Econ Starbases Ineffective

Or, how to pull all the hair out of your head in 3 easy steps.

Out of the past three games, only in one of them have I enjoyed functional economy starbases, and the third one was me just playing a quick first round of the campaign. In all other instances, no matter how many fully production modded economy starbases I plop next to my planets, I get either one or no points of production increase from any of them.

It lists the bonus in the planet details but I have now in numerous instances taken a planet and then blitzed 3 or more economy bases, only to watch the production numbers there not budge more than one or two points. The fact that it's giving a slight bonus sometimes, rather than no bonus ever, just makes me even more worried. I have done no modding and have only kept the game up to date.

Is there something obvious I'm missing, or am I doomed? Any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

I have used econ SB's extensively and never seen an issue though my experience is limited to v1.2.

Are you adding the proper economic modules? The econ starbase gives no bonus by itself. You need to add the following modules each of which requires another constructor.

Module (Effect)

Starbase Factory (SP, MP, RP +2%)
Advanced SB Factory (SP, MP, RP +3%)
Massive Scaling Center (SP, MP, RP +4%)
Smart Drones (SP, MP, RP +5%)
Intestellar Collectors (SP, MP, RP +5%)
Orbital Replicators (SP, MP, RP +5%)

Once these are all added the starbase provides a 24% boost to all production (SP and MP) and research (RP) of any planet in its influence area. If you left click on the starbase you highlight the circle of the starbases influence. Any square even partially highlighted is considered to be in the SB's influence area. If you go into the planet screen and click on details at the top left is an area that should show the percentage bonus from the starbase influence.

I typically use this feature to put 16 econ SB's surrounding my Uber-Research planet and get a SB bonus of 384%.

Successfully updated karma reason!

It lists the bonus in the planet details but I have now in numerous instances taken a planet and then blitzed 3 or more economy bases, only to watch the production numbers there not budge more than one or two points.

It may very well be working as intended then. Are you sure these increases don't match the expected increases? The boost to production can be pretty slight unless you have the later modules installed.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Are the economic modules working? If not, then there might be a problem. Otherwise it's probably working as intended--as noted above, the bonus can be easy to miss, especially if other bonuses are in effect.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Yes, as I said I slap on every mod. However, I just played one of those games through, to see if it worked, and messed with things, and discovered:

The bonuses only seem to apply to the production at that planet that you are using for its specific bonusy purpose. What I mean is, the military production bonus only applies to the specific production of ships, and the social production bonus only applies when you are using it to produce social structures.

My problem seems to have simply been that I was using 1/49/50 military/social/research.. this meant that my buildings would build fast and delay my military production while they did so. However, this convenience has been offset this entire time by the fact that the bonuses were not applying to my ship production as the social production was not used to produce social things and the military production was tiny tiny tiny, just enough to get the social production to carry over to making the ships.

Thanks, folks.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Oh, I see. Only the basic production gets transferred from social to military - you won't even get your race bonus.

Couple of ways to help with this...either put some slider points into military spending, or at least use the focus button on those planets you want the bonus. With focus, 1/3 of your social and 1/4 of your research will convert to military and you *will* get both racial and starbase bonuses on that. The remaining 2/3 of the social will still transfer over without bonus.

Successfully updated karma reason!