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[Eji1700]

I've finally built all 3 star fortresses and messed with them in combat (generally by waiting for an invasion and seeing how they do without support).  My brief notes:

Generic- they all get drones (little orbiters) at level 3 and a minefield.  The mines seem to be functionally identical but visually different.  The drones will often smash into enemy and allied ships.

Hightech- legit.  Not much to say other than hightech stuff is good especially on a station that cares a lot less about flux.

Midline- Surprisingly good.  I thought it was going to suck due to its shape (maybe the lower stages do) but the level 3 is a monster.  4 mirv missiles on the sides (2 on each) with the "doom side" sporting gravaton beams, auto cannons, Hephaestus, and Mjolnir will rip through anything and everything.  The back side only being the hanger and some heavy mortars isn't bad at all at cleaning up stuff.  The higher spin rate isn't bad either since if you can wall off the sides it lets it vent flux each go round.

Lowtech- feels off.  First of all, it's got flack for DAYS.  Flack cannons + vulcans + devastators.  The issue i feel with the low tech though is that it has 2 hellbores, 2 reapers and I think 2 heavy motars on one of the arms...and thats IT for non flack/shield damage.  The whole thing basically doesn't deal HE damage 90% of the time, and instead grinds through everything with an absurd amount of vulcans.  I really feel the fort could use some light motars/assault guns because it's silly to watch a kite throw up its shield point blank and just tank the entire thing.

I'm also a little surprised that the lowtech doesn't get teh hephaestus cannons and is stuck with just mark IX's/devastators.  Having some of the worst options for bombers as well (yay..piranha) leaves the station in a really weird spot.

[StarGibbon]

Is there any reason in the game at present not to build one over the other if one type is clearly better?  It doesn't appear to be linked to my available blueprints, doctrine or tech level.

[SafariJohn]

What weapons/fighters the stations use is based on what weapons/fighters you prioritize in your doctrine. Did you set any priorities?

[Eji1700]

What weapons/fighters the stations use is based on what weapons/fighters you prioritize in your doctrine. Did you set any priorities?

to test i just said "use everything", and it seemed it was sticking with lowtech, even though the midline was using cobras.

So if that's the case, ok you can get around it somewhat, but it's still silly to me that the only way to make the lowtech station have kill potential is to bypass the low tech vibe by including better fighters.

As for limitations- to my knowledge there are none.  As it stands you should probably build only high tech and midline.  To be fair, the low tech star fortress can still devastate fleets, especially with assistance form fleets in the system, but it feels by far the weakest

[Thaago]

Lowtech has some pretty ridiculous killing potential if you emphasize assault type guns in your faction doctrine. It has a lot of guns and missiles.

[StarGibbon]

As for limitations- to my knowledge there are none.  As it stands you should probably build only high tech and midline.  To be fair, the low tech star fortress can still devastate fleets, especially with assistance form fleets in the system, but it feels by far the weakest

I'm thinking available blueprints play a role. I have a full suite of low tech blueprints, and my low tech T1 battlestations have been completely invulnerable to cap ship doomstacks when I was in the battle to observe them, even without monkeying with weapon priority.

On the other hand, I have very few energy weapon plans, but I scrapped my low tech station for a high tech station after reading this thread, and it was nearly dead by the end of the battle. It didn't seem to be firing many weapons.

I don't know how else to explain the discrepancy between what you report here and what I just witnessed.

[TaLaR]

Lowtech suffers a lot from AI propensity to overuse shields, when it should mostly armor tank.
Also lack of finer control in weapon selection  and placement can lead to KE/HE/Flak unbalanced variants that can't fire combined HE + KE stream in most directions/ lack or overdo flak coverage. Player can try to fix this with doctrine (not sure how successfully), enemy stations are quite bad in this regard.

High-tech on the other hand has some shield-only and weapons-only modules, so it can't commit 1st mistake even if it wanted to.
There is no problem of damage type/PD balancing either. Overwhelming majority of high-tech weapons are energy type and PD is small (except Guardian) and just less important due to good shields.
Stations also have good compatibility with beams and high speed projectiles in general - enough output to drown targets even in soft flux, no excessive shot travel time, that makes dodging low tech much easier.

High tech does have a problem with blueprint availability early game though. Mining blasters do have their merits (for a station), but Mining lasers are complete crap. And no large weapon at all.

[Thaago]

I think weapon priority/blueprints is the biggest factor. Low tech can easily get by (by which I mean destroy absolutely everything) with the base set of blueprints because Mk IX's and Heavy Mortars are excellent guns. It does cry out for a basic missile pack though. High Tech meanwhile suffers extremely without at least the high tech pack as the default energy weapons are terrible.

[Draba]

Hightech gets ridiculously good with autopulse/graviton beams, worth focusing in doctrine if it doesn't mess with your patrols too much.
Autopulse builds charges while on the other side/under fortress shields and gravitons in numbers that a station packs grind down shields well.
Neither weapon is hard on flux so paired with fortress shields it can go all day.

Both are in hightech pack IIRC so you are pretty likely to find them earlier than the rest, too.

[Eji1700]

Ok so doctrine does have an effect.  I wasn't aware of that. I have basically everything on right now for my weapon doctrine, and mostly low tech weaponry, so I'm not sure why it would prioritize devastators and hellboars, but i'll give it some more testing when i next get a chance.

[Megas]

When my first high-tech weapon was tachyon lance, it was great.  Beams of death fly everywhere, and my personal fleet provided all the hard flux it needed.  Once I found the high-tech pack and got autopulse, station insisted on using autopulse, even if I have tachyon lance prioritized and autopulse turned off.  It just will not take no for autopulse.