I disagree. Cuts down on micromanagement big time. I starbase spam with 20+ economic and military starbases around my homeworld and eventually upgrade them all, Once you get your economy going, especially with the economic starbase improvements you're rolling in dough.
They should change it to 2 administrators for a military starbase in my opinion, too powerful early on.
As for monastium, I typically play with 64 players in the game so I have no problem trading for it.