Hello!

First of all thanks for a great game, having lots of fun!

After playing 130 turns in the Imperial campaign I noticed that at some point the defensive structures become obsolete/near useless.
Especially the turrets who already in early midgame become near useless. I only use them for extra scans (and as bait for the stupid ork/tyranid AI that rushes into them so you can easily spam AoE-stuff ontop of their tightly packed fleet, but this is more an issue with the AI).
Turrets don't even seem able to beat frigates! Starbases are still quite alright, but they are also quickly falling behind as the fleet sizes continue to grow more and more later on in the campaign.

My suggestion is to allow us the option to be able to upgrade both turrets and starbases (perhaps unlocked with the tech-tree, so that you cannot do it until later) to improve their efficiency with upgrades or multiply their numbers.

One other important suggestion would be to allow turrets/starbases to count as a force when invasions arrive. I had one occasion where an 800 Dark Eldar invasion-fleet captured Medusa from me, even though I had a starbasea and turrets there because I forgot to move the fleet above that was guarding the Ork-system. It's quite possible that if we had the option to fight with our defenses (at least in auto resolve) then the Dark Eldar would have lost a modest amount of ships, and if you added the option to upgrade and/or multiply defenses then they could even hold systems on their own. But as it works right now invasions seem to take zero damage even if you have a starbase present.

In regards of mines it'd be interesting to encounter them in actual battles, not just as a passive system buff/debuff on the campaign-map.
Perhaps also attainable through an upgrade, like with the turrets/starbases in my suggestion above. It would be interesting to encounter stealthed proximity mines that would be pulled towards your vessels when you get close enough, and your defense turrets would have to deal with them.
Or give interceptors a second role in being able to clear minefields if you for example send an augur probe into a field. This would open up new strategies in battle!

Thank you for reading! Looking forward to more future content from your team!

I somewhat agree. The defensive structures are at best a speed bump and I honestly don't even consider them when gauging enemy strength. If they had the range to pose an actual threat that would be something.

But right now, the mines are easily the most problematic of the 3 structures and they don't have an on-field presence.

.... come to think of it, where ARE the mines? They are in the tutorial but I haven't seen them at all after that.

It's funny how things have swung though, because in Beta, defensive structures basically guaranteed a victory to whoever held them. They naturally tended to end up in control points, which meant the enemy basically started with two of the five points in their control, and you couldn't take them back without focusing on taking those structures out, by which point they'd basically already won.

Hopefully, when the pendulum does swing back, it doesn't overcompensate again!

Romeo brings up a good point though, they are very useful in the point capture mode. I play the campaign on the mixed mode so I get bits of both. They're far more useful in the capture mode but basically useless in Cruiser Clash or whatever it is called now.

At the end I was using the cluster of four turrets as a free way of slowly adding troop count to my close to hulled ships

THey are useful in CC too, the enemy will go at them first ignoring your ships. They will bunch up nicely for nova shots.

Thank you for your replies,

My mistake, I completely forgot about domination since I got tired of it and changed my game to only cruiser clash.
But I agree that in domination defensive structures are quite good (for the wrong reasons though).
Even if you rush and destroy them easily, they will have held points long enough to make a difference.

I also already mentioned in my original post that they're useful against tyranids/orks (but also for the wrong reasons) since those blob up around them at the start, allowing you to spam plasma bombs/radiation clouds/nova cannons etc on top of them.

I'd love to see defensive structures becoming better over time if we would be allowed to invest into them, with upgrades, via the tech-tree (an expanded tech-tree in general would be awesome) etcetera. I think this would be important, especially if you're planning to increase fleet sizes in the upcoming patch, because otherwise they would become even more marginalized.

@sybarite

That latest reply is an excellent suggestion. I get that we can't have customization back in order to protect the multiplayer balance... But then give us a significantly deeper tech tree to make up for it. As it stands, it's pretty weak.

Well, the tabletop included not only macro platforms, but also lance and torpedo platforms. Already during the beta I called for System Defence Fleets, made up of fire ships, armed merchants (transports) and dedicated System Defence Monitors, basically cruisers with the shields and firepower of battlecruisers or even battleships thanks to omitting the warp engine. All of these were present in the tabletop, fire ships and merchants were in the previous video game. So they have everything available.