How much do starbases help?

A mining starbase on a resource is a civ wide bonus, while you economy starbases and that are in area of influence. On the planet screen in the details button you can see on the right side any starbase bonuses being recieved by the planet. the economy bases boost your Points in production/research by % stated. I'm not exactly sure how the civ wide bonuses of resources are calculated though. Not sure if it's an actual percentage or not on those. Someone will come along that knows   .

A lot. Getting resources early is huge, and wiping out the enemies is also nice...

Economy starbases are more subjective. It sort of comes down to your settings, and how you build up your planets. If you play abundant with tight, or even loose clusters eco starbases can give serious bonuses. Ex, pick a tight cluster of 6 to 8 planets, build all research on them and stack as many eco-starbases on them as you can. (production is good as well)

The problem with this is at higher levels, it gets harder to balance this. If I try to do this, I ussually over do it and don't have much of a military and the AI jumps on me. (can ussually beat them back, but it's slow going)

For me I find it better to just try to gooble up the resources, build them up, then build up militarily, then slowly start building eco-starbases in key places. Later in the game, I end up building primarily constructors. Which end up either being influence or eco bases.

The thing to remember is you really don't need a huge military. (just need a potent force) This is especially true once you have 2 or 3 military resources maxed out. It gets wastefull to keep building attack craft, so I just build tons of constructors.

EDIT. Off resource only gives research/production/trade or influence bonuses.
On resource, gives whatever that resource is. They're all pretty good, for me the military resource ones are the key to getting control of the game.

As the previous poster said, check out the "Details" section of the specific planet in the Economy Starbase's area of effect to check and see how much of a bonus it is getting. This one is pretty easy to see. It's not easy to predict how much of a bonus you're going to get BEFORE you build the starbase, but easy to check afterwards.

Influence Starbases are much harder to figure out. I can never tell how close I am to flipping an enemy world if I build an influence starbase near an enemy world.

The difficult thing about the economy starbases for me to figure out is the %bonus from trade frieghters. I'm never really sure if that upgrade is worth purchasing or not. I tend to go ahead and build that upgrade if my starbase is crossed by 3 or more trade routes. Even after you build the upgrade for the bonus to frieghters I haven't figured out how to tell exactly how much money you're making from it.

Economy starbases are a nice edge to have.

Influence starbases are only worth it if you can get the Influence bonus over 100%. With the cultural conquest modules alone, you can push it to 255 at max. Its not easy to predict how long it will take a planet to flip, they've made the Influence system a lot more behind the scenes than it was in GC1 when you could check influence rating by sector, but you can typically be assured a planet will flip within 10-20 turns of being put into crisis mode. Even less if one of your planets is in the area of effect for the Influence base. The lower a planet's PQ and population, the faster it will fall. One game I actually took out three alien homeworlds first by planting a trio of Influence bases with the Cultural Domination line. Toria IV collapsed quickly, while Thala, Arcea and Toria took a LONG time, easily 15 turns (I wasn't keeping absolutely careful track, Thala was the longest to hold out).

As far as I'm concerned, the Diplomatic Outpost tree of the Influence starbase line is useless. The bonus levels next to the Cultural Domination line are next to nothing, and combining the two is a waste of constructors. If it comes to needing that kind of Influential firepower, you're better off with two Cultural Domination bases than a single Influence base with both lines installed.

About the Economy bases and Freighters.. I've had freighters running through my network of econ. bases around my tech planet and watched my trade routes closely. I noticed a significant increase in a route while passing through the network(16 bases all with 30% trade boost). At times a route making bout 50bc would shoot up to 300+ while passing through. I still haven't gotten exact boost amounts cause I usually have to many bases to straighten out which is effecting what all the time, or rather I'm just to lazy too.  

There is a notable improvement, even with only one or two bases. I don't usually go to the extreme of 16 starbases on one planet, but its not unusual to put 2-3 overlapping around my homeworld and the core worlds of my empire, and even then, it IS nearly a doubling effect. The best place for them, in my opinion, if you're just upgrading the trade lines, is at the furthest point you can put them in your empire along the path of travel. The further a freighter is from the planet in your empire it originate from, the more its generating.

Theoretically, the best place would be an economy base at the destination, which is the peak production point. Most major AI empires have issues with this, but it does explain why the minor races tend to plant economy bases near your homeworld when they start trading with you.

The best place for them, in my opinion, if you're just upgrading the trade lines, is at the furthest point you can put them in your empire along the path of travel.

Of course, this means you won't get production bonusses for your own planets. Up to now I've only built econ bases near my own planets because I wanted both production and trade bonusses. I noticed a significant increase in trade income when freighters pass through the starbase zones (using 5-10 starbases). But I don't like the fluctuating income effect this generates, so I'll planning to try a string of starbases along the route, to see what that does to my monthly income.
It will probably always fluctuate a bit, because of the distance/income effect(?)

You can build a trade route with econ starbases, and only upgrade the trade module. Takes 4 constructors, giving a 60% boost to frieghter income along the route. Works while at peace. Placing starbases in the territory of another race, can be tricky, and I have found if I put it near a star that is not inhabitated, then they do not get upset, and I get the trade income boost as the frighter passes through.

