[Cheeze]

Here's one reason why you couldn't ignore one. With sufficient range, you can probably never take a planet without risking being attacked by the base, no matter if you choose to ignore it as a target. Although if glassing the planet was your goal, then that works fine. And if you wanted to capture the planet, then you must eliminate the starbase first, or else it will attack the now-captured planet. Or, should it be directed not to attack, it still blockades the planet, meaning you received no resources, intel or research.

Perhaps it is also tied in with the unpredictability of the starbase's position in combat. In PBW, when I tell my ships not to fire on the planet, I have still lost more than a few who fly close enough to the planet for it to shoot at them while going after other targets. It probably wouldn't be any different.

While you will never see this in simulators, I have found that often when you direct your ships NOT to fire on a type of target (in my case planets), once they run out of things to shoot, they tend to just mill about aimlessly. I believe you would find in that in the warp point example, the ships would not move much at all, and many would wind up targets for an undamaged station.

You have found an exploitable situation, but not an unfair one. Starbases offer superior range and firepower compared to ships, but that trades off with an entire inability to do anything but wait for an attacker.

[This message has been edited by Lynx (edited 18 November 2001).]