I prefer the same old starbase assault we've had now for a while... The server admin has all the flexibility he needs to make it as hard or easy as he wants using the shiplist.
IIRC, the sg5 starbase assault had the attacker with an AI ally attack 2 or 3 defending ships then the base itself. Well, I reworked the shiplist so that once the 3x defender ships were destroyed or captured, the base launched a fighter pod containing 24 fighters and 3 more ships undocked from the station whenever the attacker closes within 45k. In addition, everyone remembers the sg5 bases were damned hard to crack already. Tons of shields, labs to regenerate, excess power to reinforce and a tone of heavy standoff weapons to keep the enemy at bay. The only thing they lakced was adequate PD against massive fighter squadrons... But with the fighter pod the base drops, that might confuse the fighters a bit...
But bottom line is that using the shiplist is a surefire way to make these base assaults as easy or hard as the admin likes. Aside from requesting each base assault spawn 3 defending ships (sometimes the base spawns only 2 defenders and I dislike this), I have no further requests.