Yes.

However, I've become convinced (schooled by others here) that it takes a long time to recoup your investment with trade income enhancing modules, so it is a marginal at best strategy.

Well if your playing for a long run game I have found they work well around the manufacturing capital. with a plus 120 on top of a 125% (mfg captial and a Quantum generator). Let say you got a Triple and a double precurser mine tile and another facotry at minumum thats 144 MFPs. That gets you 444 mfp when you add it up. but then again my math may be off. I like playing long games where long term payoff is more important than short term.

Although I rarely make military starbases.

Duh

Consider that at some point in the game if you are "evil", the modules are free and you can just spam constructors until your bases are maxed out. And for the record I did achieve a solid 1000 extra per turn thanks to trade with 8 medium trade routes going out and a few starbases in the busy points. So it CAN easily help your economy but in times of war, of course, it will become risky at best to rely on it. At the very least you could use the peace time bonus to raise your industrial spending. If I really tried to create a trade economy I am sure it could be even better. Trading is a great supplement and upgrading existing starbases in busy lanes does help.

Wow, 1000 bc's extra per turn sounds like a lot. I have never come close to that. How much total trade revenue did you have to get 1000 extra per turn? How many economic starbases did you have? Do you pretty much ignore the other types of starbases so the cost of a new star base doesn't get astronomical?

Another way to get more out of investing in economic starbases is to research the full logistics tech tree. One of the side benefits of greater logistics skills is a reduction in the cost of new starbases.

They will still continue to increase in cost as you get to higher numbers of bases -- 20-30+, but the rate of increase will go down substantially. In longer games this will make a big difference in total investment cost as you build out your economic infrastructure.

One of my favourite strategies is to play as the Korx, toss everything I can from my abilities and political parties into trade, and then set up one massive trade route with a single civilisation, usually from a single one of my planets to a single one of theirs. That alone will net you will over a thousand BC on a decent sized map.

If you build a network of bases, though, with the full trade upgrades (which is 60% bonus each) and then build them such that each one is just on the edge of another's influence, you get a 120% increase in your trade income. When I use this strategy, I'll be typically raking in thousands of BC a turn (quickly paying off all the setup costs and allowing me to quickly regenerate my treasury) Sometimes the number gets well over 4000... trade routes become significantly more valuable over time!

I've managed to have very, very tiny empires keep pace with larger ones by doing this. You and your trading partner get massive economic boosts. The downside is that your manufacturing and research typically can't keep pace... you have to focus your planets pretty carefully on one or another. I tend to focus on filling my planets with high tech research buildings and then using surplus income to BUY my warfleet.

okay... i did it... it took most of my afternoon, and then i had to go do laundry. sometimes i wish i was a Torian. they don't wear clothes.

no, scratch that. i never wish i was a Torian.

and now presenting....



that was the max i was able to achive. i cheated very thoroughly, so this in no way represents something you could do in a real game... at least, not this quickly.

the figure comes from the 11 terran freighters and 12 of mine. IF i had remembered to give the terrans another +1 route, you could multiply this value bu 24/23 to get an estimate for a max value (48,192).

my frieghers all occupied the same square in a big stack, while the terrans' were more spaced out (1 or 2 per parsec, most in a clump one after the other, but with a few stragglers). that explains the sine waves you see in the econ graph farther down (which could be offset by spacing out the arrival time of freighters).

this is how:




i played as the Korx and used the cheat mode to set this up. made the terrans my allies. for us both, i picked +30% trade and the merchantile party. i should have also given the terrans +1 trade routes, but c'est la vie.

on turn 1, i cheat built 208 SBs decked out fully with trade modules; force researched xeno ethics and neutral shipping, and cheat-built 12 freighters which i kept parked next to my homeworld.

next turn, i made contact with the terrans. they were too busy to talk to me for another two months. so i hit enter furiously. as soon as i could, i gifted them 208 SBs, 12 freighters, and all the trade techs plus xeno ethics. then i build 208 more SBs and 12 more freighters; those frighters were immediately teleported to the terran world, and trade was established.

it took them a while to get all the freighters to me. why is beyond me, but that's the AI for you (set on tough).

this SB array resulted in most parsecs being covered by 20-24 SBs (except 1 in 15 squares had only 8 SBs' coverage). about 2/3 of my frighters' way to the terran world, a thought occured. i allied with them (disabled all but conquest) and forced UP meetings until the allies-share-SBs agenda item came up (and it only took 2 tries!). that doubled the effect of every SB.

i didn't even bother taxing my 19 billion people. here's what my trade history looked like.



i also wrote down my income on the first of every game year (or thereabouts, sometimes i forgot).

game date (d/m/y): trade income
1/3/26: 256 (first week of trading)
1/1/27: 3617
1/1/28: 12526
22/1/29: 18273
1/1/30: 21522
1/1/31: 31047 (alliance was formed during previous year)
15/1/32: 43817

toward the end, my trade revenue was typically 35-45K, but dipped down to around 18K at its lowest point in the 15-turn cycle.

also toward the end, the highest per-freighter value i observed was 2233/turn. i constructed the first set of SBs without any extra logistics points (Korx base ability: 6); it cost 27,918 BC. i constructed the second round with all the logistics techs and the hyperion log. system; it cost 12,771 BC.

so... constructing this thing in a real game would be unrealistic (unless you've already won virtually). but i think you could apply the principal quite well to a relatively short trade route; it wouldn't take too many bases, and it'd be much easier to defend. most of the income here is bonus anyway, so while i'm sure that goes up on longer trade routes... it goes up more if you can saturate them with SBs. you won't max out trade with a short route, but you'll still rake in bucks. also, get an econ treaty with whomever you trade, and you get a bonus 10%.

you could also use the principal of gifting SBs to allies, under the allies-share-SB UP law, to radically increase the industrial bonuses you can get from SBs on a manufacturing or research world. build 16, gift to an ally; build 16 more, gift to another ally, etc.

so... any questions?

It looks like every one of his freighters was in the influence of roughly 24 starbases at any given time. With that many bases and a 60% bonus on each you get a 1440% bonus on every freighter.

That is crazy talk.

Torians wear pants.

Evidence, please

It is a requirement that all jail inmates AND escapees wear pants, regardless of race. Torn pants are preferred but not required.

well, i just checked the opening movie for DA, and the Torian prisoner's lower half is mostly covered by shadow.

also to Acturian, while i'll do a bit more work on the previous test, it probably won't be til this weekend.

the AI players rarely keep that much cash on hand; it'd be like taking a tablespoon from lake michigan.

and i didn't even bother because i wanted to determine exactly how much they'd cost; it would have been a much bigger pain to do so while constantly having to accout for what i earned back.



here's how it works.

the trade modules on an SB affect all of your trade routes AND any trade routes headed to one of your worlds - only while the freighters are in the SB's area of effect - so alien SBs still boost your trade routes, as long as your trading with the alien that owns the SB. without a UP law though, industry modules will only affect your planets.

when you get the UP law, it's as if the starbase were really two starbases, one of which is yours, and the other is the AI's. and since it acts like two bases, it affects all your trade routes twice as much as it otherwise would.

without running in cheat mode, there's no way to force the UP law. it comes up at random, except it doesn't seem to come up until there's at least one alliance in the game - but i might be wrong on that.