Starbases can be build at planets. One planet can only have one starbase and they cannot be taken down after construction. There are 4 types of starbases that vary in construction costs and services offered. Every starbase type can recycle ships though.
| Type | Description | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ship yard | 328 | 20 | 21 | 78 | 210 | 107 | A ship yard supports ship repair with 19%. It cannot build ships or defensive structures. |
| Battle station | 522 | 51 | 83 | 99 | 250 | 210 | A battle station cannot build or repair ships but can have up to 110 defensive structures. |
| Starbase | 855 | 35 | 70 | 123 | 418 | 370 | A starbase supports ship repair with 11%. Ships can be produced and 50 defensive structures can be build. Additionally space folds can be created. |
| Warbase | 3250 | 270 | 327 | 520 | 830 | 920 | A war base supports ship repair with 11%. Ships can be produced and 130 defensive structures can be build. Ships can be equiped with optional extra modules. Additionally space folds can be created. The planet that hosts a war base receives extended scanner range. |
Ships are constructed out of the 4 components hull, propulsion, energy weapons and projectile weapons. For each of these components a lot of variants exists that have different techlevels. The higher the techlevel the more sophisticated the component and the higher the production costs.
Each starbase needs to be upgraded individually for each of these technologies. For instance upgrading hulls to level 6 in one starbase does not lead to all starbases having hulls at level 6! Upgrading starbase techlevels is only a matter of costs (Cantox), it does not take any other resources and no turn is needed to be completed.
With space folds resources like Cantox, supplies and minerals (but not people) can be transported to planets and ships. A starbase with hull techlevel 7 and propulsion techlevel 8 is required for this.
Space folds have the following costs:
- Per KT supplies, Lemin or mineral 8 Cantox are needed
- To initialize a space fold at least 75 Cantox are needed
- Cantox do not cost anything to transport (apart from the 75 Cantox to initialize the space fold in the first place)
Advantages:
- They travel very fast at Warp 12.67 (160 lightyears per turn)
- They can only be destroyed with subspace distortions
- They do not consume fuel like freighters
- If a ship is the target of a space fold and the ship moves, the space fold automatically follows it
Disadvantages:
- They can get very expensive with big loads
- A starbase with high tech level upgrades is necessary
- Enemies can estimate where space folds come from and where they are going to
- After initializing a space fold it cannot be canceled and its course cannot be changed