To an extent they are kinda naf tbh, that they work against the borg is the main problem, though if they are to be included it would be good if their use is more standardised and rationalised, e.g. a enhanced coms station (using the current relay's mesh) that can spread culture remotely, or just an enhanced sensor station that can give information on other systems (again, can use the same mesh) would be useful and realistic within the Star Trek universe (e.g. the Dominion specifically had one such important installation that was captured by the Federation)
I've actually thought about working that into warp detection, but that's all you can do with it really. There aren't any functions to limit the vision stuff to nearby planets. We could do within the same solar system, but a large single star map is pretty hosed there.
Speaking of Starbases, that's a huge drop in firepower and staying power, especially on SB defenses with a 75% reduction in shields. Not even +3 defenses and +2 Regenerative Shielding makes them any tougher. Maybe their firepower is fine, but the serious drop in SB staying power makes it look that much worse.
An unimproved Dominion Starbase has about 500dps, higher than Feds(320) and Klingons(400). There are four targets per bank so it's not as weak as the numbers say. The weapon upgrades give a further 80%, so 900dps ignoring tech improvements. The Klingons are only a little higher than that, and the Feds much lower. Where durability is concerned, the Klingon Starbase has 40 shield points per second restored and 21k max shield points for three upgrades. The Dominion Starbase only gets 5000 shield points with those three upgrades, and 1.6 per second restored. Regenerative Shields on the other hand can run continuously, restoring 100 per second. At 69% mitigation, you can completely absorb 300dps in actual damage, which is typically over twice that in ship stats, a fleet of 10 wont even be noticed. In combination with the other ability, which vastly outstrips the others in damage potential, small raiding parties are rapidly dispatched without accomplishing anything.
It's impervious to a much larger force than the other sides can handle on their own, the trade off is that it gets smoked a lot faster against large fleets. This is true of their defensive structures as well, a theme of their defenses. Severely punishing against what would be a problem for other sides, but when there's enough firepower to ignore their shield regeneration, they last half as long.
The Starbase is an all or nothing proposition. If you want a fortress with massive damage potential, you have to spend four upgrades on those abilities, you can't just jack weapons and toughness up and use the other three points on support. If you do, you've got one hell of a monster though. Opening Salvo gives it a damage potential of over 2kdps, dishing a maximum of 100,800 damage per shot. If the thing came with 21k shields, the Borg would be the only side able to drop it.
Feds... just tired of seeing stuff of Cruiser size or even Capital Ships getting disabled and dragged halfway across the map. Amusing seeing Neghvars and Dominion Battleships / Enslavers getting disabled by Tractor Beam spams and never really getting much shots off. This problem persisted with the previous version. I would've commented on it earlier but I was playing around with the other factions also (haven't tried Romulans yet). But the Tractor Beam spam is horrid.
Er... what? Tractor Repulsion, the awesome one, and the frigate version of the normal tractor beam, only work on frigates. Capital slot ships can only be tractor beam spammed by their counterparts. Even the level 3 capital version is only a 12 second effect with a 60 second cooldown, the frigate version is 8 and 90. It's hardly something to continuously disable the enemy with. Now, tractor repulsion is awesome, but even it's only working 50% of the time, and does a two second interrupt, not a lasting disable that can prevent firing of weapons. It's on a ship that blows up so fast you hardly notice them too, dies faster than their scout ship does.
Are you butt raping smaller fleets or what?
