I love starbases. I've loved them ever since they got added at the last minute to the previous iteration of the game. That said, I believe they are clunky in current (and previous) incarnations.
I have a few ideas that would resolve it, so here they are.
To start with: The Problems:
- Star bases require more micro management than colonies. A properly starbased colony is 2x as effective as one that is not starbased, particularly if you're putting them around a budding world.
- Having 3-5 fully upgraded economic starbases around a each planet becomes non optional if you want to be competitive in mid- late game, and strong arguments can be made for it in early game as well.
- even if you make beefed up constructors and you have the pragmatic trait, a constructor can only add 4 modules. At that point it takes 3-4 constructors to upgrade the non war-faring components.
- Doing this is time consuming, and tedious, and really not all that fun... particularly on bigger maps. But if you don't do it, and your brother does.... you're going to lose.
- The entire map becomes covered with constructor spam as your already built up worlds churn out 4-8 constructor modules a turn (if you're pragmatic) or 2-4 modules a turn (if you're not pragmatic), as that's all you can reasonably fit on a 1 turn ship.
- on the really big maps, this can cause each turn to take 3-4 minutes, and all but about 45 seconds of that time is building starbases.
Now... The possible solutions as I see them:
- limit the number of modules a starbase can fit. increasing this number could be a tech. 1-2 in early game, 3-4 in mid game, and 5-6 in late game. This is the least favorite of the ideas to me, as it still doesn't make starbase management all that "fun"
- Change starbases entirely. Currently they are ships. Make them like planets. the old PBEM game "Stars" had some fantastic ideas for starbases (they did their ships the same way, but I believe it would only be awesome for starbases in galciv)
Here is an example of what I mean.
This was a small space station in Stars. The beauty of what you could do with this concept in this game, is that you could have adjacency bonuses for modules!!!! Instead of "how many constructors can you spam" it becomes a game of "chose what modules you wish to put where, but chose carefully because what you put on your station, and where you put it can alter its benefits noticably"
As you tech up, you could build bigger space stations.
This was the floor plan for a larger starbase in "stars!".
You'd design your starbase, build it at your starport, and then it would be transported by one big constructor. Once it set up, you'd select which modules you wanted, and were you wanted them. After that, the starbase is done. You have to upgrade it like you would a ship if you want to upgrade components, and you need to replace it if you want to go to a bigger starbase.
This would allow for some very fun combinations of modules, and you could even have a race that specializes in starbases for their racial. They could have more flexible design layouts than anyone else, and perhaps a bonus to adjacency bonuses.
Limit each planet to one starbase. One starbase can still service multiple planets, but there would be no benefit to having 2.
This is my favorite option, but would obviously require the most work.
- Simply limit the number of each module a planet could benefit from. only 1 zero g ballet. having 2 around your planet doesn't help you, just costs you money. You could still do a racial where you can benefit from 2.
I think this is way less fun than placing starbase modules for adjacency bonuses based on what you want the starbases planet to do. There will still be mindless clicking adding all 20+ modules to every starbase you create, but at least it won't cover the screen with constructors.... as much and make it neigh impossible to finish a game competitively on ludicrous galaxy size, or whatever you decide to name it.