This follows a previous post about pacing and how any planet could drastically extend your range.

I have started a new game (huge galaxy), and done a lot better at the start. One of the thing that bothers me a lot is the "colony extends range" thing. Well, an alien civ colonized a 0-planet (now a 2-planet), and this allows it's whole fleet to come after me. I know it worked this way in GC1 but I always felt this was not very good. A small outpost like that should certainly have no way of extending the range of so many vessels : this should require more. First, one should decide what "range" means:
- is range a limitation by being out of communication ?
- is range a limitation by lack of "fuel" ?
- something else ?
Given the tech tree, it looks like range means "fuel" (which you store in greater quantity if you install special modules, and which is increased by logistics). Hence, the logic is that planets provide fuel to ships in their "range". The next logical step would have starports distributing that fuel to fleets in space by cargo.

I can agree that the game would be cumbersome (an not very fun) if one were to compute an exact fuel capacity etc. for each starport... But one simple thing could be worth doing, which was very common in the old navys: blockade.

There should be a simple command called blockade that a military ship could attempt. The effect would be to drastically reduce the range granted by the blockaded planet (starbase), and I believe it could add a lot to the strategy of the game: as long as the blockade is in place, the opponents ability to move around is severely limited. It gives meaning to the strategy of controlling the space and not bothering about planetary invasions. It also does not kill the strategy of establishing an outpost in enemy territory as long as you can prevent it from being both invaded and blockaded.

Yves