Hi.  Got some questions here.  I "could" figure it out with playtesting and A/B comparisons, but really that would take too much time; time that I would rather spend trying to WIN my game. 

Q1.  Do mulitple factories have an additive effect with regards to future social project building and/or military (ship) building?  Sometimes it seems the answer is "yes," but other times, I'm not so sure.

Q2.  Assuming that the answer to Q1 above is "yes," then how and "when" are planetary bonuses applied?  For example:

I have a Type 10 planet.  It has two tiles with a 300% manufacturing bonus.

If I build a factory on each of these tiles, plus two additional factories on non-bonus tiles, how are the bonus manufacturing points applied?  Is it

A.  ((300% of one factory ) X (2 tiles)) + (two non-bonus factories)?

or..

B. ((four factories) + 300%) +300%?

and/or..

C. Does it matter what order I build my factories in?  In other words, should I build the non-bonus factories before the factories on the bonus tiles, in order to have the 300% applied to all of my factories?  Or does it not matter what order I build my factories in?

Q3.  Are approval / cultural / research points calculated the same way as manufacturing points (with regards to building on tiles with corresponding bonus points)?

Q4.  How about "addons" to starbases?  One type of starbase class (I can't remember which, and I'm not in front of my game machine at the moment) had improvmenets that looked like incremental 5% improvements.  This confused me.  Specifically...

A. Does each improvement incrementally add 5% "of-the-base"? ie, base + 5% + 5%

B. or does each improvement "stack" onto the prior improvement? ie, (base + 5%) + (5%)

As you can see, A and B above are not the same mathematical equation, and would not yield the same result.  In A above, each 5% would be an equal value, but in B above, each 5% would be an ever-increasing numerical value. 

Knowing the answer would possibly affect my strategy because if A, then the improvements would be worth less.  If B, then the improvements are very powerful, and increasingly-so...similar to a daily compounding interest rate as opposed to a monthly.

That's it for now.  Like I said, I could playtest this to get my answers, but I'd rather just ask, so that I can continue to enjoy the game.     

Thanks in advance!