Quoting daeatul,

reply 26

Lol i send huge hulls with 5 constuctor modules or more on it and tell them to fly my pretties! 

EXACTLY    

Pair it with a Rally Point and it's nearly a Fire and Forget situation.  

One thing that GCII had was the option to turn on automatic upgrades for starbases.  I presume that will be one of the options available once "Starbase Options" is turned on.  Once that happens, all one has to do is build a multiple constructor ship at a shipyard (or queue them up) and then forget all about them.  No fuss, no muss.

Until one realizes they've put too many constructors in a starbase and they've been sitting there, twiddling their thumbs, for 20 turns.    But one can't have everything, I suppose. 

I don't want set growth either, I want to be able to build fast if I want to do so but I think its a poor choice to have to spend military production to build civil infrastructure when you could spend civil production to build civil infrastructure.  

So how about this, leave constructors for military modules and put starbase then the civilian modules on the planetary build queues.  Tie starbases to planets like shipyards but attached to social production.  They just don't shut down when unsponsored, they just can't build more modules until a sponsor is attached.  Use the same decay rate for production sent to a distant shipyard.

I dislike the idea that ships are purely military.  Yes the way GC does the economy all shipyard production is controlled by the military production slider... but this is already a misnomer as colony ships are not military.. nor are freighters, or survey ships etc...

In thinking about it more I think the best option would be to be able to build permanent "factory ships" that can go out and build stations.   

The factory ship constructors can be given several options.
A build starbase  (200credits)
B Build starport    (150 credits)
C Upgrade starbase (credits based on the type of upgrade)
D. Build supply ship  (100 Credits)

Supply ships would function based on the current tech level and scale with improvements but in general you would then link x starbase or starport with y planet.  the support ship level could be set based on the logistics level of the empire and would function similar to the current trade links. 

Building more supply ships creates more supply to the starbase.   the "upgrades"  would then be build in a build queue similar to the starports and could be rushed just like any other build feature. 

Once a starbase is fully upgraded the excess support ships can be assigned to a new starbase...  or can be sold for scrap, or used to support  military/civil/social projects and boost the power of the station.

This would also allow starports to be supported by multiple planets that are currently "outside the cost effective range"  of the planets supporting it.   It would only requre the player to build the support network.

Yes this increases the micromanagement to a level... but it also lowers the ship spam and makes for strategic choices for support and supply.

Then just buy the module.  My problem isn't just the spam, which isn't so bad when you can put multiple modules on a ship but I still hate the wasted production for the hull, but that I can only spend military production to build starbases then its a choice between a fleet, colonizing and infrastructure.  I get why colony ships are military production but not economic, cultural, mining and resource starbases.  

yes that is a good solution.  I tried that tonight.  Put 7  constructors on a huge hull and I had the pragmatic improvement, each construction pod builds twice as much.  So 14 pods on one trip.