It sounds good -- and the stability rule makes them especially tough nuts to crack. Does this mean bases with no engine rating would not spin at all? Or just that they would not be able to control the spin?

And, I just realized ... a ship/station that does not have a speed can turn to face any direction it likes, since the thrust requirement is always zero if the previous speed and current speed are both zero.

May have to think about that, either for stations specifically or for the game in general...

I wouldn't tie spinning movement to engine rating. A space station that is spinning for reasons of artificial gravity for example doesn't need constant thrust and wouldn't stop spinning or change direction. Under the proposed rules a station would stop to spin when the engine rating is reduced to zero by damage. This woul render some narrow arc weapons effectively useless.

I think stations should have a engine rating of zero and automatically spin 60° clockwise or not depending on the designers choice. You could introduce this as a ship feature (Spinning Station and Station). This would be even more simple and serves the purpose.

I also think stations are usually known for their toughness and large amount of weapons. The latter is already taken care of with no engines to waste space. In addition to that I would make damage rolls of 1 and 2 essentially meaningless to reflect a structure primarily build to last not to be able to fly around. Well with no engine rating hits on 2 would do nothing anyways but hits on 1 wouldn't cause the usual hull damage (Armor plating effect). The huge amount of weapons you can fit on a no engine hull 10 "ship" for example should be already good enough.
CR wise the loss of movement should cancel out the added durability or you add the armor plating modifiers.

Stations that can move (slowly) as seen in some background material can be ships with a very low engine rating. They will still have more space for weaponry but are essentially slow moving ships.

I see but the rules regarding engine rating cut in half when moving and weapon rerolls are also exceptions. Free spin would be constant so basically a "no-brainer" during the movement phase. Whether or not this uses actual engine rating my concern is that the station may chance facing at will or stop due to damage.
I believe constantly spinning one hexside every turn or remaining completely stationary is the thing everyone expects from sci-fi space stations. On the other hand I know that Starmada is and always have been about flexibility.

My vote would be for no engines but a maximum of two overthrusters allowing the station to rotate up to 120 degrees per turn.

Paul

Just one thing that I'd like to clear up:

I assume that the incompatible with flotillas is simply that you can't have a flotilla starbase, not that you can have either starbases or flotillas on the board, but not both...

Cool...
Then you could have weapons that go out to 60 hexes. 

That wasn't exactly the rule.

Space Stations in pre-X Starmada were considered to have "Long Range Sensors", which doubled the long range band. Thus, a weapon with a range of 15 would, on a station, have range bands of 1-5/6-10/11-20.

Id keep starbase / battlestation rules simple and pretty much within the existing rules.

- Bases do not have engines.
- Bases can spin to any direction just like ships without engines.
- Engine hits dont do anything because there are no engines, giving bases more staying power than ships.
- Structural bracing allows bases to use C.3 Expanded ranges even when not allowed for ships.

This makes bases somewhat tougher than ships as they ignore 'engine' hits and have a bit more internal space for their size to use for equipment, again because they dont have engines, and the Expanded ranges gives them stand off weapons that bases typically have but at a cost instead of a tradeoff for ships versus bases.

Thats my vote at least.  What do you folks think?

Alchemist

Seconded.

Close.  Except instead of having a special rule doubling the long range band you just use the existing C.3  which allows for bases that dont have better weapons than ships, and those that do.  Its all depends on how the base is constructed.

Alchemist (aka another dan)