There are two kinds of starbases in Pardus – public starbases (under the control of the game) and player controlled starbases (constructed, commanded and controlled by the pilot).

A public starbase is always located at the same location across all universes.

These starbases consume a range of commodities every 3 hours (starting at 0025 GMT/UTC) which influences the worker population using similar rules as a planet.

The population of an public starbase never drops below 500 workers even if it receives no food or water for upkeep. You cannot capture, destroy, fly-close or hire squadrons from them either.

The majority of starbases are not controlled by the game but are player owned starbases. They can be constructed, bought and sold (transferred) by the owner, and like regular player owned buildings, they use a building slot. They can also be attacked, captured and destroyed by other pilots.

In The Beginning…

A player owned starbase begins its existence as a Trading Outpost (TO). As long as it meets the requirements for becoming a starbase, it’s owner can initiate an 8 stage upgrade process. Each stage of the TO upgrade requires 75t Metal, 50t Electronics and 25t Battleweapon parts to be present in the TO at 0015 GMT/UTC.

The upgrade resources are only consumed if they are all present in the TO, in the right quantities at that time. Should you not have them in the TO at that specific time, you will have to wait 24 hours. Each stage of the upgrade is an independent event so you can take as long as you like to complete this process.

At any time after the 8 upgrade steps have completed, the owner can click a button to complete the upgrade and transform the Trading Outpost into a new starbase with an initial worker population of 1,000. All resources that were in the TO, along with any defenses it may have had, disappear at this time.

Tip: When building a starbase, give some thought to what you will name it in advance… check the spelling. You will have to pay 5,000 APs if you want to rename it

As swiftly as they rise (8 days minimum), without supervision a player owned starbase can quickly downgrade to a Trading Outpost. If the worker population drops below the minimum 500 workers then the starbase ceases to exist – in it’s place will be an empty Trading Outpost. Every item of equipment and all resources stored in the Starbase are lost for good (mercifully the credits are returned to your pilot however).

Worker Population

Worker population is used to determine how much tax the owner receives when the starbase ticks (every 3 hours) – 20% of the worker population. The number of workers also determines how many slots are available to build factories on, the services that are available to visiting pilots and the number of missions available on the starbase Bulletin Board.

The Pardus Manual provides details on worker population:

• Stage 1 – 500 ≤ workers < 5000 – 4 building slots
• Stage 2 – 5000 ≤ workers < 15000 – Ship equipment available – 8 building slots
• Stage 3 – 15000 ≤ workers < 30000: Shipyards available – 12 building slots
• Stage 4 – 30000 ≤ workers: Black market appears – 16 building slots

The image displayed on the navigation screen for a starbase can be used to reveal whether it is player owned or not (they look very similar but they are slightly different), the faction of it’s owner and it reveals what stage it is (influenced by worker population):

Neutral Stage 1	Federation Stage 2	Union Stage 3	Empire Stage 4

Notes about Starbase Buildings

The Pardus Manual describes the different buildings that a player can build on the pylons in the starbase inner space.

With the exception of the Standard and Heavy Defense Artillery buildings, construction of starbase buildings is the same as that of regular player buildings – each costs 500 APs and requires several resources (stored in the ship – not the starbase) to build. Only the starbase owner can build in the inner space of a starbase.

The Standard Defense Artillery (SDA) and Heavy Defense Artillery (HDA) buildings can only be obtained by first building a Light Defense Artillery (LDA) building and investing extra resources to upgrade.

As well as requiring resources to initiate, the upgrade process takes 12 hours to turn a LDA into a SDA, and a further 18 hours to upgrade a SDA to a HDA.

In total it will take a minimum of 30 hours from the construction of a LDA building until it has finished being upgraded to a HDA.

The Impact of losing Starbase Buildings

While the loss of buildings impacts current production, it does not affect any ships, weapons or equipment built prior to the building loss.

Should worker population drop enough to cause a player starbase to drop a stage, all buildings that were built on the outer-most 4 building slots will be immediately destroyed. All ships, weapons and equipment that were in the process of being built in those buildings at the time are also destroyed.

If a Warehouse Factory building is destroyed as part of such a population decline, and if this leaves the starbase with more resources than it has room to store, any excess resources will be immediately dropped, starting with the most expensive resources first.

When a starbase doesn’t have a building able to produce an item in inventory (maybe it currently has no Weapons Factory – but guns and missiles are in inventory from a previous Weapons Factory), then that inventory is not visible and cannot be sold.

As soon as a building is constructed that can produce any item already in inventory, then all the inventory for that type of building is immediately available for sale. If a starbase has at least one shipyard, then all ship sizes already in inventory are also available for sale.

Lesser-known Observations on Starbases

Here are some unrelated notes on player owned starbases collected from conversations with pilots, various places in the Pardus Manual and Pardus Forums as well as from first-hand experiences.

• a hack on the owner never reveals the presence of a starbase
• you can only have one starbase in your possession at any time
• it costs 4,000 APs to initiate transfer to another pilot
• a starbase transfer takes 24 hours from initiation to completion
• you cannot self destruct your starbase while it is being transferred
• starbase transfers fail at completion time if the recipient has no building slot
• when the owner retires, their starbase disappears completely
• if docked at a starbase that is destroyed you remain unaffected
• if ambushing on a TO that upgrades, your ambush is broken
• while not visible, each starbase comes with 4 defense modules
• all faction equipment in a starbase is lost if the owner leaves that faction
• fly-close always puts you randomly at [3,3], [9,3], [3,9] or [9,9]
• an ambush at [3,3], [9,3], [3,9] or [9,9] won’t trigger on the initial fly-close
• you cannot cloak in inner space
• it costs no APs to fly-close or exit inner space
• you cannot exit inner space if you are affected by a stun time bomb
• you can’t set ambush in fly-close with a retreat point set outside
• you can’t set ambush outside with a retreat point set inside fly-close
• starbases in the PFC, PUC and PEC get paid a daily subsidy at 0526 (GMT/UTC)
• a destroy building bounty can be collected by destroying the starbase owned by the bountied pilot
• when you transfer a starbase, the recipient gets no notification at all until they receieve the starbase

Do you have some lesser-known observations of your own? Please get in touch and I’ll add them here as well!

