I have identified some concerns with the starbase raiding mechanics that I feel warrant some serious consideration and design review. Some of this may apply to planet raids as well.
I recently was focused on raiding Tri-Tachyon bases for blueprints. I focused in on Culann (I think it was? The AI-managed research facility one). Basically, I found a way to lurk nearby in stealth mode, wait out the local patrols for a gap, and then raid the station. This was all fine.
The issue in my mind is that I was able to, in ideal conditions, make a new raid about every 7-10 seconds, usually recovering a new blueprint every time. I basically extracted the entire High-Tech catalogue (that I didn't already have) over a series of raids performed in 10 second intervals during those occasional patrol gaps, about 3-5 raids in a burst before the patrols came back and I had to wait again, usually for about 2-3 minutes for a new opening. So I'm getting a new blueprint at a rate of about 2 per minute on average, and notably, it's a new, unlearned blueprint every time (no duplicates). I only stopped once the station stopped handing out blueprints, since I apparently had all the ones it could give out, and apparently raids don't give you blueprints you already have.
The cooldown on raids is pretty short, and also, the patrols did not significantly increase in number, aggression, or difficulty relative to my actions (they do swarm a bit more for a few minutes, but that response is pretty predictable and does not scale to the point of guaranteed danger for late-game fleets). So my risk didn't really ever increase past a certain point despite the fact that I was performing something like 15-30 raids over a 5-10 minute interval.
As well, although my fleet did get chased down by patrols a number of times, by that point in the game I had two Paragons in my fleet and a lot of other smaller but powerful, kitted-out ships. I was always stronger than every patrol that caught me, and I could always disengage, at the cost of a relatively unimportant -5% reputation hit. So, sure, by the time I was done Tri-Tachyon basically hated my guts, but I also had zero need for them anymore as I had robbed them blind of every blueprint they ever possessed, and could fight off their entire faction from my trio of free port colonies in the space boonies.
TL;DR, I think the raiding mechanics could use a review and revision. It is too easy and profitable to just keep spamming raids once you get over the initial (very large) investment hump, and a sufficiently powerful single fleet can essentially shove aside any possible patrol that a standard faction can throw at them. In my case, I should have had every hard-hitting ship in Tri-Tachyon space sniffing after my raider fleet around the victimized station by the 7th consecutive raid at least, I should think. And I probably shouldn't have been able to do consecutive raids nearly as often in such a short span of time (why not just grab 5 blueprints at once in 1 raid if we can get 1 blueprint per raid 5 times, for a similar span of time and resource cost?).
All of this was compounded by my possession of the Transwarp Jump skill (a free escape once I need to resupply). I don't think this skill is broken or anything, but with the other factors listed, it was the cherry on top of a very exploitable cake.
As an aside, successful raids require absurd numbers of marines! I had 4-6 capital class civilian cruisers carrying marines to get up to the ~90% raid success threshold I needed to consistently get blueprints, at a rate of roughly one new blueprint per raid. I passed right over the smaller military troop carriers because I didn't really need their ship stats relative to the rest of my fleet, and their crew capacities were significantly lower per ship, which meant fewer marines and lower raid success rates overall. I had something like 3000 marines, maybe even closer to 5000. They were many. This seems somewhat counter to the aesthetic and nature of black-ops style operations, and means it's actually pretty hard to do consistently successful raids worth the risk and effort with anything less than an overblown capital ship fleet. Resource payouts were also kind of lackluster for the prep costs and financial investment involved; the blueprints were the only reason I bothered to do raids at all in the entire game (am I doing it wrong?).
As a final thought, I think that raids could perhaps be improved a lot, and made more relevant in the early game, by making them;
- less frequent (can't raid a given station more than once a month, maybe)
- harder to achieve/better protected by patrols
- more profitable per raid (high payouts; lots of cheap resources or a nice clutch of rare/expensive/illegal ones, useful commanders, guaranteed blueprint or AI core or other high-rarity item maybe, etc)
- rapidly increasing risk (if you get caught, the reputation costs and/or the relative strength and number of faction ships in the local area rapidly increases to push you out/have long-term dangerous consequences. Perhaps it even reaches the point where it gets impossible to win ever more frequent and lethal fights if you hang around, and you must flee or be destroyed until the heat is off.)
- possibly more dependent on smaller/weaker, but faster/stealthier ships ("man I wonder where those two Paragon capital-class ships popped in from, I didn't see them behind us a moment ago!")
- possibly dependent on smaller numbers of Marines (but more expensive and more effective per unit) (again, emphasize smaller ships; worse in combat, better in stealth, with a strong raiding package to deliver if they get through)
- for blueprints specifically, maybe make new/unlearned blueprints a bit less frequent (more duplicates to freely sell, avoid turning raid opportunities into dependable new-blueprint dispensers)
Basically, make raids high-risk, high-reward with rapid-heat-up punishments if caught. As it is, it seems pretty difficult to make a raid-oriented playstyle workable due to the prohibitive costs and low profitability of payout, in addition to the higher upkeep costs of marines and the fact that marines take away from/share your ship crew pool (and blueprints - currently the main payout - are really only useful when you eventually get a colony, if you're a tech hoarder like me and don't sell them. Even then, unless it's a great blueprint, the profit margins aren't all that high).
Thanks for making such a fun game, I hope my feedback helps for future updates. =)