When to use Logistical command stations?

[Traveller]

These never got a lot of love from me.  There's a few places where they make a lot of sense--for example, along long stretches of safe planets within your territory that you have to move through often, or getting Mk.III to defend against teleporters...but aside from that I'm just not seeing it.

I mean...if you need to slow down your enemies, why not just use gravitational turrets?  I'm guessing that if you have logistics AND gravitational turrets, the enemy's speed is most affected by the turrets.  And if you are slowing them down so you can shoot them, well, attack boost is worth more isn't it?

I could see using Logistics Mk.III on a whipping boy planet for the salvage, but it seems like an awful lot of knowledge expense to pick up some more metal.

[Radiant Phoenix]

A few other edge cases I can imagine:

• Most of your firepower is immune to attack boosts
• Catching more of an exo-wave in a warhead attack

But... I basically just use them to make my fleets 50% faster inside my empire, and that only rarely, because most of my stuff gets where I want it plenty fast. If I really wanted to deploy my ships super-quick, I would just use a warp gate.

There is, I guess, a question of, "what could a Logistics Command Station do that isn't already done by another type of command station, and is good?"

Things I can think of:

• Increase construction (and repair?) speeds, likely in a manner multiplicative with engineers, so you put your manufacturing there.
• Make the speed adjustment last for a time after the unit leaves the system, so it's more noticeable. (dip your route through a LCS planet and most of the journey is shorter, not just the part on the LCS planet)
• Be cloaked until the enemy does somethingorother (e.g., stay on the planet for a minute or two), making it less susceptible to raids if you have a defense fleet you can send in.
• Cloak various other structures on the planet so you don't have to worry about them being raided.

[kasnavada]

Never ?

I'd use a station for defence, stealth, or ressources. Logistical never provided any of those so I never use them. But if they did they'd be a warp jammer, a military station or an economy station.

I *may* use logistical if they provided a different kind of defence, like enabling teleportation between 2 places in my empire. But then it would be called a stargate.

[Radiant Phoenix]

Maybe move the Warp Jammer Command Station into a chain of "stealth" command stations, and make the Logistics command station a standalone.

Stealth Command Stations:

• Mk1 (0kK): Cloaks itself and the energy collector for up to X time when AI ships are on the planet. Maybe also nearby stuff? The idea is that you can put this thing out and it will do a reasonably good job of not being attacked. (I think I would use this sometimes. Probably more if I wasn't doing Fallen Spire.)
  
• Mk2 (+2kK): Also cloaks most economic (non-combat) human stuff on the planet. Duration might go up too.
  
• Mk3 (+5kK): Also keeps adjacent AI planets from going on alert and stops waves from attacking. If cloak duration went up at Mk2, it presumably goes up here too. (I already take this in basically every game)

"Special" Command Stations:

• Logistics Command Station (?kK): As per existing Mk3 Logistics Command Station, but also reduces build times on the planet massively. (I would definitely use this one)
  
• Gate Network Command Station (?kK): As per existing Mk3 Logistics Command Station, but also generates a friendly-only wormhole link to all other friendly Gate Network Command Stations or foldouts. (I would be strongly tempted to take this one)

[Captain Jack]

Better idea: a special Wormhole Nexus location, with the Wormhole Gates leading to it needing to be built separately. The Nexus is as heavily defended as the AI Homeworld, but doesn't have Tachyon Sentinels. It does have structures that resist Artillery ammo, so no Golem cheese.

You can use the Nexus to sneak around via Transports and Cloakers.  Destroy the Wormhole Gate when you're through and you can prevent the Nexus from going on alert. Take the Nexus and set up a Warp Jammer and you've got a shortcut to both homeworlds plus some other areas (but not direct access).

EDIT: I'll add that I really like the other suggested Command Stations.

[Kahuna]

I think they are viable if you rely on fleetships (instead of brick wall defenses for example). Fleet ships don't use much energy so that wouldn't be a problem. Rebuild an entire fleet is very expensive though and that's where log stations will most likely shine. I think they have the potential to provide even more metal than Economical Command Stations because of their high salvage %.

Anti Armors as bonus ship and use Mark III Logistical Command Stations for defense and utility. Unlock Minefields and Mark IV HBCs for their energy cost effectiveness.

Anti Armors synergize well with Riot Starships and Missile Frigates. Those 3 synergize well with Flagships which also synergize with HBCs. Riot Starships synergize with log stations. So that would be my recipe for defense and offense.

For a while it has seemed to me that log stations are underappreciated.

[Radiant Phoenix]

Here's a new answer: when you're speedrunning, and triple-speed is the difference between blitzing the AI with your Shadow Battleships before it can respond and being swatted down for your impudence.

[Kahuna]

I think they are viable if you rely on fleetships (instead of brick wall defenses for example). Fleet ships don't use much energy so that wouldn't be a problem. Rebuild an entire fleet is very expensive though and that's where log stations will most likely shine. I think they have the potential to provide even more metal than Economical Command Stations because of their high salvage %.

Anti Armors as bonus ship and use Mark III Logistical Command Stations for defense and utility. Unlock Minefields and Mark IV HBCs for their energy cost effectiveness.

