I kind of agree but I feel like the only buff they would need is a range buff and maybe a higher Hardpoint value Two Golan 3s can do a ridiculous amount of damage with fleet support if you mean the stations them selves alone I don't think they were ever ment to contend with a 300 pop fleet attack but I find that if the fleets are around 100 to 150 max without a support fleet Level 3s hold their own Golan 1s I wouldn't trust against more then one capital ship with support fleet and golan 2s I don't usually use enough to have a idea of what they can handle.

They have appropriate cost and combat power, we don't want to have battles, where just single golan without any support can take out whole enemy fleet

It would make sense lore wise if they were more powerful, yes. But from a gameplay perspective?
Think about it, it is nearly impossible to withdraw any ship from combat without it losing most of their capabilities. It would make siege battles unnecessarily costly for the attacker.

Perhaps something like this to make them more flavorful: Golan I construction adds 3 or 4 Golan I stations, a bit dispersed around the Starbase. They are still weak, but more of them means they buy you a bit of time for maneuvers. Golan II adds 2 stations, and Golan III one that is a little more powerful.

I mean, the Golan I and II are hardly woth their cost. I only get them for the Infulence bonus if I have to.

Originally posted by Nemesis1st:

They have appropriate cost and combat power, we don't want to have battles, where just single golan without any support can take out whole enemy fleet

The range feels off if nothing else. The turbolasers only seem to have maybe 90% of the range of capital ships. Small difference but very noticeable.

golans have literally more range than the comparative same caliber guns on ships precisely to prevent range cheese, look at the info card stats of the golan medium turbolasers vs the ships medium

Originally posted by :):

golans have literally more range than the comparative same caliber guns on ships precisely to prevent range cheese, look at the info card stats of the golan medium turbolasers vs the ships medium

Indeed they do. The only way to cheese stations is ultraheavy weapons or stuff like super megamasers. The AI doesn't even use the range advantage properly, so I don't see where the range discussion is coming from. As much as I do agree with stations being overall a liiiiiittle bit underpowered in terms of firepower, the range is NOT the problem.

I think there is a disparity in what people are expecting from Golans and what they're actually providing capability wise. They're immobile yet somewhat bulkier members of their relative size classes. That bulk allows them to absorb a fairly decent amount of fire from incoming ships and while they're not exactly bristling with guns they are well armed and capable of destroying targets within their own bracket and below.

If they're alone they're gonna focused down quite quickly but they typically supported by a shipyard garrison that covers the gaps in its own capabilities as well as supporting fleet elements you have stationed on the planet. Even alone a Golan is still capable of dealing fair amounts of damage to something that isn't being cautious.

Even then building a Golan is often worth it as it dissuades your neighbors from sending attacks while your fleets are elsewhere. Yeah they'll probably still attack at some point but they'll need a moment or two to build up a force where just leaving the planet open will see an attack much sooner.

Originally posted by Widowolf:

I don't think they were ever ment to contend with a 300 pop fleet attack but I find that if the fleets are around 100 to 150 max without a support fleet Level 3s hold their own

I agree completely. A Golan III can repel a large capital ship easily if it attacks alone, but in general, Golans are better suited to tank damage while your fleet hides behind them and nukes everything that gets close.

Originally posted by Harmonia:

Originally posted by Nemesis1st:

They have appropriate cost and combat power, we don't want to have battles, where just single golan without any support can take out whole enemy fleet

The range feels off if nothing else. The turbolasers only seem to have maybe 90% of the range of capital ships. Small difference but very noticeable.

Range is based on projectile type and ship/unit/structure size, so it's what supposed to be

They're fine as they are in terms of combat performance.

The problem is that they're not "worth it" in terms of build cost/wait time.

A golan 3 costs about 8k credits, iirc(been a month since I played, not sure the exact price) and about a minute to build.

That's fair on its own. However, you don't "just" build a golan 3; you have to first build an XQ, then a golan 1, then a 2, and THEN a 3.

Effectively, a Golan 3 cost its base price and time on top of the price and time of a golan 2, 1, and XQ.

This makes them time-wise not worth it. In a vacuum, when just analyzing the space battle itself, golans are fine. It's when you look at the broader scale of economics and time investment where golans really show just how bad they are. Cumulatively, it feels like nearly a third of the game time is just spent waiting to build golans and similar space stations: even more so in the early game when you're trying to consolidate territory and get infrastructure going.

