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[RedHellion]

How long does it usually take for a colony to start producing defensive patrol fleets after a Patrol HQ is built? I've had a Patrol HQ there for at least 3 months, and upgraded it to a Military Base a month ago but haven't seen anything other than the odd trade fleet owned by my empire leaving the system.

Relevant info:
My colony is still just size 3, but has 9 stability and around 90% fleet strength (and I have lots of blueprints for both ships and weapons/fighters available). The colony is decently profitable ($40k+ credits/month) but has a hazard rating of 200%. It has a starport and a space station, as well as more than enough ship hulls and other required materials produced by my tech mining and orbital works industries to fulfill the Military Base requirements (and says there's no shortages of anything being experienced by the colony). There are also a few small 1-2 frigate Remnant fleets in the system that I haven't been able to clear out yet because every time I engage them the "Pursue" option is greyed out; I've been too lazy to dump all my capital ships to destroy them with a frigate-only fleet since they don't actually attack anything.

[Eji1700]

So from what I can tell one of the balance issues with colonies right now is that patrol fleets appear to be based on colony size.  Small colony, small patrol fleet.  Of course this doesn't stop you from dropping a few pirate raid payments on a badass tier 3 star base, so the cruiser fleet "expedition" coming to say hi rolls over your speedbump of a patrol fleet and then impales itself on your doom fortress.

Maybe i'm missing something, but it could use some tweaking.

[RedHellion]

I mean, patrol fleets being partially based on colony size makes sense. But even a small colony with a Military Base should see a marked improvement over one with just a Patrol HQ, and just having a Patrol HQ at all should bring some kind of basic defensive fleet into being even if it's small or poorly equipped.

Not knowing exactly how such calculations are done now, if it is heavily based on colony size then I feel like a Military Base should bump up the colony population size for fleet size calculations rather than (or in addition to) being a multiplicative bonus or just an increase to fleet quality/strength.

If you can ship in the hulls and personnel and supplies, I don't see why a small outpost colony shouldn't be able to support a large fleet presence when required.

EDIT: To clarify, my colony (and that entire system it's in) has 0 patrol fleets currently (at least none that I've been able to see anywhere in the system) even though it had a Patrol HQ and now a Military Base.

[Eji1700]

I think one of the bigger problems is that the expedition fleets are MASSIVE even though the colony is still "small".  In fact colony size doesn't seem to relate to much at all except patrol fleets. It's pretty easy to be printing money and having doom fleets show up at your door with a size 3 colony, so either patrols need to be tied to cash as well or the fleets/stations need to be tied to colony size better.

[Megas]

That was a problem too.  My fleet was barely able to fend off so-called expedition fleets, which was nearly endgame strength (while my fleet was merely midgame strength) the moment my colony was starting to get off the ground.

Colonies as implemented seem more of an endgame thing.  If you do not know all of the mechanics, it is very easy to go into a death spiral and lose all of your money.  (I had to max two Industry skills on the spot to save my colony.)  It is probably easier to play as pre-0.9 Starsector until you get a big strong fleet and a lot of cash to build a ton of stuff at once.

[RedHellion]

So in your experience playing so far, do colonies with a Patrol HQ at least produce and maintain one or two patrol fleets within a few months, even at size 3?

[Megas]

You get one puny picket at size 3 patrol HQ (assuming focus on quality).  If you want bigger fleet, you need to grow your colony (use Free Port and/or Population Incentives).  Fleet Logistics 3 will help fleet size too.  By size 4, I might have had two smaller pickets.  By the time I got to size 5, I had boosted ship quality (with Orbital Works and corrupted nanoforge), allowing me to shift doctrine from quality to more ships a bit, and I got a military base and a battlestation.  I got more and bigger fleets.  By size 6, my patrols are about on par with a major faction's.  I routinely see two or three patrols - my patrols - flying around my system.

[RedHellion]

If so, then I think that Military Base and any further upgrades should add to the calculations for determining number of fleets on a similar level as colony size does. Maybe add +1 size for purposes of fleet calculations or something; just increasing fleet size as a multiplier doesn't seem to be helping much if your fleets for low-level colonies are tiny to start with or you only get 1 fleet anyway. Especially when factions are bashing even relatively new colonies with large expeditionary fleets pretty quickly.

[Deshara]

the Growth mechanic could easily be reworked, so that you could invest in boosting the production of a fleet if you have need of speeding the process up