I love starbases, but hate upgrading starbases. Manually directing constructors to various starbases as they come out of the shipyard is extremely inefficient. Using the govern tab to set rally points for constructor-producing shipyards is marginally better, but still requires players to shift the rally points around whenever they want to upgrade a different starbase. This means it is the same problem, just with a different interface. Even the “Request Constructor” button, which is currently the most efficient option, requires that the player jump back to the starbase to select upgrades whenever an individual constructors arrive. Furthermore, it may request a constructor from a different shipyard than the one the player wants to be building the constructors.

These may seem like small issues, but they rapidly become obnoxious as one’s empire expands and dozens of starbases need to be managed. More importantly, constructors built to upgrade starbases will rarely (if ever) be destroyed or redirected to do something else, so requiring the player to manage constructors is largely unnecessary.

My idea for improving the starbase upgrade process is to remove constructors entirely. Instead, starbases would be built by constructors, then upgraded like ships. The player would pay credits, with the amount determined by the level of the upgrade, and it would take effect after a small number of turns. Multiple upgrades could be purchased at once, with construction of one beginning immediately after the previous upgrade was completed.

tl;dr: Upgrading starbases with constructors is tedious, starbase upgrades should be bought like ship upgrades.

Do you think this would be an improvement over the current system?