Economic Starbases

1. Either where a trade route bisects the SB's AoE closest to the diameter of the starbase, or somewhere where a planet(s) is under the AoE to maximize the production bonus.

2. Sure, doesnt matter.

3. See #1.

4. I dont think so.

5. Yes.

6. Click the starbase.

1) Anywhere along the path of the most trade routes. You want to maximize the number of parsecs of the trade route that lie within the SB AOE. There may be some advantage in having the SB near the end or beginning of the trade route but I'm not sure about that.
2) Doesn't matter subject to point 1)
3) Yes.
4) If by ally you mean trading partner then no. Only your trades routes or anyones trade routes that terminate at one of your planets receive the bonus however technically you certainaly do not need to be allied with someone for you or they to have established a trade route between each other.
5) Absolutely.
6) I don't think you can see the effects directly. You should see the current value of your trade routes in the domestic policy screen. You would then have to notice the difference in these values when a frieghter is in the AOE of an econ SB versus when it's not in the AOE of an econ SB. As far as the value of other races trade with you I have no idea of where you can detemine this if it is even possible.

One point about using econ SB for increasing trade income is that in general it's pretty useless at least in large galaxies and above. his is because trade is such an insignificant part of your economy. Where I've used econ SB's is to use the modules that add a bonus to Social, Military and Research production to any planet with the SB's AOE. This amounts to 24% per SB and you can usually get 16 SB's to cover any particular planet resulting in a 384% production and research bonus.

I used to do this to build up uber research planets capable of generating up to 20K RP's per turn, but I don't really need to do this anymore. Since then I've never bothered with econ SB's.

I have a question about these starbases in TotA ... do they work right ?

I mean in the manual it says that each starbase, adds 5 to their specialization, but when I build an economic starbase near one of my planets, nothing happens, no increase of the income, nothing ... also, nothing happens when I add a trade module to that starbase (the starbase is of course built near a planet with trade routes).

You did add the modules to it, right? As far as I know, the starbase itself doesnt generate any bonuses, you get them from the modules you install on it. (you will have to research the more advanced modules)

I will quote myself ... "...nothing happens when I add a trade module to that starbase", so, yes, I added the module to the starbase. I've reread the manual, and the initially 5 bonus is given for the resource starbases only. But still, what about the trade module bonus ? I know that there is a trade bug in ToaT, which makes all trade routes give the same amount of cash no matter the distance between the trading points, but I don't think it affects the bonus from a trade module, I think ...

If you go to the Foreign Stats screen and look at the Relations tab, under the alien race's portrait it tells you how much trade you're doing with them, and has a button to enact a trade embargo.