Best Way to Use Civilian Stations?

[SacremPyrobolum]

Once I finally learned how trading works thanks to this excellent video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spreNyeID-I

I briefly took to putting a civic station in every system.

It went as well as one would expect, I ended up bricking my economy due to constant upgrades and was plagued by pirates.

So now I decided to only place my civic stations in my Province capitals and home world. This solves the problem of pirates because I also place my Naval Station in the system as well as a battle fleet and cuts down on station management and costs. It also takes advantage of the trans-Province trade bonus which doubles your trade income.

 

[shadowoak]

Don't manualy build the freighters. Use the stimulus sliders to have the civilians craft them for you, that way you don't spend neither money for costruction or maintenance. Upgrade your stations only when you have to, and finaly, build about 5 police cutters per system and put them in your defense fleet.

Also, you should move the population slider to the max in planets that don't make a lot of construction points.

 

[Ulzgoroth]

I tend to field a civilian station in any system that can support 3 stations and a lot that can support 2. Smaller than that sometimes.

I don't upgrade them much. With a level 2 civilian station and megafreighters you can tap most if not all of a large system economy...at least if you've kept to 50% civilians. A level 1 station is more than sufficient for many systems.

 

[unmerged(336877)]

Well my aproch is a bit different from Ulzgoroth.

I Build single High upgradet stations in systems containing 2 or more station slots (i want to make most out of the % mods from habitations). This way i can set up defendable strongholds against Pirats and enemy strikes (since i make them a high priority target). In adition i try building singel civic or diplomatic stations in High import systems to make use of the trade % modifyers

I think every player needs to find his own solution to this problemls and there is no singe correct way. Just try to find the on you feel most confortable with.

 

[BoydofZINJ]

Here is how I do it. I try to keep most of my systems as "trade" systems and a few high construction worlds as "industrial" systems.

In the "industrial" systems - the ones that build my fleets and upgrades, I will not build civilian stations there - unless there is no other trade planets that need them.

My capital is an exception. I tend to keep my main capital planet as an industrial system - but normally I downgrade it to trade system - because I am hoping the front is far enough away that I dont need it anymore. However, I will build at least one freighter on each of my planets that I put a civilian station. After that I let stimulus do the rest. The reason I do this, is I find the stimuls to be too unpredictable and not reliable enough. You can spend millions for a single freighter or two. Stimulus seems broke, except for mining.


I only upgrade the stations on systems that are not "industrial" systems that have high pops... where the total maximum pop is 15+ (adding the maximum base population of all the worlds together) or the system has a 8+ pop world and another world. The capital is the exception - even if it has a single planet - I will upgrade the station, but that is after I stop making ships at the captial.

One thing I have noticed, and it might just be me... if I start putting civilian stations too early - I get too many pirate raids for it to be useful. It almost seems I need to wait until I get Q Ships or just stay with 2 or 3 stations and garrison them heavily with police ships.

On all worlds that I put a civilian station and are not high construction systems, the systems building my fleets - I will slide the bar from construction to trade - but will always keep some construction.

 

[HighLigerBimBam]

Stimulus works fine. It is by design not cost effective. You will get certain government shift for alot of money and some freighters. If you want to be cost effective you need to build them all by empire. I usually do this. Especially when you know that each civilean station level can support 3 freighters, so once you upgrade a station order three new freigters in this system aswell. Is cheaper an faster as stimulus.

 

[Ulzgoroth]

Stimulus works fine. It is by design not cost effective. You will get certain government shift for alot of money and some freighters. If you want to be cost effective you need to build them all by empire. I usually do this. Especially when you know that each civilean station level can support 3 freighters, so once you upgrade a station order three new freigters in this system aswell. Is cheaper an faster as stimulus.

Stimulus isn't just a way to move toward liberationism. It also gives you a trade fleet with no upkeep costs. On an any moderately serious trade network that's saving better than 100k a turn easily.

I've also been finding stimulus-building of megafreighters not to be particularly slow or expensive...I cut them, say, 80k a turn, they roll out one megafreighter a turn until spots are filled. This may be a side effect of some kind of inefficient play earlier in the game though, no guarantees of savings. It might be that the private sector can bank past overpayments to supplement future stimulus or something.

It also lets you build your freighters without spending IO to do it, though I can't really think of any time where that would be of much value. A decent way to make it less painful to build them is systems already routing most of their IO to trade perhaps.

 

[What?]

What is your tax rate?

Because at tax 6 i am not guaranteed a regular or megafreighter every turn unless i punch at least 200k in stimulus per turn

 

[Ulzgoroth]

What is your tax rate?

Because at tax 6 i am not guaranteed a regular or megafreighter every turn unless i punch at least 200k in stimulus per turn

Tax rate 6. Liir, Anarchism, various uncertain factors possibly relevant.

Could pretty well rely on a megafreighter rolling every turn of stimulus. I don't know why.