so I had to test it.

Due to partial tiles counting as within the area of a starbase, you can have up to 24 starbases affecting a total of 2 (that's right, TWO) tiles.

I've used hyphens so the spacing will hold; hopefully it's clear enough.

It goes a little like this:

X|---------------|X
X|---------------|X
X|---------------|X
X|XX-----O-----XX|X
-|---------------|-
X|XX-----O-----XX|X
X|---------------|X
X|---------------|X
X|---------------|X

The x's are your starbases. The line in the middle is just the sector line; don't worry about it. The eight in the middle two sectors can be placed in alternative positions, as far away as the lowest/highest outside ones (maybe one more tile than that) and still affect the same specific tiles. The O's are the two tiles in question which receive the full bonus from all 24 starbases. They are eight parsecs away from either neighboring sector-right smack in the middle.

If memory serves, they max out at +54 attack and +9 defense. Times 24 is +1296 attack and +216 defense.

My guess would be you simply don't have them underneath the array for long enough, though I'm not sure how long "long enough" would be. Hopefully someone else can help you in that regard, but I do have a couple of additional points that may be helpful. Also, I would recommend using a large or greater galaxy size, along with at least common/common planets/habitable as a general rule, just so you can build fast enough.

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As a note, defense influences your military score as well-though only on ships with at least 1 attack. Formula should be total attack of all ships + total defense of all ships + (total hp of all ships/10). Try building a ship with only one weapon and fill the rest of it up with EOL defenses-zero point works nicely. Watch what happens. Mostly useless for an actual game, due to the way combat is handled in DA, but it does actually count as more for your military score than a comparable ship with all weapons. I'm not positive this holds true for all weapon/defense possibilities, assuming same tech generation, but it holds true for a significant portion of it, including the final techs...which should really be all that matters. Additionally, maxing out a defense tree takes between 12k-17k research (base cost, before tech speed is factored in), while the cheapest weapons tree takes ~49000 to max out (beam weapons), and isn't a particularly good size/space ratio.

This is particularly effective with the Krynn, who start with a +50 defense bonus. Starship Defenses adds another 10% on top of that, and Universalists adds another 10% for practically free. The luck bonus doesn't hurt, either-if you spend one customization point, you're at 50% luck, and always have your weapons roll from half to max. Even without the Krynn's +50 defense bonus, the +20 from starship defenses and universalists is more than enough to overcome the 25% boost to attack that ships in orbit get, due to the extra amount of defense one can place on a ship as compared to weapons. In addition, you can only have 10 ships in orbit per planet, so that 25% is limited.

Sole Soul is correct but I may as well give you a few nice pictures and expand on what he's said.

First off building one of these is a lot of work. You talk about implementing the array in a small galaxy having only 16 planets or so. I've done so many times, but it's not a job for the faint of heart. A single fully populated military starbase takes 28 constructors.

I use two flavors of SB array, the 16 and the 24. A 16 SB array requires a total of 448 constructors which at 16 planets producing a constructor per turn will take 28 weeks just to construct the array. The 24 SB array requires 672 constructors which with the same 16 planets will take 42 weeks. That's almost a year just to construct the array let alone start building ships to put under it.

Another point that this means is that you have to build your planets industry sufficiently so that you can produce a constructor per turn for each and every one of your planets. One way to insure this is to try and make as cheap a constructor as you can. Another is to make sure you're evil and build the Artifical Slave Center (ASC) which gives a 50% bonus to military production that actually multiplies all other sources of production bonus. Basically you need to be more concerned about your *weak* planets instead of your strong planets. You want equal production on all your planets. Capability beyond what's needed to produce a ship per turn is wasted. Planets that can't produce a ship per turn slow you down. Note that this applies while you're building constructors but it also equally applies while you're building ships to go under the array. Your ships need at least a single point of attack and a single point of defense to receive full benefit for the SB array. I tend to use the cheapest attack/defense that will fit on the hull I'm using. I tend to use huge hulls but many people use cargo hulls. You also ask about how long and how many ships. In even the tiny galaxy I will go for as many ships as I can afford the maintainence on. In a tiny galaxy I've usually done about 2,000 ships, in a gigantic galaxy I've done as many as 26,000. Again at one ship per week from 16 planets 2000 ships takes about 125 weeks which is not quite 2 and 1/2 years. So all told constructing something like this in a small galaxy takes quite some time, at least 3 years often closer to 4.

OK so now on to the pattens. Sole Soul's 24 array pattern is correct but I have a better picture taken from one of my games. I've highlighted the sector boundries and I've outlined the two parsecs that receive the benefit of all 24 SB's. Also note the highlighted area of influence of one of the outermost SB's does "cover" both of the outlined parsecs. The placement of the inner 8 SB's is not really critical and can vary from that shown.