The reason I emphasize early game is because there's not much you can do early on while waiting for stations to build. If you don't build stations, for every planet you take, you'll also likely lose one.

Naturally, one can resort to cheap-shot cheese tactics to abuse the game's innate mechanical limitations, such as leaving a shuttle or cheap light corvette in orbit over hostile worlds followed by an aggressive ground invasion of multiple planets in a row, but I don't think building around abuse of AI is a great method.

Since there is no means of just building the max level space station of a planet right away, what I do is just reduce build times for golan 2's and up by anywhere from 10-30 seconds. Waiting on credits to turn over to afford them is already penalty enough; the lengthy build time for most space stations seems unnecessarily slow; they're so slow, in fact, that it causes a significant economic issue for factions with larger territories, in that you can't bleed them of credits by harassing their space stations repeatedly to keep them weak. By the time they build up, they've already made surplus profits just from having so many worlds. If they built quicker and cost the same, one would be able to more effectively "raid" enemy territory, as they would then dump lots of credits to rebuild defenses, making them vulnerable to invasion over time. That's not something you can do against factions like IR or NR.

So, ironically, in an effort to curtail snowballing, it only enforces it further. This is easily witnessed when a faction starts controlling the wealthy southern and central parts of the galaxy, and part of the reason why NR and IR tends to snowball in AI hands without player intervention, at least on captain difficulty. I don't bother with admiral and only toggle cruel on temporarily if the game starts to get a bit too boring(usually late game to sort of give the AI a "final stand" bonus to make fighting their last holdouts more fun.)

I also think it'd help if the text description of golan 2 and 3's weren't so flattering in their claims on the stations. This may be the cause of a lot newer players' disappointment in them, since they are really not as great as the description says lol. This is a mod where capitals are thrown around by the dozens, not one where a "large fleet" is 4 corvettes, a couple frigates, and maybe a single capital lol.

tl;dr: golans feel better when they don't take so long to build. It's the build time investment that make them feel underwhelming, even though they're decently balanced in combat.

Originally posted by Lahgtah:

They're fine as they are in terms of combat performance.

The problem is that they're not "worth it" in terms of build cost/wait time.

A golan 3 costs about 8k credits, iirc(been a month since I played, not sure the exact price) and about a minute to build.

That's fair on its own. However, you don't "just" build a golan 3; you have to first build an XQ, then a golan 1, then a 2, and THEN a 3.

Effectively, a Golan 3 cost its base price and time on top of the price and time of a golan 2, 1, and XQ.

The cost of a Golan 3 is 8000 credits yes, however if you're progressing through the primary starbase upgrades the cost of upgrading from a Golan 2 -> Golan 3 is not 8000. It is 3000.

You pay the total cost of the station but in installments over its upgrade levels. A Golan 1 is 800 if you're upgrading from an XQ rather than the 3000 credits it would cost if you built it as a secondary defense station. The Golan 1 upgrade is actually notable in that it costs less than it's full cost. The cost of building an XQ + Golan 1 upgrade is actually 2900 credits in total instead of 3000, with the remaining 100 credits tacked onto the Golan 2 upgrade.

honestly, I miss when they could turn. then rather then having most of their guns aimed away from something you could turn their facing at the start such that their hardpoints are facing the right way.

Originally posted by yarrik88:

honestly, I miss when they could turn. then rather then having most of their guns aimed away from something you could turn their facing at the start such that their hardpoints are facing the right way.

they still can. Not the main station, but the extra defense stations can.

Im of the opinion, having now played 4 campaigns in the previous edition of thrawns revenge to completion, and many others only part way, that I believe Golans are not worth their money by the time you hit Cycle 50-100. Mainly I find that their firepower, even golan 3's, dont have enough damage to kill an AI controlled ships shields when 4-5 star destroyers are jumping in system, before it dies. They rarely even seem to slow the enemy fleets, especially the empire battlecruiser spam. If they were merely tougher to kill, or had a greater shield regen rate that could help, or if they acted as a fleet tender, even if only at higher levels. I will note that I use them as a main defense line, and usually pair them with a ground to space cannon if I can help it, because usually they arent going to do much more than slow the enemy, but extra time gives me more shots with the cannon.

Im usually playing on medium, full galaxy.