Econ Starbase Stacking

Yes.

However, I've become convinced (schooled by others here) that it takes a long time to recoup your investment with trade income enhancing modules, so it is a marginal at best strategy.

How so? Beacuse of the cost of constuctors?

Well if your playing for a long run game I have found they work well around the manufacturing capital. with a plus 120 on top of a 125% (mfg captial and a Quantum generator). Let say you got a Triple and a double precurser mine tile and another facotry at minumum thats 144 MFPs. That gets you 444 mfp when you add it up. but then again my math may be off. I like playing long games where long term payoff is more important than short term.

Although I rarely make military starbases.

Duh

Yes, combined with the low amount of extra revenue.

You only get extra revenue when the freighters are in the influence radius of the the base, and on those turns you don't get very much extra at all. I'm not saying they are completely useless, but I don't think it is worth enough to change the decision of where you should put economic starbases.

Consider that at some point in the game if you are "evil", the modules are free and you can just spam constructors until your bases are maxed out. And for the record I did achieve a solid 1000 extra per turn thanks to trade with 8 medium trade routes going out and a few starbases in the busy points. So it CAN easily help your economy but in times of war, of course, it will become risky at best to rely on it. At the very least you could use the peace time bonus to raise your industrial spending. If I really tried to create a trade economy I am sure it could be even better. Trading is a great supplement and upgrading existing starbases in busy lanes does help.

there's also the initial cost of starbases, which grows exponentially.

Wow, 1000 bc's extra per turn sounds like a lot. I have never come close to that. How much total trade revenue did you have to get 1000 extra per turn? How many economic starbases did you have? Do you pretty much ignore the other types of starbases so the cost of a new star base doesn't get astronomical?

i've managed to get way past a thousand through trade. the key is to cover every parsec of the trade route with as many bases as possible. then you give them all to your trade partner and start over. it takes forever. and no matter what you do, the cost of new bases becomes astronomical (meaning it takes even longer, having to wait for your treasury to build back up, especially since you can't pay for them on credit).

Another way to get more out of investing in economic starbases is to research the full logistics tech tree. One of the side benefits of greater logistics skills is a reduction in the cost of new starbases.

They will still continue to increase in cost as you get to higher numbers of bases -- 20-30+, but the rate of increase will go down substantially. In longer games this will make a big difference in total investment cost as you build out your economic infrastructure.

I've built "Trade Roads" that have allowed me to have a thousand per turn per route before. Though by the time you get it setup and eliminate possible threats to them you could already have your planets built out to produce good cash flow and have most likely won the game, so it's more of a just for fun thing to do for me.

One of my favourite strategies is to play as the Korx, toss everything I can from my abilities and political parties into trade, and then set up one massive trade route with a single civilisation, usually from a single one of my planets to a single one of theirs. That alone will net you will over a thousand BC on a decent sized map.

If you build a network of bases, though, with the full trade upgrades (which is 60% bonus each) and then build them such that each one is just on the edge of another's influence, you get a 120% increase in your trade income. When I use this strategy, I'll be typically raking in thousands of BC a turn (quickly paying off all the setup costs and allowing me to quickly regenerate my treasury) Sometimes the number gets well over 4000... trade routes become significantly more valuable over time!

I've managed to have very, very tiny empires keep pace with larger ones by doing this. You and your trading partner get massive economic boosts. The downside is that your manufacturing and research typically can't keep pace... you have to focus your planets pretty carefully on one or another. I tend to focus on filling my planets with high tech research buildings and then using surplus income to BUY my warfleet.

oh, you can push it beyond that with even more bases. if you find two planets that line up just perfectly, the trade route will pass through either 7 or 8 parsecs per sector. you then build a base on every other square. you then give ALL of those bases to your trade partner, and build bases on the remaining squares. actually, for the short term i usually just park them in those squares and set them to guard, because...

