Building things faster is in fact the entire point. Money is based on population, morale, tax rate, etc; more factories means you can spend that money faster and get your goodies sooner.

As near as I can tell, what they allow me to do is to build and upgrade my buildings faster, and build ships faster

Bingo.

Manufacturing Captials are important because they 1) let you build buildings/ships even faster , and/or 2) let you have fewer factories on a planet (allowing for more income/morale/influence/GA/SP buildings, while still having a high industial output).

Yes, you do need to change gears a bit (as compared to MOO2, at least) as it is not as effective to have dedicated 'Research Planets' or 'Production Planets'......a slightly more balanced approach seems to work better.

I don't really need to get any constructors out there yet

You ALWAYS need more constructors.....always!

You may think you don't need a constructor, but you're wrong.

Uses for constructors:

* Building resource starbases
* Building economic starbases
* Building resource/economic add-ons
* Building trade boosting add-ons
* Building yet another overlapping Economic starbase...
.....

I think you get the idea.

You're going to need constructors....ESPECIALLY if you are going to 'play nice'.

Remember, you only need to pay for half of the production bonuses you get from eco starbases & the value of trade routes can REALLY skyrocket if they pass through properly upgraded eco starbase's "Area's of Influence'

....make constuctors

I don't know where a primer would be (maybe the wiki?) but here are a few things to remember:

1) Try to have a starport on every plantet you own - as you've noted, there may be times you don't have any buildings to construct & you don't want that production to go to waste. Though you can play with the sliders, the easiest way to utilize it is through a spaceport (you need constructors! )

2) Starbases - with the exception of Resource based starbases, you only start to see an impact (on either production or influence) when you start adding additional modules (i.e. an eco starbase will only provide a 3% bonus when a second constructor is used on it). Also, remember that additional modules only come available when further research is done on the Cultural/Diplomacy side (Influence/Trade) or the Industral side (Resource/Production).

One thing to also remember is that having your starports constantly building something allows you to 'store' those productions points. So, in case you are suddenly beset by incoming transports, you can quickly switch what you are building to enable you to counteract (or counter attack).

Oh, and that thing with you changing factories to markets then back to factories? Don't do that. As you research newer techs you are going to need to upgrade the buildings you have, and the only cost effective way to do that is through a planets production (I believe that a manufacturing point is 'worth' the equivalent of about 10bc's or so).

So with an economic starbase, for example. Do I just put a bucket of them around my homeworld where my traderoutes run from (ie, if their area of influence overlaps, do they all remain effective and additive)? Do I pepper them all along my traderoutes beginning to end? Should I put them in all of my solar systems regardless of trade route status?

Also, if I build a big ship with more than one module on it, can you do multiple upgrades at once? or should I just build lots of fast single-module constructors? Sorry I'm off topic from my original goal here, but I never saw the value of the starbases so I'm sucking up your knowledge like a sponge

more then one module does nothing. i think they might have even fixed it in the newer versions so that you can only have one constructor module per hull, i dont think you can do more then one now, but if you can it doesnt help anyway

Factories do cost 2 maintenance/turn, so not having one at all is better than having one and not using it. However, if you're converting a factory into a market center, something is wrong with your bulid order. If anything I go the other way around, because as my population grows I need more industrial capacity, not money.

Factories are important whether you're building anything or not, playing nice or planning to conquer the galaxy. If you've allowed someone to become more powerful than you and they declare war, you're going to have to build as much as possible as quickly as possible. Otherwise the war will not end until they wipe you out. As long as the planet is making far more money than it's using up, don't worry about what the factories cost.

Unless you've built a bunch of cash planets and can afford to outright BUY every warship you build. I've never tried that, but I don't think it would work. The longer it would take to build something, the more it costs to buy it.

Or what you can do - and this works well for me usually - if you have one very high quality planet (15 or better) with no bonuses or with manufacturing bonuses, smother it in factories and a manufacturing capital and make it your principal shipyard. It won't make you any money but it'll be able to crank out ships at an amazing rate, especially once you're up to Industrial Sector. Look at the Dread Lord's planet - it's covered in nothing but Industrial Sectors.

