am i the only one who didn't realize...

Vince... No, you weren't. So don't feel too bad about it.

Heh, building 3-4 sb's per sector was my original strategy for boosting planet production and culture-bombing the enemy. Now that those starbases cost me 5bc per turn, I'm a bit more frugal with them. Besides resources, I only build one per sector, two if there are 3+ stars (or 1-2 stars that are high-class planets).


~SDC~

Ditto, I thought they only could be built at resources.. could not figure how the enemy was building them all over, thought they were over mining the resource.

You think that's bad. I didn't realize until my third or fourth game that you could build modules that improved your resource extraction for starbases built on resources. I thought you just built the starbase and that was as good as you got... No wonder I didn't see the point of building starbases on resources.

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but a lot of what's kept the game fresh for me is doing new things that I didn't realize were options.

(Frequently I'll read something here, utter a loud "Doh!" and slap my forehead, only to immediately start a new game to try something different.)

O.K. Please tell me how you can build 3-4 starbases per sector? I mean, that's an awful lot of constructors - are you building defensive modules (though they are useless against capital ships)? If you spend all those resources on constructors you're going to lag way behind on tech and social spending.

Roberto,

Once you get production cooking, it becomes a little easier to push out constructors, just as it becomes easier to push out military assets. I myself am a little mixed on the defensive modules. They have come in handy, especially if I have a SB that is quite a long way from home and my ability to send reinforcements is limited. I tend not to focus too much on the defensive modules for SBs closer to home, instead relying on my ability to get a defensive ship or two to cover if necessary...

-Anx

Near the end of the game it's not uncommon for me to have 5-6 starbases in a sector. These are usually with 5 cultural upgrades as well. (Culture Maximization and Cultural Palace) They may also have defensive upgrades if I expect resistance.

In my large game last night I had probably 30 starbases (not counted those I disbanded to save money) and 40-50 more constructors on route when the computer AI was absorbed.

I tend to win by cultural victory though, so this is the typical end game for me.

With the new maintenance costs on starbases I had to pretty much shut down my research to do this, but who cares, I was already way ahead of the computer in tech, and they had hardly any planets left to research from.

I get at least half of my constructors by using them as a sort of default military build for any place I don't need real military units from. That adds up after awhile. I don't play a SB heavy strategy but I still have no trouble getting a few in my most important sectors this way.

Same here, in mid-late game, between wars I put all Mil queues to Constructors, pack a half-dozen of them and build big SBs all over

I read somewhere where the 3-4 starbase per sector is going to be squashed via a change in that cummulative effects will be nearly eliminated.

Does one get the bonus of building a starbase on a resource to start with, or is it necessary to improve it before the resource becomes mined ?

You get the bonus as soon as the starbase is built, but the mining modules increase the bonus.

> I read somewhere where the 3-4 starbase per sector is
> going to be squashed via a change in that cummulative
> effects will be nearly eliminated.

Very doubtful as Brad has said nothing of the sort and it's his game. All of his posts have been trying to walk the fine line between letting people be creative (slingshots, tractor beam deadzones, etc.) and keeping things "balanced".

Things have already been reigned in with the 5bc upkeep, higher constructor costs, diminishing returns from boosting production, and tweaks to the AI.

All I recall seeing in my 1.03 game was a 5bc upkeep cost per starbase. I don't recall seeing a higher constructor cost, and I did not notice any 'diminishing' returns on multiple bases.

What are these changes?

In 1.03, the cost of constructors increased from 150 to 200.

In the 1.0 version, I think you didn't see diminishing returns on the production enhancement from starbases until you were somewhere around 20x the planet quality. In 1.01 or 1.02, I think this was lowered to 10x the planet quality.

In 1.03, this *quasi* bug was corrected so that you can only boost the military / social production by 3x the planetary quality before you start seeing diminishing returns.

If you check some of the encyclopedia files, I think they suggest building at most three production enhancing starbases per sector. But they hadn't yet put anything in the code to make more than three counter productive until 1.03.

More specifically: every production enhancer grants a certain amount of the extra IUs for free. After you reach 3X the PQ of the planet in *free* IUs you only get the square root of the theoretical IUs over 3X for free.

As an example, let's say you're getting 40 + 60 for your military production on a PQ 20 planet, You would need to raise the number of free IUs 2 to get 1, 4 to get 2, 9 to get 3, and so on. It becomes wasteful to keep stacking production enhancing SBs in a single sector.