starbases

I disagree. Cuts down on micromanagement big time. I starbase spam with 20+ economic and military  starbases around my homeworld and eventually upgrade them all, Once you get your economy going, especially with the economic starbase improvements you're rolling in dough.

They should change it to 2 administrators for a military starbase in my opinion, too powerful early on.

As for monastium, I typically play with 64 players in the game so I have no problem trading for it.

I build one economic base in each star system.  Then build mining bases.  I only use military bases for relics

Making it hard to do something is good for the game. The game should be harder, IMO. It's boring if you don't have to trade for resources and watch your money and how you spend it. That is the whole point of a strategy game.

I didnt mind constructor spam, but a lot of people complained about it. I think that people didnt like ai sending too many constructors through their territory. If i understand the op you want constructor spam back. I think it also caused micromanagement issues. I think this is moot.

All you had to do was put more constructor modules on the ships.  Besides it kept the combat ships down.

Like I said moot! The old way was fine there were just to many other people who thought different. I don't think that changing how constructors work will fix a better, and smarter Ai though.

Hated constructor spam for starbases.  One reason I quit playing.

Love the new system - figuring out how to make more credits to afford things and developing a sustainable budget is brain work - building massive amounts of constructors is busy work and tedious and boring as hell.

Love the starbase concept in GCIII. Start off with 4 economic starbases around systems with 2 or more planets, then eventually every planet has 4 economic starbases. Really kicks ups everything - especially starship construction and you're gon need it when the AI starts rushing you.

luceo non uro 

The update is nice because now you face a choice- money for better starbases or money for other things. I appreciate the lack of constructor spam as well. In addition, with administrators being scarce, each star base matters a lot more. Using the old system, adding one more starbase was trivial; now it's choice between a starbase, a planet, or a survey ship and that makes for a more interesting game.

If I can have just have everything, then why wouldn't I? Making some hard choices (and living with them) is more fun than making more mouse clicks.

I find using money (and resources) for starbases much better than ship construction efforts.  Back in the spamming days, if I got 50,000 credits, I didn't really know how to use it, other than upgrading ships (which I don't really like to do en masse).  Now, it goes in a snap if I toss out a few administrator citizens for starbases across the galaxy, and get a new tech to upgrade them.  Economic production means more to me now.

Yes, I agree. Economics now has a much larger role, especially if you consider special resources, minerals and food as part of your economy that you'll need to manage.

Harvesting your own monsantium or harmony crystals means that you aren't dependent on an outside civilization for essential items, but also means that you need to find and colonize those types of planets first.

I actually like to mine Monsantium as a Silicon race, just to have trading power.  Eventually I'll destroy it for the planet's sake, but having a stockpile is nice.

yeah well now tourism makes money like crazy but no Durantium cause factories take it all.