One only needs to spam starbases if it is necessary to win the game.  Well my experience tells me it flat out isn't.  It will make you more powerful, yes, in the classic turtle strategy (otherwise known as "grow tall").  But it flat out isn't necessary to win.

it simpliy isn't.  Therefore if you find starbase spam tedious..... Don't engage in it.  I know I certainly don't.

PS: As I am sure you know, one can put multiple constructors modules on a single ship.  By the time the mid game rolls around, this drastically cuts down on time spent.

If one wants to complain about starbase spam, don't focus on the optional maximization game.  Instead focus on the fact that the number of relics and resources that can be mined has increased by a huge factor.  THERE is where the real spam is coming from compared to GC II, IMO.  Instead of "firing and forgetting" mining ships and having the occasional relic, the usable resources are off the charts in GC III.  If one wants to complain about game mechanics, that's the place to look.  Again, IMO.

And even there it isn't that bad with a bit of planning.  But at least I can see the complaint there, though what one could do about it at this stage, I don't know.

Regardless, making it so only one base can affect a planet at a time nerfs a huge portion of the "growing tall" strategy.  And unless there is a very good reason to get rid of it, I don't see the point of changing it.

Wouldn't it be much better to instead make building starbases less painful ? 
Make a template starbase, put a single module, and have an option of : Some Constructors going to the waypoint X will build me until i have all the modules in the template.
Fire and forget  

You want to tread on that hallowed ground! Personally I don't do it (mass spam starbases) but if I do I only put it around my Capital planets,Financial,Manufacturing and research planets and these are normally a mix of military/Econ and mining bases. But there will be others that do this and that's why theres a minimum distance between starbases as Frogboy  and Mormengeil has taken this into account during development?

Oh look another thread about Starbases, sigh....

I agree with dansiegle30. Tall vrs wide. 

It is not required to spam starbases at all. Its entirely optional. In fact I only put starbases around my major research planets, and productive planets. If I want resources Ill grab those as well. 

I disagree with the OP. Starbases should be used to their maximum benefit if someone wants to use them. The idea that you don't want them so everyone should do without is just plain evil.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Bad boy!

Anyway, why would I want to stop at 5 starbases per planet? That's fairly simple thinking.

Now go back to your corner and think about what you wrote. 

I do agree with another thread about cost.  If I had to say, I'm a tall builder over a wide guy.  But  10-20  SB modules only costing 1 BC mtc seems overkill.  Rough guess, thinking 0.1 to 0.2 BC per module would be Bit more fair.

-1

I like starbases and constructorsl  Pushing them around is fun for me and possibly many others.  Please keep that in mind.

I heard Paul talk about how he deliberately changed things to no support for starbase modules to keep the focus on starbases themselves.  You are going to have to come up with some good reasons for changing it for that kind of redesign.  The presence of an expansion race is not a good reason.  It is part of GalCiv.  If you find it a bother for any reason, add more opponents rather than asking the game to be redesigned.  That will end your expansion soon enough.  Sure, you will have an expansion bonus, but it takes more than that to actually win the game if you give it settings that challenge your play style. 

Totally agree with this. Having more than one starbase affect a planet makes absolutely no sense to me and is super annoyingly tedious.

This is one of many blatant bad game mechanics that the devs either ignore entirely or simply reply with a forum post similar to a post in this thread along the lines of "You don't need to do it to win so it doesn't need to be changed".

i agree with the op. economic starbases just add boring passive economic buffs but they are such big hassle to construct and choose optimal placement. galciv2 was better this way as there was no minimum distance required per starbase making the placement much less problematic.

The big problems with starbases are:

- Spammy, because you can place them so close together (maybe they need to have larger exclusion areas)

- "Request Constructor" button is a poor mechanic

- The player gets constantly pestered to "Upgrade Starbase"

- "Core" constructor designs are over-priced, with extraneous features

They are probably the most hated part of GC3 for me, but a few relatively simple fixes would make them much better:

#0) Increase the exclusion radius on starbases.

#1) Get rid of the "Request Constructor" button.  Replace it with a build queue, where you can queue up all of the things that you want to build.

#2) When a constructor rolls off the assembly line, allow us to press "A" or something to have the constructor fly off and automatically go to a starbase that has items in the build queue.  The choice of which starbase to go to should be based on distance plus how old the current request is.  If both starbases have the same age of requests, go to the nearest, but if the farther starbase has been waiting for longer then at some point it should trump the nearer starbase in terms of "need" and the constructor would go there instead.

#3) Optionally, give us the ability to design starbases modules and then pick those starbase templates when the base is first constructed.  Or "governors" which would manage the build queue (the governor should be a choice that is presented at starbase creation).

Have to agree with OP and the post above me by Bruce. Saying you don't HAVE to do it to win is a waste of thread space. You don't HAVE to use ideology to win or when the wheel was around you didn't HAVE to micromanage it to win or build ships over medium size, and on and on.

Most people like to get the most efficiency they can out of their planets and bases, so its only natural if you can build 4-5 you feel like you are wasting $ etc if you aren't. Personally I never built economic starbases before coming here to this forum since when you just build one it doesn't seem to even lower your projected debt / or raise projected income by even 1 when I tried in the past so I just built them for mining. After seeing this im going to go try it but like the OP, I sure don't want to feel like I should have 4 on this planet and 4 on that one til my entire map looks like crap because its filled with starbases and game lags because of it.

Would prefer if they were more effective and only one per planet was allowed. You guys really enjoy building constructors that much that you like having to place 4-5 on every planet? Not sure why you would defend a mechanic like that unless its just because you are sick of seeing posts about it and devs never do anything. But then if that's the case, obviously a lot of people are not liking that part of the game.

@naselus:

Attacking the original poster's reputation is doesn't really do anything to forward the game's progression.

Making star bases/modules more expensive (or as you suggested prohibitively expensive) is not the solution (not that it couldn't be a topic for another thread) to the annoying SB spam problem.

Making SB effects 1/planet is a simple, elegant, terribly obvious solution and the dev's not doing it feels like them giving us the middle finger. Which is what they seem to do about the many problems of this otherwise would-be amazing game.

I have to speak up every so often and defend my poor maligned friends, the constructors.  For me, a good deal of the enjoyment is placing and deploying constructors.  I'm getting good at it, in my evaluation, even though I haven't tried playing with the range extension.  I even used a pair of  military bases on a crucial beach-head battle where they had adjusted to my weapons.  It made all the difference.  I seldom do bases for single planets, though.  It seems inefficient.  If I can't place a starbase so it covers more than one planet, than I don't bother putting one there.  Obviously, some of this depends on my map choices, where there are a sprinkling of planet clusters throughout the galaxy.  But if people are only arguing about the phenomenon of single planets, then it seems like other player concerns are being shoved aside. I do surround my home planet with a ring of starbases these days, though, and am trying a ring of starbases with research modules around my main research planet.  So I see what people are talking about with that approach.  I just focus with the constructors differently.

I think naselus is on the right track, looking for root cause in the economics, though I haven't found his or anyone else's answers comfortable just yet.  For me, they are working out well even if they could be even easier to manage. I would hope that none of that gets broken while trying to address some of the issues other players experience.