This script is designed to show you an estimate of how many missions you have done at your current competency or rank, and how many remain until the next rank is achieved (until you reach level 13).

This information is displayed on the Player Stats Overview page, just below the progress bar of the Competency section and, if you are in a faction, the Military Rank section as well.

If you have already achieved rank 13 (competency or rank) then nothing will be added in the section you have that rank in. If you are 13 (or above) in both Competency and Military Rank, you will not benefit at all from this script.

This script uses the numbers needed to complete each rank from the Pardus Ranking Guide thread in the Pardus Forums.

Why are the mission numbers not accurate?

You may notice that you complete a mission and yet the numbers shown in the Stats Overview page don’t change at all. When they do change they increase more than just one at a time. Bug? No.

If you hover over the progress bar in the competency or military rank section, a tool-tip shows with the percentage you are from making the next rank. This is the data used to “reverse engineeer” the number of missions you have done.

At rank 12, the Stats Overview page will show you are are 50% of the way to making the next rank. It will continue to say this for another 11 missions until it will increase to 51% after the 12th mission is completed. The script will report you have completed 648 missions and have 647 remaining during that time as well.

• Download the Missions to Rank script (Firefox)
• Download the Missions to Rank script (Chrome)

Congratulations on your promotion to Prince! The Emperor will likely be in touch soon to offer you a place in his royal guard – or so they say.

You may have completed much of the Advanced Skills available to you, saved up lots of cash and been looking forward to being promoted since you first piloted a Rustclaw.

Before you rush out and buy that shiny yellow Mooncrusher… there is one more thing you should consider.

Take a look at your cloak skill

Are you satisfied with your current level of cloak skill and your ability to cloak? The Mooncrusher is almost as large as a small asteroid – and it’s hard to disguise an asteroid. Being bright yellow doesn’t help either!

Unfortunately for many young Princes and Princesses, by the time they discover that they can’t cloak their new ship, it is already too late. They have paid upwards of 38 million on their new ship and are not interested in trading out of it.

Why do I need cloaking skill?

If you want to ambush and engage in PvP then you need to be able to cloak.

A high cloak skill means you can cloak at your ambush site quickly and hopefully remain unseen doing so. A low cloak skill will mean you spend more time visible at your ambush site – providing your enemies a chance to notice your exact location. At 100 APs per cloaking attempt, it is also an expensive activity!

If you don’t bother training your cloak skill until after you have your Mooncrusher, you will likely remain disadvantaged for quite some time. The huge ship size means that you will fail almost all of your early attempts at cloaking.

Why not just cloak train in the Mooncrusher?

The Pardus Manual tells us:

… Your skill in cloaking … will increase with every successful cloaking attempt (and also a very small amount with every unsuccessful attempt) …

So even though your cloak skill improves with a failed cloak attempt, it is only by a “very small amount”. Because of the low success rate caused by the large ship size, you will end up spending huge amounts of APs cloaking (or attempting to at least) for just a few points of cloak skill.

If you were to cloak train in an SSC with a cloak skill of around 15, your cloak skill will reach 16 in less than 2 days. Using a Mooncrusher will take almost 18 days.

Cloaking the Shadow Stealth Craft – smallest of Imperial ships, even with a very low cloak skill, provides an excellent chance of success (giving the best cloak skill gains) for the amount of APs used.

It is not expensive to do it since you don’t need guns, armor, shields, etc so pay no maintenance costs. Just sit on a friendly starbase on an Energy tile and cloak… uncloak… cloak…

How much cloak skill should I train to?

Aim to have a cloak skill of 30 at least before you step into the Mooncrusher. If you take a week out between each of your ship upgrades to sit in an SSC and cloak train, you probably won’t need to do anything special.

How long will it take?

To improve your cloak skill from 10 through to 35 will take about 563,000 APs in an SSC – about 97 days of cloaking from start to end. That time can be significantly reduced by taking drugs to provide you up to twice as many APs per day.

Make sure you understand how to get optimal AP gains from drug use… you don’t need Trip Control and Meditation, but it will be a little more convenient if you do.

This script is designed to show how long your Space Leech will take to fully repair your damaged armour.

When you visit the Ship Overview page, the amount of armour that is repaired every 20 minutes will be recorded. When on the Navigation page, this is used to calculate approximately how long it will take until your armour is fully repaired.

The repair time is shown on the page beside your current armour value.

Because a Space Leech grows over time (and repairs more armour every 20 minutes as a result), visit the Ship Overview page regularly to ensure the estimated time remains up to date.

• Download and install the Leech Repair Time script

Note – this script will work with partial refresh enabled or disabled.

This script enhances the view that Senior members of an alliance get see when viewing the membership page.

An image is attached beside each pilot ship showing their race (ensuring the correct sex is also represented).

If the pilot race is not known, this is automatically collected from their profile page and the information is then saved to be used for future page views.

• Download and install the Show Alliance Member Race script

This script enhances the main skills section of the Stats Overview page.

Your 5 main skills are included in a single line to make it easier to paste your current stats into chat and PMs.

Extra columns are added to include the rate of skill gain and the number of days until trade-in for the 5 main skills.

• Download and install the Pardus Skill Stats Assistant script (Firefox)

• Download and install the Pardus Skill Stats Assistant script (Chrome)