I'm still on my first game (which in fact I abandoned about 150 turns in, since the patch is coming), but I haven't seen any space stations or star bases or any other kind of static space defence.  I had a look through the tree, and I didn't see anything, but I could have missed it.  Is there such a thing in this game?

AlmondBrown wrote:

None at this time. Question though. What purpose would a static defense provide you that a mobile defense (ships) can't provide? Also how strong should a Static defense be? Fleet Size 25? Larger....? Other games have them and it seems difficult to balance them as your enemies will have them as well right?

P.S. Welcome to Endless Space 2... :)

Thanks for the welcome!  Good quesitons, and I've been thinking about these myself.  I think the advantage is that for the same hull size, cost, and tech level, you are trading off mobility against increased firepower and defence.  So, if you want to take a more defensive posture, such as a pacifist, for roughly the same cost you get a somewhat tougher, shootier weapons platform at the cost of it being static.

I suppose if you were only interested in defending yourself, you could slot some ships with damage-boosting modules or repairbots instead of engines. There are also system improvements to increase the difficulty of an enemy invading your system.

I think we don't nessesarilly need the static defence because like AlmondBrown mentioned you can make a mobile one, and in fact you can do someting I feel a lot of people often don't, you can make a new ship! Those default templates that you get when you research a new ship, yea you can use those, and you should at least have one of each class but you can make a brand new one with lots of defences and hp and some good back line ships that are mostly weapons and damage, name them something specifiic (so they are easier for you to keep track of) a build a specific kind of fleet that you don't need movement modules for becuase you're going to have it parked somewhere most of the time as a defense.

I'd welcome static defences, it would make trading/diplomacy playthroughs feel less hypocritical for investing heavily into hulls and weapons to defend yourself.

Instead of static defences, I would love it if you could build structures on systems that would add effects to the battles themselves happening in that system, similar to the effects seen on asteroid fields, black holdes, neutron stars, etc.. make it so you can only have one type at a time in a system so as not to be overpowered and have them cost large amounts of industry so they can't be switched to quickly (or make them permanent and can't be switched to another effect type).

I love the idea behind the combat arena effects that are in place now, but they're few enough in number that they don't make a large enough impact when it comes to more strategic planning, and I think it would be really cool if the players themselves could do build something similar at great cost.

Ridiculi wrote:

Instead of static defences, I would love it if you could build structures on systems that would add effects to the battles themselves happening in that system, similar to the effects seen on asteroid fields, black holdes, neutron stars

I'm on board with this! Some visual indication would be nice too.

For example if you'd build a planetside artillery, you'd see some sort of effect on the battle arena. Of course it could be a stat bonus to the ships too, but I'd also like to see how the improvement would affect the outlook of the battle.

IceGremlin wrote:

We could just bring back Retaliation damage from the Shifters expansion of Endless Legend, damaging all orbiting ships equally at the end of each turn based on some factor like Manpower capacity or System Level. It's not very flashy, but it fills the missing niche of an orbital defense to deal with enemy ships, and nicely encourages the use of Invasion Gear modules instead of just sieging systems to zero all the time. If the damage is consistent for each ship, then this also encourages using Medium and Large ships over Small ones, to minimize instances of damage.

Of course, we also need some higher tier Defense improvements in the game. Right now it's just three improvements spread across two very early techs, and then a single Unique improvement in the final tier. Makes ground battles very one-sided in favor of the attacker as the game goes on.

As for flashy improvements, what about Orbital Interceptors? All they'd do is add extra Fighters and Bombers who show up when a battle starts. Flashy, cool, but doesn't require any new programming or assets; just some bonus squadrons for a home field advantage. Very "Battle of Britain."

Yea it used to be a thing in ES1. I doubt they would add them back in ES2 but it is on reworking. Orbital defense is kinda need after warp travel become a thing since you can blitz your fleet into any system especially crucial one and shut it down for good and there is nothing you can do about it unless you see it coming or having fleet ready.

Ridiculi wrote:

I love the idea behind the combat arena effects that are in place now, but they're few enough in number that they don't make a large enough impact when it comes to more strategic planning, and I think it would be really cool if the players themselves could do build something similar at great cost.

Agreed, and it wouldn't be solved just by adding more special nodes in map generation. The major problem with the current natural battle theaters is that you unlock free movement very early on, not to mention there's admirals that boost it even further, meaning there exists no real chokepoints thus no battles fought in special nodes. Another issue is that there's no reason to ever guard a special node, the only points of interest are the actual systems that need to be sieged down and invaded, meaning neither the attacker nor defender has any reason to try to control them during the actual war phase.

Which is a real shame since there's plenty of theater effects and background artwork that are completely going to waste. I like your idea of player created system theater effects, like others said retaliation seems like a nice idea considering how invasions are currently very siege module heavy rather than relying on manpower modules and actual multi-turn invasions.

I would be wary of a too many choke point scenario as then you youself couldn't pull off a nice end around attack to draw away forces from an enemy that has "bulked" up a specific area, usually due to your own encroachment policy of course.

I would however, I assumed anyways, that any Battle Arean affect was always active for the Planet that has it in its Borders? Or do you have to fight around those "anomlies" specifically to get the noted bonuses? If so then yes, they areindeed wasted, as most of the fighting my Fleets do is in enemy territory and not my own. ;)

A no-free-movement mod or option could be fun (implying that isolated nodes have an extra way to be reached). A fun tactical game would be played around starlanes and nodes !

SuperMarloWorld wrote:

A no-free-movement mod or option could be fun (implying that isolated nodes have an extra way to be reached). A fun tactical game would be played around starlanes and nodes !

It is a thing in Stellaris. People prefer to play on Hyperlane only more than allowing all three FTL method since Warp, and Wormhole travel make static defence worthless. They are going to change FTL method to work close to ES now. If we are going to implement static defence structure then it need module that has wide range and capable to pull ship that is on warp travel to it. That could make it useful, and prevent getting blitz with no way to stop by warp travel. It still a problem since ES1.