THEN you build 4 SBs on the left/right corners of the nearby sectors and give all of those to your trade partner. THEN you repeat the entire process to construct your own SBs. the SBs you gift to your partner will still boost your income, and vice versa.

this results in about 30 SBs affecting each parsec, or a bonus of +1800%. it's pretty much impossible to implement perfectly, since stuff gets in the way and your trade partner is likely to construct his/her own bases in the short term, and s/he might also scrap some after you give them to him/her. plus stuff gets in the way.

hmm... now i'm thinking about setting up a custom map to see what kind of numbers this would produce... if i do will use cheats to save myself time.

edit: actually i see no reason they'd need to be offset from the center of a trade route. the number of SBs should remain constant, you're just spreading their AoEs differently... maybe... maybe not.

okay... i did it... it took most of my afternoon, and then i had to go do laundry. sometimes i wish i was a Torian. they don't wear clothes.

no, scratch that. i never wish i was a Torian.

and now presenting....



that was the max i was able to achive. i cheated very thoroughly, so this in no way represents something you could do in a real game... at least, not this quickly.

the figure comes from the 11 terran freighters and 12 of mine. IF i had remembered to give the terrans another +1 route, you could multiply this value bu 24/23 to get an estimate for a max value (48,192).

my frieghers all occupied the same square in a big stack, while the terrans' were more spaced out (1 or 2 per parsec, most in a clump one after the other, but with a few stragglers). that explains the sine waves you see in the econ graph farther down (which could be offset by spacing out the arrival time of freighters).

this is how:




i played as the Korx and used the cheat mode to set this up. made the terrans my allies. for us both, i picked +30% trade and the merchantile party. i should have also given the terrans +1 trade routes, but c'est la vie.

on turn 1, i cheat built 208 SBs decked out fully with trade modules; force researched xeno ethics and neutral shipping, and cheat-built 12 freighters which i kept parked next to my homeworld.

next turn, i made contact with the terrans. they were too busy to talk to me for another two months. so i hit enter furiously. as soon as i could, i gifted them 208 SBs, 12 freighters, and all the trade techs plus xeno ethics. then i build 208 more SBs and 12 more freighters; those frighters were immediately teleported to the terran world, and trade was established.

it took them a while to get all the freighters to me. why is beyond me, but that's the AI for you (set on tough).

this SB array resulted in most parsecs being covered by 20-24 SBs (except 1 in 15 squares had only 8 SBs' coverage). about 2/3 of my frighters' way to the terran world, a thought occured. i allied with them (disabled all but conquest) and forced UP meetings until the allies-share-SBs agenda item came up (and it only took 2 tries!). that doubled the effect of every SB.

i didn't even bother taxing my 19 billion people. here's what my trade history looked like.



i also wrote down my income on the first of every game year (or thereabouts, sometimes i forgot).

game date (d/m/y): trade income
1/3/26: 256 (first week of trading)
1/1/27: 3617
1/1/28: 12526
22/1/29: 18273
1/1/30: 21522
1/1/31: 31047 (alliance was formed during previous year)
15/1/32: 43817

toward the end, my trade revenue was typically 35-45K, but dipped down to around 18K at its lowest point in the 15-turn cycle.

also toward the end, the highest per-freighter value i observed was 2233/turn. i constructed the first set of SBs without any extra logistics points (Korx base ability: 6); it cost 27,918 BC. i constructed the second round with all the logistics techs and the hyperion log. system; it cost 12,771 BC.

so... constructing this thing in a real game would be unrealistic (unless you've already won virtually). but i think you could apply the principal quite well to a relatively short trade route; it wouldn't take too many bases, and it'd be much easier to defend. most of the income here is bonus anyway, so while i'm sure that goes up on longer trade routes... it goes up more if you can saturate them with SBs. you won't max out trade with a short route, but you'll still rake in bucks. also, get an econ treaty with whomever you trade, and you get a bonus 10%.

you could also use the principal of gifting SBs to allies, under the allies-share-SB UP law, to radically increase the industrial bonuses you can get from SBs on a manufacturing or research world. build 16, gift to an ally; build 16 more, gift to another ally, etc.

so... any questions?

Good test. You are much more patience than me. No wonder I've never come close to +1000 bc's per turn. That strategy would be pretty hard to implement in a competitive game.

