I realize this subject comes up with some regularity on these boards, but according to my search, the last similar thread was in July. Being the big GalCiv advocate that I am, I feel like it's my duty to state once again, for the record, that the current starbase construction system brings a lot of headaches to a lot of people.

I have to confess that organizing vast fleets of construction ships to streamline my empire's economy is neither fun nor believable. When you have starbases with upwards of 20 or 30 modules, that is a lot of time spent figuring out how many constructors you need at what star bases for what modules, not to mention a lot of wasted motion moving 3 or 4 fleets from A to B only to invariably discover that you allocated more constructors than you needed and now you need to find somewhere else to put them.

It seems like the most common solution to the constructor issue is to simply not build starbases. However, one of the more enjoyable aspects of GalCiv for me is streamlining my empire for maximum efficiency -- so I use a lot of econ starbases and a lot of military starbases to generate more mobility. There's no reason I should have to give that up because the star base construction system is poorly implemented.

There are a lot of ways to manage your hundreds (if not thousands) of constructors that you will build during the course of a game. The most efficient method I have come up with is to use fleet rally points to collect them all, and then send them out to do their job once four or five of them group together. Even though this takes a lot of the workload off my shoulders, I still find there are a few problems with it. First, it's not a very precise system -- so I either end up with too many or too few construction units when they arrive at their destination, afterwhich I have to take time to reallocate them. Second, I am missing out on the returns from those units while they sit there idling in space waiting for them to collect because I simply don't have the patience to individually launch and move them as they are built, nor does any human being. Third, almost the entire time that I am waiting for my turn to complete it's cycle is spent watching little construction boats scuttle across my empire, which is great, but also very time consuming. I would much rather be playing than watching constructors fulfill their flight plan. Fourth, and this is somewhat minor, but it seems to diminish the realism and credibility of the game. My warship navy shouldn't be outnumbered by my construction fleet, and yet it frequently is. Not to mention, the idea of "disposable" construction ships is sort of silly. Is the entire vessel and crew really going to be consumed in the construction process? Is that why the empire builds hundreds and hundreds of such ships per year? I realize that it's merely a way of abstracting the logistics of construction in a space empire, but I don't think it's very functional or very fun, and there's no reason I should miss out on all the rewards of star bases simply because the system is too much of a pain in the ass.

There are a multitude of suggestions as to how streamline the starbase system, but I would be happy just to be able to put more than one construction module on a ship. I don't think that's the definitive solution to star base construction, but it would at least ease some of the head ache and keep me playing until something truly revolutionary was introduced.

Most people probably don't feel as strongly about constructor micromanagement as I do, but I can honestly say that everytime I have put the game down for a period of time, it was owing to the pain in the ass of managing constructor fleets. The solution to all my colonies that are not major manufacturing centers is to have them build constructors so that those few military production points aren't wasted on nothing every turn. That adds up to a helluva lot of constructors by the time the game is over, and that's not a whole lot of fun to manage.