I know there are other threads on this topic - but I wanted to bring up the question of Starbase micromanagement again.  In each of the games that I've played, because I go for the economic powerhouse model, I find most of my time taken up by going to a Starbase, clicking 'Build Constructor' six times, then figuring out which starbase I should send each of the 3-4 constructors I built this turn to.  Couple this with the flexible starbase design, and most of my time in the game had boiled down to basically 'Starbase Accountant'.  

Additionally it seems like there's an odd distinction going on where there's four 'paths' for a starbase - military support, cultural, mining and economic.  But the economic one is so much more useful than the others in terms of cost versus benefits it doesn't seem quite right.  Now granted my view of the non-economic starbases is limited.  I know the AI overvalues the mining assets, but they have no in-game purpose currently and that will change.  I think I read some other poster saying that the cultural victories will be toned down in the final game, making the cultural starbase less valuable (currently it's pretty solid).  And I've never used the military support starbase - I find myself favoring ships over the limited buff radius of those starbases.  Given that I prefer to play an economy rush, my view may be biased towards the economic starbase, and I'm willing to accept that.  

All that said, the buffs you can get from a well-position starbase with most of the economic modules is nothing short of incredible.  They are a massive force multiplier for every aspect of production - which is my only real issue with them.  In other 4X games I've found myself trying to optimize specific systems for a purpose - this system/planet is for manufacturing, this one is research, etc.  And the game has a lovely multiplier model already in place for the colony screen, which is fantastic.  But it seems diluted when I can double total output on all fields with a single starbase.  Each starbase has a maintenance cost, which admittedly goes higher the more modules you place on it.  But those are quickly paid for once you get some manufacturing and wealth multipliers going, eliminating the 'hard choice' aspect of building the economy.   

Am I missing something?  My inclination now is that a starbase should have to be specialized towards one of the economic aspects - manufacturing, research, wealth or approval - rather than being able to service all four aspects at once.  I think that would make me think harder about how I build individual colonies, since I couldn't rely on the starbases boosting both manufacturing and approval unless I carried the (presumably higher) cost of both starbases.  You'd have to be pickier about what you built, due to the starbase effect 'closing off' lots of simultaneous development.  A cluster of planets might be able to be serviced by an outer ring of starbases - but you'd probably have to pick 1-2 planets per starbase to boost, rather than getting all of them at once.  And even then you're boosting only one thing, so you need more sunk costs in the starbases to get those tasty multipliers.

Additionally, I was wondering if a model where starbases were sponsored (like shipyards) could eliminate some of the micromanagement.  Say you could tie a starbase to a set of planets, and 'leech' production from them like a shipyard does.  Then the upgrade path simply becomes a build queue that you can set, and the appropriate module would be built as production was available.  Once you selected a module to be built, the starbase would draw production to keep it updated, but it wouldn't build modules that you didn't select.  As an example, if I built the military support and basic starbase defense modules, the starbase would draw production to upgrade those as new technologies became available - but it wouldn't try to build the factory modules.  Constructors could be 'consumed' to drop a specific amount of production into the starbase build queue immediately (it effectively allows you to shift military production to civilian production), but otherwise would only be necessary for setting up the initial starbase.  That gives you the flexibility to rapidly build up a production poor planet with constructors, or let production strong planets sponsor several starbases at once.

So far I'm really enjoying my exposure to GalCiv3.  I can't wait to see what the next beta brings along, or what the final game looks like - but I suspect I won't be getting much sleep for a while!.