Once again, the Torians decided that they'd help me in my war -- by giving me starbases. This time one of them was a mining starbase, which is useful, but the others were economy starbases in his territory. Now it's a little silly to be giving me those starbases. Mining bases should simply never be given away, unless the AI is feeling quite intimidated or they otherwise just want to kiss ass. In general situations, however, they should be jealously protecting those resources. Economy starbases are -totally- useless to give away. All that does is hurt them. It doesn't benefit me at all.

Another oddity is minor civs building influence starbases. There's no point to it. Minor civs don't seem to even have influence, so why should they bother to build those things? I could understand it if they were in the business of selling the things to other civs, but they personally have no use for them.