You can always set your planets to focus on research when they don't build anything. The planet won't research as well, but if your neighbor decides to knock on your door you can quickly switch to military and beat the !@#$ out of them quickly. THe most important thing is the flexibility it allows you.

Factories are always doing something in my games (military or social production or both). The only time I even think about disbanding a factory is on a PQ 7 or less that I have specialized into a research planet. I have no starports on these low PQs so any military pproduction is gone but the focus on research they give keeps me ahead of the "I don't have anything to do" curve. Always a bigger building or better ship to construct.

STarbases are important. I'm a warmonger who finances his military with solid economics. I build Econ starbases in my core empire, not so much once I start conquering areas as keeping up with recently captured resources keep my constructors plenty busy. A fully upgraded Econ starbase gives +50% miltary, social and research production to planets in its area of influence. FYI starbase influence is 8 parsecs north/south and east/west or 5 parsecs diagonally. v1.1 will make it easier to see this area of effect when you place the starbase. You can have a maximum of 4 starbases per sector in v1.1.

Add trade modules only in area(s) close to your source trade planets. I don't waste time/constructors on bases along trade routes as those routes get cancelled as soon as you attack that empire. I would rather build an extra base in my core area so I can get the production and trade bonus. Still get the production bonus even if all trade routes are "too dangerous".

Be careful with influence starbases as plopping one down in an AI controlled area makes them a tad bit upset. Even more so sometimes than if you parked an invasion fleet there. The areas where you and the AI have influence doesn't seem to cause as much AI distress.

I currently play at Crippling difficulty but those I talk to who play suicidal still like the starbases.

The number of starbases seems to be limited (by logistics ability?). It seems I can only grab, say, 4 resource points and build another few starbases around my planets before the game refuses to let me build more or wants to charge me 500 bc each to build them.
Could someone explain what's up with this, please? I've had the game for a couple weeks or so but I can't quite figure this out, since it seems we should be able to build all the starbases we want (and also the comments on this thread make it sound as though we can). Thanks!

The production and economy system in GC2 was pretty counter-intuitive to me also at first, based on my experience with other games of this type. Here's a basic overview:

- Income is purely population/tax based. More population means more income, at a given tax level.

- Market/trade buildings give a stackable % bonus to the planet's income, so more buildings means a bigger % bonus. *But*, if you build them on a planet with a small population, there won't be much base income, and so even a huge bonus won't amount to much actual income, since it is percentage based.

- So, to raise income, increase population. Population grows more quickly with higher approval and when planet approval is > 75%, it gets a bonus. And at 100% approval growth is doubled.

- Since raising taxes hurts your approval, it also hurts your pop growth and so too your long-term income. Higher planet populations also make your approval ratings drop on those planets.

- Since approval is important for pop growth, morale-boosters are important to keep morale up and your pop growing.

- You also need to build farms to raise the planet population cap, but be carefult to also budget space on the planet for enough morale boosters to keep the pop happy. I've found that beyond 20 billion planet pop you'll need 3+ morale boosters.

- Factories have nothing to do with income; they only let you spend your money faster. Building more/bigger factories are just increasing your production capacity. But of course, that's a critical thing as many others have shown above. Just keep in mind that if you're strapped for cash, building more factories will only increase your spending rate not your income.

- Each factory production point costs 1bc, whether for military or social production. As of one of the patches (1.x?), unused social production is diverted to military production. Unused military production is "free" - it is not wasted and you don't pay for it, but it also doesn't generate income.

- I've found that the later building upgrades can be painfully slow if your planet has low production capability, so I like to have several factories per planet (assuming a size 10+ planet) to help fill up and upgrade all the planet slots. Then, once the planet is full and fairly upgraded, so can upgrade some of all the factories to other building types.

- Economy starbases are incredibly useful because you can upgrade them to give up to 25% bonus to income, production and research. Half the bonus production and research is *free*, the other half you pay for. So if your planet has a base 100 production and 100 research, a +25% starbase will give you 125 production and 125 research, but you'll only pay for 113 of each.

- The starbase bonuses are stackable, so if you can build 4 full economy bases covering your worlds, you're literally doubling their output.

Hope this helps.