I don't expect you to sink any more time into your simulation, but what proportion of trade revenue do you estimate you received due to the economic starbases? It looks like a lot.

It looks like every one of his freighters was in the influence of roughly 24 starbases at any given time. With that many bases and a 60% bonus on each you get a 1440% bonus on every freighter.

That is crazy talk.

100%. i set my tax rate for this test to zero. as i stated, i was using cheats to set up the trade routes. i also used them to avoid going bankrupt while the trade routes matured. the point wasn't to simulate a real game, but to explore the potentials in trade.



not all the time. for 1 in every 15 turns, they only ("only") had 8 bases influencing them. for 2/15 turns, it was 14. for the rest, it seemed to either be 23 or 24 (i say 'it seemed' because on certain turns, it looked like there were 23, but the numbers suggested 24).

also, the base array provided me with a 2880% bonus, not 1440%. as i explained, forming the alliance and getting the UP law that causes players to share SB benefits doubled the effect of every base (even though trade bonuses already affect both players, the UP law made it such that every base was treated like 2 bases by the computations).



for a trade route going across an entire gigantic map? oh yes, it is. and i said it is. but for a modest set of trade routes crossing, say, 5 sectors? it's doable in a real game, and you'd still make a lot of money from it.



i actually wouldn't mind going back to this simulation. it's still my most recent quicksave. however, i don't think i can answer your original question. since i only gave myself and the terrans 1 planet each, even if i did tax my people it wouldn't represent what you could get from a randomly generated map, since you'll have more than one planet.

but i want to go back to the sim breifly. i was very curious why the final peaks of my trade revenue were higher; since i got tired of the sim, i didn't want to see if they'd lower again and by how much. in DA, trade revenue is partly determined by how far from your homeworld the freighter is. i hope everyone knows that, since it's plainly stated. but they also become more valuable over time. i'm not sure if the high peaks at the end of my sim were from the frighters being far away from their homeworld, or from them maturing. so i'd like to run the sim for a few more game years to see what happens.

but as for a percentage of my income... it's a tough question. in my games, i usually set most planets of PQ 10+ (based on their PQ after complete terraforming), to populations of 19 billion, since managing morale becomes impossible after that. i could estimate what percentage of my income was from trade by guess-timating how much tax i could get from and economy of a given size. or you could go by one of the economy test beds out there. either way, i'll see what i can provide.

Torians wear pants.

what? i swear i remember the condemned Torian in the openning movie for DA didn't have pants... but admittedly, i don't scrutinize that scene on a regular basis.

Evidence, please

Well that one was in jail....

It is a requirement that all jail inmates AND escapees wear pants, regardless of race. Torn pants are preferred but not required.

let's start a petition: Torians should wear kilts! perhaps a primarily green and yellow sett.

well, i just checked the opening movie for DA, and the Torian prisoner's lower half is mostly covered by shadow.

also to Acturian, while i'll do a bit more work on the previous test, it probably won't be til this weekend.

Why hasn't it been mentioned that you can just sell the econ starbases to your trade partner to at least regain some of the cost that went into building them immediately. Also, do you need an alliance and the UP law in order to benefit off your trade partner's SBs? If yes, is there any way to bring up a UP issue at will?

the AI players rarely keep that much cash on hand; it'd be like taking a tablespoon from lake michigan.

and i didn't even bother because i wanted to determine exactly how much they'd cost; it would have been a much bigger pain to do so while constantly having to accout for what i earned back.



here's how it works.

the trade modules on an SB affect all of your trade routes AND any trade routes headed to one of your worlds - only while the freighters are in the SB's area of effect - so alien SBs still boost your trade routes, as long as your trading with the alien that owns the SB. without a UP law though, industry modules will only affect your planets.

when you get the UP law, it's as if the starbase were really two starbases, one of which is yours, and the other is the AI's. and since it acts like two bases, it affects all your trade routes twice as much as it otherwise would.

without running in cheat mode, there's no way to force the UP law. it comes up at random, except it doesn't seem to come up until there's at least one alliance in the game - but i might be wrong on that.