Anti Armors synergize well with Riot Starships and Missile Frigates. Those 3 synergize well with Flagships which also synergize with HBCs. Riot Starships synergize with log stations. So that would be my recipe for defense and offense.

For a while it has seemed to me that log stations are underappreciated.

Ok I just tested Logistical Command Stations against 10 diff Alarmist/Raid Engine / 10 diff Alarmist/One-Way Doormaster. The amount of metal you get from salvage is incredible but in the end it doesn't matter because you're going to die. Log stations don't really help you defend your planets. Sure they slow the AI ships down by 50% but that's not even nearly enough. It's far better to spend some "extra" knowledge and unlock Mark III Gravitational Turrets. The 50% slow down is way too little. Sure it makes kiting somewhat viable.. but your ships have a bad habit of yoyoing around like [...] when they move at high speeds (++600 thanks to the log stations). The faster the ships move the more likely they are to yoyo around. The yoyoing happens when they "try to stop". But for some reason they don't actually stop.. they fly past the point where you ordered them to move and yoyo back and forth and get killed. This bug has been a round for a while now but log stations make it much worse.

Mark III Log station slow down fighters' speed to 42 while Mark III Gravitational Turret slows them to 8. Sure log stations range is planetary and can be combined with Spider Turrets but still.. not even nearly as good as grav turrets. So there doesn't seem to be any reason to unlock Mark >= II log stations over other stations.

Log Stations would probably be worth using if Mark III slowed enemy ships down by 80%. 80% might be too overpowered though.. Maybe 70%?

[Toranth]

Log Stations would probably be worth using if Mark III slowed enemy ships down by 80%. 80% might be too overpowered though.. Maybe 70%?

An 80% reduction in speed is slightly better against most ships than a planet-wide Mk II Grav turret.  Most ships have a speed between 15 and 20 at that point.  It is never better than a Mk III Grav Turret.  An 80% reduction is slower than a Mk II Grav turret for about 2/3 of units.
A 70% reduction is a little worse than a Mk II Grav turret - most ships have a speed in the mid 20s.  A 70% reduction is slower than a Mk II Grav turret for about 1/3 of units.
The current 50% reduction is worse than a Mk I Grav Turret.  Most ships have speeds in excess of 40 even after the reduction.  A 50% reduction is slower than a Mk I Grav turret for about 1/3 of units.

Yeah, the current 50% isn't very impressive.  80% seems mighty powerful, though... it'd seriously tempt me into using Log IIIs sometimes, even over my beloved Mil IIIs.

[kasnavada]

I'd rather have the 50% speed reduction stack with the gravi turrets.

Else there is still no point in using them unless it's the same bonus. It also would give some use to lvl 1 & 2 stations.

[Toranth]

I'd rather have the 50% speed reduction stack with the gravi turrets.

That'd be awesome, indeed.  A Mk I Grav Turret would reduce speed to 16, better than the current Mk II.  The Mk II would become speed 10, almost the same as the Mk III's current max speed of 8.

And the Mk III?  An amazing speed of 4, a restoration to its former glory as the ultimate bane of all non-Gravity immune AI units.  While I'd love to see the super-flypaper make a return, it was nerfed precisely because it was so effective. 
Which means it'll never happen.  Boo.

[Chris_Stalis]

What about providing a discount on power usage on planet with a log station, in order to keep the speed modifiers from changing?

The main thing about turrets now is that they sap the global power grid something fierce if you have a proper anvil set up to take an exo-wave hammer. If you're playing without exo-waves and have a more archipeligo approach, it's still kind of brutal because you can't have as many planets with full turret deployments, simply because you're not going to have deep sections of terrain to turn into Mk II & III supply posts. To balance this, why not let the logistics portion actual improve the efficiency of managing energy reserves? Any ship, turret, golem, warhead... whatever has its power requirement temporarily decreased to 80% of normal (Mk I), 60% of normal (Mk II) or 40% of normal (Mk III). When/if the device leaves the system, the discount goes away.

There's a host of ramifications to this idea strategy wise that would need play testing, but what are people's gut reaction to the notion?

[Radiant Phoenix]

Econ command stations already generate a bunch of power, and military command stations reduce the effective power requirements of turrets by 17% / 33% / 50% by reducing the number of turrets needed to achieve a given level of firepower.

[Kahuna]

I'd like to remind about my idea about the warp gate command station. Mark III log stations could have a warp gate ability that would allow the player to load ships inside the command stations like transports. Then the player could use any Mark III to unload the ships to teleport them from log station A to log station B.

[kasnavada]

I'd rather have the 50% speed reduction stack with the gravi turrets.

That'd be awesome, indeed.  A Mk I Grav Turret would reduce speed to 16, better than the current Mk II.  The Mk II would become speed 10, almost the same as the Mk III's current max speed of 8.

And the Mk III?  An amazing speed of 4, a restoration to its former glory as the ultimate bane of all non-Gravity immune AI units.  While I'd love to see the super-flypaper make a return, it was nerfed precisely because it was so effective. 
Which means it'll never happen.  Boo.

Unless you change the numbers =). Putting the gravi turret 3 to 12 and setting the logistical bonus to 33%. Change other bonus accordingly.

I feel the 8 speed is too low anyway.