In smaller galaxies a 24 SB array is not real practical and I'll opt for the 16 SB array. In this case you just build the array in any four corners area where sectors meet. Also you have a much greater area of overlap of all 16 SB's. Anyway here's a picture of one of these.



OK. Now the final point is what technology you need to get before you can fully build one of these things. First off you need the Starship Defenses, Starbase Mobilization, ... Starbase Conquest Strategy branch of the tech tree completed. You will also need a few top end weapons techs to get the final few modules. I usually end up building up my SB's to about 44 attack 9 defense and then work on the high end weapons techs while producing ships for under the array and finish the array as I get each tech. Note that you will need a battle stations module which will be the only non "ship assist" module that you will need in the SB. The following is a list of the modules and required techs.



One final point and that is that the if you look at the fully built up SB properties it will show an attack assist of +54, a defense assist of +10 and a starbase attack (from the battle station module) of +3. Note that the +10 defense is not correct and it's really +9. However this means that each SB gives every ship under it 63 points of attack/defense bonus. For your 16 SB array this is a 1008 point *per ship* bonus and for the 24 SB array this is a 1512 point *per ship* bonus.

This should pretty much answer every question anyone will ever have about military SB arrays.

Actually here's one more screenshot of the details of a single military SB. Note the 27 installed modules plus the initial constructor required to build the SB in the first place gives the 28 required constructors. Also, I always felt that 28 constructors was quite enough and never felt the need to use any speed assist/interdiction modules or any modules for the SB's own attack/defense other than the first battle stations module required to complete the ship assist path.

one question remains... why? forgive a noob. seems if you try to lure the AI to one of the two parsecs (like I do know you can do to lure the AI to your home space to get some special attack bonuses) he/she/it will first attack the starbases themselves defeating the purpose. at least I presume this is the case. unlike miners starbases seem to be a target for the AI. or will the AI once 'locked on' to one of your ships foolishly pursue it even into the middle of such an array? but even if so how do you get it when it is moving 4-5pc/week to stop on one of the two squares? and after all that, would it not be much cheaper and fast, and easier, to just build a ship or a fleet that has that much better attack in the first place?

This is for score only. There is no real practical in game use for such a thing. Actually that's not totally true. Early on while this is just getting starting this can pump up your military rating to very high levels allowing you to bully the AI's into accepting peace on your terms. It's like a Spin Control Center (SCC) on steriods. However by the time this really gets going it's truly unnecessary because by then the game has already been won and you're probably just mopping up.

Crud! I've been building substandard arrays - I hadn't noticed the modules you need battlestations to build.

OTOH, can you confirm the necessity of one point defense on ships in the array? I have whole classes of ships that only have weapons, and the fleets show a substantial defense rating.

Also, my preferred method of populating the array is usually tiny hulls. Even minimally armed, they gain massive bonuses for the least capital investment, and you can cram more of them in a fleet.

At the moment I only have endgame.sav files to use as examples and so I only have the single final turn to view the state as it is and I don't have any ships without both attack and defense.

But I have verified this over many times, although all my experience is limited to DL, you definitely need a single point of attack to get the attack bonus and a single point of defense to get the defense bonus. Also you do need to be careful when looking at a fleet or individual ships. There is a discrepancy when you look at a fleet in the main display but if you look at the fleet details you will see the proper values. Also if you mouseover the item it will display what the base is and what is from starbase assist.

As far as tiny versus cargo versus huge hulls there are other factors going on. For one you do get the benefit of the ships HP although that's a minor effect. For me, my major concern is getting all my ships to the rally point in the middle of the array.

My methodology for gigantic galaxies involves buying the ships directly instead of producing them. My income of around 1.3M ~ 1.6M bc's per week is usually sufficient to buy about 300 or more ships per turn. This is a logistical nightmare and a memory utilization nightmare if I were to count on autopliot to get all my ships to the rally point. So instead I use a colony rally point just to get my ships autolaunced and then use the governor to cancel the autopilot each turn. I then do this for 7 or 8 turns dependent on the hull size of my ship and my logistics. Basically I let my ships sit by the planet that produced them until I have one fleet worth. Then every 7 or 8 turns I'll go around to the 300+ planets that I have that are producing ships, fleet them up and send them off to my rally point. For convenience I like for my ships to reach the rally point in a single turn from all of the 300+ planets that produce them. This is why I use huge hulls because it allows me enough engines to reach my array in a single turn.

