Greetings everyone!
My first idea post on Gal Civ 3 is regarding Starbases. I find them to be invaluable, and they do add a good deal of depth to the game. What concerns me is that after the initial investment, their gains continue indefinitely with little limitation. I am of the opinion that a starbase should need resources consistently to function. Whether those resources be in the form of a more stringent maintenance costs depending on factors such as distance from territory, the amount of redundancy (it should be much harder to increase production past 100 than it would be to get it from 0 to 50, for instance), or perhaps a labor cost from various sponsor worlds to represent maintenance and upkeep and deliveries needed to keep a station running.
I also believe that space stations should themselves be a larger, more long term investment before providing the bonuses they do. In example, one could build a constructor, and set it to build a starbase, but it would take a few turns for it to be complete, upgrading it with a ring would take longer as well as a continued investment throughout construction, on and on with each further upgrade taking more time and resources.
Having large starbases should be - I think - a slightly more prohibitive investment than it is now, as 'starbase spam' can actually be overly powerful in my experience.
However, am I off base? What does anyone think?