Anyone with insight into this would love to hear it.

there are no template names for Starbases in an unmodded Sins, you have to mod them in

we do it in Distant Stars, its very complicated

edit: you can colonize dead asteriods and normally be able to build com towers that work

Ah--it does require modding.  Thanks guys...that does clear it up.  I thought you could simply add the Star Base Constructor and Envoy ship in like any other with a map template.

I created a campaign style map with vanilla Sins and halfway through it, Entrenchment came out.  So I retooled and then Diplomacy was released.  As a result, I added to player positions for the AI so that Diplomatic considerations would be in play--but I didn't want two AI's butting in militarily into what is meant as a two player campaign.

So the AIs have no ship building capability.  They have pre-poistioned fleets and structures at dead asteroids and no colonizers.  I wanted to allow them a ship to create a Star Base and a flet of Envoys.

My goal is to make a mod but I first wanted a  stand alone map that can be played in any mod or version.  if people like the map scenario, then they can jump to the mod if they want.

It does not matter that dead asteroids don't have logistics slots. You can spawn as many structures as possible on a colonized planets from the galaxy forge. Abandoning the planet once the game starts will leave any structures in orbit intact.