One other possible source of confusion about the attack/defense values that you see while a ship is under a SB array and that is your normal weapons/defense bonus that you get from military resource mining as well as racial abilities and techs applies only to "base" attack/defense and does not apply to SB assist generated attack/defense values.

Just an added note; I've built my first array for a gigantic DA game and have found the speed assist modules to be most useful with the engine nerfs. Troop transports that run 25 moves normally can slingshot out of the array at 73 moves. Don't really need them in DL since transports can go faster than that naturally, but it does help you get places in DA

Interesting point. IIRC 2 modules per SB gives you Speed+1 each so you can get a speed+48 boost from a 24 SB array.

I assume for this to work you have to start the move from a parsec that is in the area of influence. I've never tried it so I don't know. Does a ship just "passing through" get the speed assist as well?

Actually my module list has an error but I'm not exactly sure where it is. Basically one of the three paths that start out requiring battle stations in my list really doesn't require it. I think it's the shield/beam path. So you actually can get further towards completion without battle stations than my list implies but you will eventually need battle stations to completely build out your SB's.

They do have to start in the sweet spot that turn. I have made it a habit now of using the second sweet spot as a launch point while I pile the "tigers" in the other one.

Do you ever try to contruct it so your SCC planet falls into at least part of the array? Or is that usually too insignificant an increase to make it worth it? It seems to me that you could get at least 16 - 20 overlapping SBs if the planet is in a good spot, and any planet can have the SCC and ODS, so even a poor planet would do.

Ships in orbit don't benefit from the boosts of a military starbase, so you can't stack a military starbase array with the SCC.

The only thing mumble didn't mention as far as I can tell is that the way to get the most out of the famed "military SB array of huge score" is that you should use tiny hulls with only 1 attack and 1 defense. Keep your upkeep as small as possible so that as you get hundreds of thousands of tiny ships, EACH with a +1500, you don't cause upkeep problems.

This strategy is a micro-management pain and will push your system... but is the easiest way to push one of your 4 scores very high.


Also note I think that TA will not be able to score anywhere NEAR what you can get in DA and TA games. Note I have the top two spots in the current TA tournament (on the high scores page, all the way to the right) - and I pulled out a lot of tricks. Set-ups that used to easily score me 200k were only giving me ~40k in TA.

Also in TA some races just don't get the techs needed for the full SB array, and the tech trees have been moved so it takes a lot longer to even get SB projection 1. Add that to the increase in ship maintenance from 1% of cost to 5% of cost (a 400% increase) and its harder and harder to maintain those million tiny ships for score... assuming your computer has the memory for all of those ships anyway.

While TA is a more fun game, be warned, if going for score, stay very, very far away from the new expansion.

~ Wyndstar

I do from time to time, but usually on smaller games. In the gigantics I try to get my array as close to the center of the map as possible and in "front" of my production planets so my ships don't have to make a big detour just to use the launchpoint. My current game I have two SCCs and neither is anywhere near my array.

Edit:

I didn't realize that, thanks. Seems I'm still learning things about the game

I actually -just- tested this yesterday, in DA 1.80g. It does indeed work. The orbiting ships DO get a starbase bonus.

I was, however, unaware of the point that +attack/defense only applies to base, rather than starbase assist. I'll probably double check that, just to be sure. (I'm paranoid.)

Here is a picture of one of my recent MSBAs. The planet just to the north has my SCC and ODS, and all the other ships I have are right above that.



Although looking at Mumble's list I realize I havent been adding all the possible modules I could. I dont know if I want to do 28 per base though....ugh. I think that exceeds my level of patience/enjoyment. Thanks a lot for the detailed info.

Sentient species taste better...

Yea it takes some dedication to build almost 700 constructors for one of these.
And since we're showing pic



Thought I had a better one, but this one will do.

I've never played a gigantic map (my computer couldnt handle it), so building 700 constructors is pretty much out of the question! Even "huge" present something of a memory problem for my system.

Sentient species taste better...

Interesting in that you allow your ships to just stream on in to your rally point. I find the delaying 7 to 8 turns so that I send a whole fleet at once really does save on the needed computational power of your system. I'm wondering if you can get a total of 25,000 ships doing something like this? Even with fleeting my ships up and limiting the time over which ships are in motion I get severe slowdowns once I get to the 15K+ area.


I actually think that they do but there is some ultimate limit that you get from the SCC. If you have a full BHE huge hull ship with let's say 400 attack points along with a 300% weapons bonus for a normal total of 1600 attack points I don't think the SCC and SB array bonus will scale this properly.


