Newbie Starbase/Repair questions

Well, the range of Ship assist effects is the radius shown when you click on the star base. Any ship inside that radius will receive the benefits you have upgraded your Star Bases with.

As for Ship repair, I am not sure but I believe there are Tech upgrades that allow ships to repair faster when they are around that particular planet. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can pipe in on that? I personally don't care about the relative health of individual ships so much as the fleet. if I have a ship that is hurting, I might pull it out and replace it with another. I have also been known to use ships as suicide bombers, so maybe I am not the best to give advise on that.

As for Economic Star bases, these serve a wide variety of purposes. If you have researched Trade, you can put modules on them that will increase the effectiveness of any transports that pass through their sphere of influence. The further along the "Trade" research path, the more lucrative they become.

Also, there are production upgrades that will increase the social/military/research production of any planets within their sphere of influence. The way I use them is, when I have a cluster of habited planets, I place one or more econ star bases overlapping their spheres to cover the planets. You don't need to have multiple planets to do this. If you have a high producing planet, it can only benefit from a star base with a production bonus upgrade.

I personally set them up in enemy territory in the middle of planets I plan on taking over. That way, when I invade, i get an immediate boost to production on that planet.

If you click on the starbase, it will show a halo over it's area of effect (if you're playing DA or TA, there will also be a moving dashed line around the edge to make it more visible).

Ships repair faster at planets than they do out in space. There are also some techs that give a bonus to your repair speed.

Econ starbases boost trade and/or planet production/research, so they're best around your production/research centers.

Great, thanks.

I recently posted in a thread on starbases that you may find useful.Here.

In addition to what those above me have said...

The radius that appears when you click on a constructor or starbase is the area of effect. This applies from freighter bonuses to ship assist missiles (yes - they really do shoot that far)

As far as I know planets will always provide faster repair than just sitting in space - there is not tech requirement. I do think I remember reading that this repair bonus will be further accelerated if the planet has a starport but that may be heresay.

Here is an example of using the freighter revenue side of economy starbases.



As you can see (hopefully) I have placed the starbases right at the most productive part of the trip. Freighters give more and more cash the further along the route. By placing the starbases (and hence the hefty % revenue multipliers) along the final stretch they start providing large sums of money.

Its easy to mistake the bonus for only 30% However the 3 modules provide a massive 60% bonus as they stack - 10% + 20% + 30% = 60%. So freighters that are passing through the area of effect of all 4 starbases are recieving a 240% bonus to regular revenue.

I should point out that you can only have 4 starbases per sector - I kinda cheated here by building this along an area where sectors meet - thats why I can have 5 starbases close together. The military starbase is to provide ship assist to the guarding fleet. I invested a fair bit into those starbases and want them well protected.

Here is an example of using the starbase factory side of economy starbases.

IMG]http://img390.imageshack.us/img390/4123/econms2.jpg[/IMG]

Yeah thats a hell of a lot of research. In addition to the percentage multipliers provided by the Technological Capital, Omega Research Centre and the Research Co-ordination Centre the starbases provides a further 42%.

The starbases are quite generous as they give a percentage multiplier to both production and research. You may only build one Technological Captital but you are a great deal more free with the economy starbases.

Having a cluster of production/research planets within the radius of a few economy starbases can yeild incredible results. Economy starbases are quite powerful but there is something of challenge in squeezing every last drop out of them through positioning and thinking ahead.

For example you could yield the same kind of frieghter bonus as above while also providing the planetary bonus if you set up your trade routes to pass through your production centre planets... Its one of the rewarding problem solving aspects of the game.

Dammit wheres the edit function gone.

With the missing bracket:

WOW. I have seen research points in the 400s but never quite that high. Gotta work on that.

There's a thread or two around here somewhere with "record" research output planets. Several people have managed more than 10,000...and if I remember correctly someone even got over 15,000. But it's generally not worthwhile for the investment in time, energy, and credits required-and you probably won't see anything like that in a "normal" game.

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