A beginner's question on starbases

production sector only - inflence surrounding sctors as well.

same with planets

Resources mining increases your stats, which affect your whole empire.

~SDC~

1) The bonuses affect the sector that they are in. However, regarding culture, see below.

2) Culture improvements increase the amount of culture that system gives out.

When you increase the culture of any planet, it directly affects your culture influence in both the sector it's in, and the surrounding sectors. The effect is weaker in surrounding sectors than in the star system's own sector.

However, the amount of cultural influence you have in any sector is also affected by the total amount of culture your empire gives out. So increasing the culture of an individual planet (either through improvements or culture modules on a starbase in that sector) does affect distant sectors (albeit marginally).

At least this is how I understand it from Frogboy's explanation.

I thank everyone for taking the time to clarify things.

I am also interested in tips about using starbases. I build the "trading post" modules in starbases on sectors with trade lines, but it's really hard to see where the trade lines are in the 'gigantic' map. Is there a way to tell quickly if a sector has a trade route going through it without squinting at the 'trade route' map? Best I can think of is '14 sectors from the left, 12 from the top', etc.

Also, is there a way to see how much a starbase costs in maintenance? Sometimes when I need to save money I could see which ones are the costliest and decomission them if I need to.

While we're on the subject, I'm curious if there is a way to find out how much extra bc a starbase is generating with the 'trading posts' modules.

Thanks!

-Derrick

Question: What exactly are the multi- Media files? Are they worth installing?

~SDC~

This probably should have been asked in its own thread, but they are the sound and movie files, at several hundred megabytes it's up to you to decide if it's worth downloading or not.

~SDC~

Best I can think of for the routing problem (and it makes knowing where the mini-freighters will pass through easier) is set up horizontal or vertical routes if possible. For maintenance, there is none as of 1.20 for starbases...

I normally grab any resource I can find just to keep the AI away from it, but if they're not next to one of my planets does that mean all the modules (except the cultural ones) are basically useless? For instance, if I install factories or whatever it only effects the sector it's in, not my overall production? That's what I've always assumed, but it'd be great if someone could clear that up for me.

The only things that have an empire wide effect with starbase are the ressource mining modules. Anything else is tied to the sector where the starbase is (and adjacent sectors for cultural modules)
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Lum, if that resource base does not have any colonies in its sector, then, yes, those social production bonuses are wasted. Until you make it a terror star and move it into a sector where you have colonized worlds.