Actually this is definitely incorrect. What I haven't been mentioning is that there is another entire level that can be achieved using a military SB array. Some folks may be aware of it but most are probably not and I'm not willing at this point to give up *all* my secrets. Let's leave a bit of mystery for others to discover.

As an additional "teaser" here is my military timline from my 957K DL game. Note that my max military rating was 13.8 million. Also note the "wrap" that occurs in the graph. Some of you may be familiar with my discussions about the wrap that occurs at 6 million and again at 12 million and I assume at 18 million if anyone could ever get there. You get a similar wrap in the pop curves at around 6.2 trillion.

Anyway, to the knowledgeable this gives complete information. If you don't get it then perhaps you're not quite as smart as you think. ;p



Note that the above picture contains the military graphs of all 9 of my opponents in the game. You can't see the curves because on the scale of my performance the AI's military ratings are effectively zero, but in all actuality the AI's military ratings were *much* higher than mine during the initial part of the game, but I took off exponentially and they didn't.

hehe. I know, I know! But I'm not telling  .

As far as the streaming thing. I usually always do the zoom in to a dead spot during turn change and see no real lag that way. I also have it set not to focus view on selected unit so I can just hit G as they arrive without issue.

I only really have the lost autopilot issue enmasse upon a reload and I have found a way to minimize it at that. You know how sometimes when you have two constructors heading to a resource and the first gets there and builds a starbase? Well the second constructor will in my experience lose it's autopilot to that spot due to the target destinatio changing from an open resource to a SB. The principal is the same when running starhips to a rally point, but only seemingly upon a load. What I do is before shutting down the game I manually take all the ships that will be reaching the rally point at the next turn change and go ahead and mve them there. This way upon reload there is no changes at the destination on that first turn change. Turns thereafter are good to go again, but if even one ship you might have missed goes to the rally point on that first turn change it can screw up most of the ships trying to move to that point after it.

This is the first time I've tried to explain my findings and not sure how well I did, but I have tested this across several games and have come up with a lot less lost autopilots especially upon reload. Now there will still be those occasional seemingly random ships that lose the autopilot, but this has stopped the mass loss for me.

Oh, I hardly think that's fair!  I'm pretty sure I'm exactly as smart as I think I am. But it's a pretty vague statement.

Yeah, I do find that the SB array does add the bonuses to ships in orbit. I'm not surprised that the SCC may not calculate the score the way you might think, though. Some good info here, but I doubt I'd ever attempt it to the scale that some of you do.

I'll have to give Mumble's hint some thought, now. I read his post detailing exactly what he has under his array, but I'm either missing some minor point, or the "secret" is more obvious than I'm giving it credit for. Will need to enter it into the bat computer.

It's usally good to place MSB at points of most likily contact with the "enemy" and have there range cover as many planets as possable.

Well, I stand corrected. My apologies. I just got done testing it, and of course the others are right, scc stacks, as do military effects on ships in orbit.

In my defense, if there can be one, , I haven't tested this since DA 1.5 when I was giving the new combat system a complete test. I swear there was a build in DA where the two didn't mesh, but given the evidence against me I could be remembering that wrong as well.

Of course, that gives me something new to try now...

~ Wyndstar

The curve, the curve. Everything is in the curve. All knowledge is there for all to see. It's probably much simpler and more obvious than folks would think.

In my case I always have ships that can reach my rally point in a single turn so this would involve moving all of my ships.

Ignoring the autopilot after reload thing I've tested this even just recently and with about 350 ships a turn this takes about 15 minutes with my Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @2.4Ghz.

This is even when zoomed in on a dead spot with options set to not focus on selected ship, skip leftover autopilot moves, don't show autopilot lines and don't follow autopilot ships.

With my typical logistics I get 8 huge hull ships per fleet and so once every 8 turns I hand move all my ships in about 45 minutes instead of what takes the computer to do in about 2 hours (8 turns @ 15 minutes each). Plus the more ships I get in play the worse the PC gets. Are we talking about the same order of mangnitude of ships here? Like I said about 350 per turn that all reach the rally point in that turn with perhaps 50% of ships traveling 90 parsecs or more. This with a backgound of perhaps 10,000 ships already sitting fleeted up at my rally point.

Hardly, You know my PCs specs and I doubt it could function after a few turns of that. At most I have usually about 140 to 160 moving at a time and then only at 35-40 moves apiece probably. I think the most ships I've had in a game was about 6K, maybe not even that much and I had to end that one earlier than I wanted because the slowdown was getting horrible. I hope when I get my quadcore here in the next couple of months I'll be able to push the game to those extremes. As it is now I seem to be limited as much by my hardware as I am by my ability to go for the big scores .