Nobody has been talking about miltary starbases. Eco are nice, but military are great!!

I once had a pirate feet spawn next to one of my worlds that had only a single slightly outdated small ship deffending it. My main fleet was across the galaxy I sent it racing to help, but I knew the ship was a loss. To my surprise, it won!! It was close, but a single outdated small ship took on and won against 3 more advance pirate ships of larger size. How? A maxed out military starbase was near by and my small ship was insane with bonuses.

Military Starbases are Great!!!

so I'll planning to try a string of starbases along the route, to see what that does to my monthly income.

I've seen people do this although I haven't tried it myself. I've seen someone get 9000 bc a week from a single trade route, but he had starbases all along the path and there were a *lot* of them. They are also a major target in a war and if they're spread out along the trade route, which is the most effective way to increase your trade income, they're difficult to defend.

I tend to use economic SB arrays around my major research and production planets filled with manufacturing modules. I don't bother with the trade modules at all, because I've never bothered with trade. With the 16 SB's that DethAdder mentioned, you get close to a 400% production and research bonus on every tile on every planet in the SB influence area. Getting 8000 RP's of research per turn from a single planet or being able to build a 4000 bc battleship in 2 or 3 turns on 3 or 4 planets is huge.

When I first started playing GC2, I was a big starbase user, I built resource, eco, military and inf bases. Now 8 months, with considerable playing experience, 50+ games later, the only starbases I build r resource starbases which I max. out.

I am also winning comfortably on Suicidal, hardest settings possible, against any number of races u care to put in front of me etc, etc...

So eco, military and inf. starbases r useless to me. This tells me they need to be made more powerful, so I after build them to counter the AI's.

I play mostly on galaxies with abundant abundancies  , so with so many planets and anomalies this may explain why I have no real need for starbases other than galaxy wide resource ones...

As a final point, as a very experienced player, there is alot of game mechanics/features in GC2 that I never use and I see no reason to use in order to win. Those should be looked at some time in future updates/expansions and a power boost given so that players use them. If NLC's, stock exchanges can be nerfed then stardock should boost plantary defense, trade income, influence (who bothers with influence wins nowadays), galactic guide book etc, etc. I could go on, but u get the picture...

Nobody has been talking about miltary starbases. Eco are nice, but military are great!!

No they r crap...no offence but they have a huge flaw, they can't move. To a newbie player they r great but to a experienced old hack (at GC2 anyway), they r a waste of resources. Get dreadnoughts/battleships instead, much more fun. U will win much quicker as well...

Bob, please stop abusing my eyeballs and my language.

"Are" and "You" require two additional flicks of the fingers apiece, I think this is not asking much.

Secondly, to each their own. I've won games without starbases, and I've won games a lot more easily with them. I personally don't bother with military bases myself, sticking mostly to diplomacy and trade until my Dreadnoughts are up and running. I am a firm believer in the Economy starbase as a means of getting marginal planets up and running quickly. New planets struggling to get things built because they were aquired after the more advanced factory technologies are well served by a quick three to four ship economy base in the same sector. In fact, that one base can get several border colonies up to speed in incredibly short order if you've got your fast ship building worlds working on colony ships and your slower ones working on constructors.

As for influence, you simply cannot win this type of game without using starbases, unless your worlds are loaded to the gills with embassy line structures, which robs you of capacity in other critical areas.

They might not be immediately too valuable if your strategy tends towards the "big stick bash ugly head" level, but when you move on to the more difficult challenges, they become impossible to live without.

I've

This should be I have  

>>> 16 bases all with 30% trade boost

How do you get 16 SB around a single planet? Aren't you limited to 4 per quadrant?

Use of SBs like the top image can lead to production like the bottom image.

Wow! F.C. and I thought Mumblefratz had some doozies.  

Use of SBs like the top image can lead to production like the bottom image

That is pretty amazing. This appears to be DA. I don't think you could get 20K on DL with only 16 econ SB's and what appears to be your tech capital. Is that a Bank or is it something else? Something intrinsic to DA must be going on here. Any idea what it is?

That looks to be a restaurant of eternity. I just built one an hour ago  

I guess you could just have a lot of research resource mining. When I had 11K, I only had 3 research resources plus I wasn't neutral. So I suppose 20K makes sense if you're neutral and have at least 5 research resources.

Actually, you'll get this even higher once you get the Omega Research Center. Take a screenshot once you do, it's always nice to have proof about these monsters. You also want Hypercomputers and Nano Recorders, but these don't need to be on the same planet.

After looking closer the planet is at 109 IP so it's it's the McDonalds all right.

I didn't see anything to indicate it as a DA game. Those type of bonus tile frequencies just aren't happening in DA.

I thought the 6B pop limit meant it was DA. But I haven't played v1.4 yet so maybe it is.

Yea the pop changes were done in 1.4, and have stayed the same for DA. Farms only get you three Bil. now and tech increases by 1Bil.

So my prediction is that he has 6 research resources given that he doesn't yet have the Omega Research Center. Regardless of how he did it, this is a picture to hold onto.