Have you every wondered why some Player Starbases have a worker population of exactly 50,000 – while others have a population of exactly 50,083? Just what is so special about those numbers?

Every Starbase tick, a payment (marked as tax) is made to the Starbase coffers based upon the current number of Workers living there. For non-Core Starbases, this figure is calculated as 20% of the worker population.

The default setting for a Starbase population is 50,000 workers, requiring 100t of Water and 150t of Food per Starbase tick (every 3 hours) to maintain.

It appears that using the default of 50,000 population delivers nice round numbers (profit per Starbase tick):

50,000 workers + 100t Water + 150t Food = 10,000 credits

Why is it common to see 50,083?

Due to the impact of rounding numbers, the same 100t of Water and 150t of Food, can sustain 50,083 workers! With this slight increase in population comes an increased amount of tax revenue as well.

50,083 workers + 100t Water + 150t Food = 10,017 credits

Instead of 10,000 credits, a Starbase with 50,083 workers is paid 10,017 credits per Starbase tick. While 17 credits can’t buy very much, it equates to over 49,000 credits per year – for zero extra work or cost!

How high can you go?

Doubling the initial numbers that we used earlier allows the same observation…

100,000 workers + 200t Water + 300t Food = 20,000 credits

After some testing, it turns out that you can support a population of 100,083 Workers for the same upkeep costs:

100,083 workers + 200t Water + 300t Food = 20,017 credits

As before, exactly 17 credits extra profit is paid per tick which equates to over 49,000 credits per year.

In Conclusion

For doing nothing but changing a setting… once…

Setting the Worker Population to be 50,083 instead of leaving it at the default of 50,000 leads to an extra 49,000 credits per year.

It’s hard to understand why any Starbase Commander would deliberately overlook such an obvious money making opportunity!