Crazy ideas so far:
* Fortresses retain a global cap but cost very little power. That would make them an unlock oriented around reinforcing your choke planets, or beefing up a beachhead. If you make them cost zero power, you can build them anywhere since supply is not longer required, which would be kind of crazy, but it also means that they can keep fighting even after the local command station goes down.
* Fortresses include a forcefield which doesn't reduce turret firepower; while modules are out, multi-part ships are still in, so this is possible. This lets you provide some extra protection for your primary combat turrets without reducing their damage.
* Fortresses make any command stations in the system invincible. That lets them tank for your command station, which otherwise causes all your defenses to go down if it gets destroyed. Lets you counter infiltrators and other FF-immune units.
* Fortresses can repair and rebuild nearby turrets, allowing for rapid recovery from attacks.
It seems that you are coming up with your own ideas for how fortresses should be changed, which is fine. I just don't see this as necessarily similar to my own idea.
My idea was a radical alteration of them:
They no longer had guns of their own.
They fit into cross planet mechanics like the Ion Cannons and Mass Drivers now do, where they could threaten other planets as well as their own.
They were a necessary part of logistics in a planet, specifically for repairing your own fleet after battles.
They provided a defensive system fleet of ships, that allowed you a sort of home field advantage against incoming enemy fleets, no matter where in your system the enemy attacked.
In my idea they had their own set of drawbacks:
You were limited in how many you could build per system by the amount of wealth the system could hold.
If you did not own every planet in the system, you were further limited in how many you could maintain.
Defense forces were typically late to the battle, allowing AI quick strikes to be something you had to watch out for.
As infrastructure they were defenseless once their garrisons were depleted, making them juicy targets by the AI.
They could not be used for offensive maneuvers.
I was trying to move away from players having one system that makes a good choke point tactically as it's the only system the AI can use to get in and out of your planets. Instead the player more typically would have to distribute defenses over a wider area, and against overwhelming forces, fall back from planet to planet until they could finish the AI off. This was accomplished by the fact that the player cannot guarantee that any system that could act as a choke point, could also have enough wealth to support a large garrison force. It also supported spreading out of the fortresses by allowing the fortress to cover a wider area as a result, with the super fortress covering the widest area.
At the same time they still assist your fleet, but in other ways. They provided other bodies for the AI to shoot at. Ones that were free so long as the fortress was well supplied. These could arrive at times during a large conflict pushing attrition into your favor without completely overpowering any AI force. They also helped repair your own force once the battle was over, without you as a player having to worry whether you wish to repair turrets, or ships first. Each now has their own preferred method and happen simultaneously so long as the fortresses in your systems survive.
Because of that, I don't think your idea of having a global cap of fortresses would work very well with my idea. It would go back to encouraging the player to put all of their fortresses in one place. This was one aspect I wanted to avoid. You generally don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket after all.
Shields might work well, but only if the AI is attacking the fortress itself. This does make it an interesting for the player though. Now they have to decide if they want their system cap of fortresses, which do not add directly to firepower for the planet they are on, on a certain planet where they can raise the health of their turrets, or if they want them to instead be out of the way for the AI, and safe so long as the AI does not make a trip just for them. This is a possibility.
I don't feel that they should just make a command station invulnerable. Perhaps if combined with the shield idea they could protect a key command station, but what other mechanism would cause this? I personally feel that command stations should control the economy (metal, fuel, energy), while fortresses/starbases should manage military logistics instead. That was part of my idea with my reworking of them.
For rebuilding nearby turrets, this is something they already did. I was moving their repair abilities inside of them. In dry dock it should be much easier to repair a ship. My question though is how big are turrets really? They should be similar to orbital platforms or satellites. Are they manned or unmanned? These questions should be answered first before we decide in my model whether they should be able to dry dock a turret. Also keep in mind this would be infringing on the engineer's remaining role in repairs.
If you have any ideas how we might reconcile these, or other ideas, let me know
