I think starbases need a complete overhaul from the what they had in GC2.

How so?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The issue for me was simply the amount of micro-management...SBs were tedious and UP in the late game (at least militarily), making it more effort than it was worth...an overhaul may be necessary, but even a simple reduction in the total number of weapon and defense upgrades and sensor upgrades would make a huge difference....

I'm not game dev, but I'd start with putting starbases in the shipyard as their own hull type that can't mount engines, but can mount some components that ships can't. (Economic components and the like.) You would still build them from constructor ships. I don't think you need to have the ships destroyed in the process (maybe have some kind of supply mechanic?), but now the bases take more then one turn to set up. The time would depend on the number of constructor components in your fleet and how expensive the base is. Upgrading I am unsure about. It might be unbalanced to let a base upgrade itself, but having to send out a constructor to upgrade a base might be annoying.

I'm also musing that you could make constructors more like worker units from civilization. Could that work? Like have them just fly around setting up space mines on asteroids and navigation nodes as space roads. No star bases at all just different tile upgrades.

Ok lets get this ball rolling. Will be updating. 

Constructors- They don't get used on on building Stations, but they have a few turns of cooldown ie resupply and get ready for the next project. You can link constructors to stations. Stations auto upgrade their stats over time slowly and they will need constructors only to make this process go faster and to upgrade to the next level. (will spill more details below)

Station types- 

Military- (this has a 3-5 levels of size). early on few weapons, light repair ability, small hangar/warehouses ie range support for the empire and small sensors. Later on more weapons become available, better sensor package, more repair, they can start buffing nearby fleets, more armor, improves planetary ship production capability, they can increase fleet size of near by fleets, they can manage wormholes and make them stable (think Babylon 5), high end upgrades can protect 1-3 planets near them from invasion so you have to go through the military station first, with better sensor pages they can reveal hidden goodies and better protection against randoms/ random events. Can be built anywhere.

Mining- Only one level. Auto upgrades with better mining, small support range bonus, small bonuses to getting worlds up and running, habitat modules  and light sensor package. No weapons ie civilian station it doesn't want the enemies attention. Can only be built in your space.

Diplomatic/Influence- (3 Levels) They can help spread your influence, build embassies for certain empire to establish relationships and help with espionage, tapping into galactic info nets, small econ/trade bonuses, small sensor package, small support range bonus, helps bring aliens to your worlds ie habitat modules, and flipping enemy worlds to your side. No weapons ie civilian station it doesn't want the enemies attention. Buildable anywhere.

Trade- (3 Levels) They support getting worlds up and running, boost econ and trade, more trade routes, placing where other empires trade routes are coming through relations bonus, social production bonuses, small sensor package, small support range bonus, small morale bonus ie investing in the empire, and habitat modules. No weapons ie civilian station it doesn't want the enemies attention. Only buildable in your space.

Good for now.

Starbases in GalCiv 2 suffered from neglect as the game went through patches and expansions. Here are those I can think of at the moment.

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The combat engine changed from Dread Lords to Dark Avatar. In DL, ships only got 1 attack per turn and did not weaken defenses. In DA, ships could get multiple attacks per turn and could weaken defenses. Starbases got none of that. Consequentially, starbase defenses effectively got weaker as enemy ships could weaken starbase defenses so damage could be done in DA where it couldn't be done in DL. Likewise, starbases didn't get the ability to attack multiple ships per turn, meaning they could only kill at most 1 ship per turn. As such, an attacking fleet of ships was no easier to destroy (and more dangerous as the ability to weaken defenses increases the danger of having combat last multiple turns).

Ships hull sizes got bigger from Dread Lords to Dark Avatar. The bigger hulls may have required more logistics points to put it in a fleet, but they got more room to mount stuff, and they got more hit points. Consequentially, ships could attack starbases with more hit points, attack, and defenses then they ever did before. In fact, if you had the technologies, you could build a huge hull that could out class any starbase.

Starbases did not get much in terms of new gear. Aside from sensor modules, the starbase repair kit, and a bunch of civ specific modules in Twilight, they didn't really get anything new.

Needed fleet support. There were too many starbase modules to install on a starbases to bring its defenses fully online. Consequentially, it was more prudent to defend a starbase with a fleet of ships than it was to use constructors to upgrade a starbase.

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The only advantage I know of that starbase defenses had was, they could be researched far quicker than ship weapons, ship defenses, and ship hull sizes. That meant that you could design a fortresses of a starbase before the other civilizations could design ships powerful enough, and fleets large enough to damage and destroy them. This advantage of course depended on the tech research rate of other civilizations and your ability to produce constructors. If the enemy was too fast and you were too slow, then this advantage was quickly lost.

Super starbases as a planetary ring?

I'm hoping starbases are just really big ship hulls that you design in the ship designer and can get unique looks for.  That would make more more emotionally invested in a particular starbase.  Over time, you should be able to research larger and larger starbase hulls.

Some reduction in the "constructor spam" would be useful.  Starbases need to be functional quickly, but also upgradeable.  I think the easiest way to deal with that might be to:

- Select station, go into shipyard designer

- Select additional modules to be added and get a time estimate

- You can either manually build and send constructors, or constructors on "auto" will go and upgrade a station that has pending upgrades.

Basically, once you say "I want X, Y and Z" to be added to this starbase, you should not be interrupted every turn by yet another constructor prompting you for "do you want to upgrade?" and having to remember what module you wanted to add to which starbase.  By having a "build queue" attached to the starbase itself, I just have to keep it supplied with constructors.  It also gives me a better way to remove elements (which should also require constructors) and then queue up new elements.

Maybe the supplies on it are depleted or something. I'm okay with that for initial construction, kind of like how colony ships are consumed to take a planet.

But the upgrade thing was super annoying. Once it's established the Starbase should be able to queue its own upgrades, possibly disabling (or reducing) it's normal abilities while the upgrades are building. That alone would dramatically reduce the micro factor. You could give the base a part capacity like any other ship, and give it some custom parts for its various functions.

I do hope that all the types make a return, I really liked having the variety of Starbases.

So do I.

However, what I hope even more is, that the AI will be able to make use of all the starbase modules this time around. In GalCiv 2, it couldn't use some of the modules. Either partially (only rarely used culture modules) or at all (Warp Disruptor, Sensors, Terror Stars). The 100-modules-limit was also pretty bad for the AI, but I doubt this is going to return in the new game engine.

Because it's literally a bundle of construction materials with a hyperdrive.

I hope whatever they do it does minimize the need for constructor spam as that did get tiresome having to constantly manage constructors. I don't mind the use of a constructor ship to initially construct the starbase like in the old games, but I wish you could just simply order upgrades directly at the station by paying credits and waiting for enough turns to pass for the upgrade to be complete rather than needing to constantly micromanage constructor ships to go to your various stations to perform upgrades.

An update to star bases does sound good, but I would want it to retain its believability. Starbases that auto-update sounds too much like magic to me. Perhaps if there was a star system with resources of building materials that could be mined for the updates to a nearby starbase would be good, but please do not make it so unexplainable that it becomes unbelievable.

Also, if you are going to make constructors re-usable, anything short of them going to a nearby planet or building materials resource (as above) would also be unbelievable.

PS: I was very good at constructor spam, and I liked it.