I just had a match were we had 1 lvl 16, 1 level 49, 1 level 50 and 1 level 40. I don't know what the last person's lvl was. We failed the fleet defense badly, the much stronger npc ships would almost instantly kill the level 16 and in almost the same time kill the level 40. Both the lowest ranks were engineers.

I think it's fantastic that you want low ranks to play with 50's, but this isn't the proper way to handle this. If anything they get overwhelmed and shy away from it. Anyone else have this issue in FE's?

I agree that there should be some kind of balancing of the NPC's vs the composition of the starbase defender group. So one of the defenders is a Lt (9), there should be fewer or lower-level attackers, etc.

perhaps limit it to ONE Va and scale accordingly

The system automaticly sets the enemy NPC level to that of the highest level in the group. That is fine for the story missions where the team is preset and they have the option to match the team leader's level. I have done that many times and set the lowest rank to the team lead and match his/her level before starting the mission. When you thrust into a group, you do not have that option. I think the system should in those cases, set the NPC to the groups average or mean level.

Taking the levels in the OP. For arguements sake, lets say the 5th player was a level 35. The average NPC level would be 38. The mean NPC level would be 33.

If each wave (in fleet alert)
consisted of

1 VA ranked capital ship
2 Captain rank Heavy ships
5 Commander ranked cruisers
and 12 lt ranked frigates (for example only)

then a mixed team could handle it well

(and yes a Lt com can take down an Npc VA ship)

I noticed with some events they group like levels together. I.e fed mirror and starbase 24. They should this for starbase defense as well.

I first did the starbase defense at 20 and all i did was instantly die lol

Uh... no. Mean and average are the same thing (in this case the mean/average is 38). I thought you might mean median, but with 16, 35, 40, 49, and 50, the median would be 40.

No idea where you got that 33.

Keep mind lots of people use the mirror event as a leveling too. No reason for 50s to be there doing that.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted.

I don't take my level 50 into the mirror event. It's pointless. But that one is level-gated anyway, so it doesn't matter.

I stand corrected, thank you. Mean and Average are the same. What I was trying to say is to take and split the difference between the highest and lowest level, regardless of what level anyone else would be. As with my example, the 33 would be the middle ground between 16 and 50. Sorry for the confusion.