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!

The Magnetic Scoop increases the quantity of resources you can hold in your ship at any one time.

The recent addition of the Enhanced Magnetic Scoop increased the amount that can be stored by a further 100t to a whopping 250t extra storage space.

The Large Print Giveth and The Small Print Taketh Away

Unfortunately, when you put resources into the Magnetic Scoop, the cost of moving your ship suddenly shoots through the ceiling. The more you have in your Magnetic Scoop, the greater the movement penalty for your ship.

This is no problem if you don’t intend on moving (for instance, when performing building upgrades – another pilot can drop resources onto you, allowing you to complete upgrades without having to increase the capacity of your building).

If you do plan on moving, you might be interested in exactly how much of a movement penalty you will have to deal with.

The Original 150t Magnetic Scoop

movement_penalty = ceiling ( amt_in_scoop / 5 ) + 10

Example: 75t in your Magnetic Scoop costs 25 action points per tile extra.
Example: 150t in your Magnetic Scoop costs 40 action points per tile extra.

The Enhanced 250t Magnetic Scoop

This is basically 10 action points per tile cheaper that the 150t Magnetic Scoop for the same amount of resources. Of course it can hold an extra 100t as well.

movement_penalty = ceiling ( amt_in_scoop / 5 )

Example: 75t in your Magnetic Scoop costs 15 action points per tile extra.
Example: 150t in your Magnetic Scoop costs 30 action points per tile extra.
Example: 250t in your Magnetic Scoop costs 50 action points per tile extra.

Don’t go hauling goods long distance with a full Magnetic Scoop – but it may be ideal for travelling 1 or 2 tiles. You be the judge!

With the addition of an improved Mag Scoop (able to hold up to 250t), transporting goods through Y-Holes and X-Holes has become a viable option to consider when travelling large distances.

According to the Pardus Manual, jumping a Y-Hole or X-Hole initially costs over 2,000 action points and is based on your Maneuver skill. The higher your skill, the less action points are required to perform the jump (as with a regular Wormhole).

Be sure to remember that your Maneuver skill is significantly affected with a full Mag Scoop. While the cost to jump might be 1,100 action points with a Maneuver of 68, a full scoop may reduce your Maneuver so much that it will most likely cost 2,000 action points regardless of your starting Maneuver skill.

Our recent NPC Skilling Order for Imperials guide suggests Roidworm Hordes are ideally placed to take your Hit Accuracy from 42 up to about 55.

Some call them docile and harmless, but I have heard stories that they can explode when angered – causing tremendous damage to any pilots foolish enough to be in the vicinity.

Once dead, Roidworm Hordes take about 6 hours to respawn – within 2 or 3 tiles of the location indicated below.

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!

In a recent article about Strip Mining I explained why it was considered such a bad thing to do.

There seems to be a lack of readily accessible detail about this aspect of Pardus, so I did a little research and come up with some information that I’m happy to share.

When Do Tiles Replenish?

Every day at 00:12 GMT, the tiles around the universe spontaneously replenish by an amount based on their current level (with the exception of the Exotic Matter tiles).

The amount they gain per day is roughly calculated as:

Gain = Floor(Current Level * 5.47% + 1.54)

Which can be used to graph the regeneration of a heavily mined tile…

You can also summarise how many days it takes to fully replenish tiles from varying starting levels:

• 10 days to grow from 285 -> 500
• 20 days to grow from 160 -> 500
• 30 days to grow from 87 -> 500
• 40 days to grow from 45 -> 500
• 50 days to grow from 20 -> 500
• 60 days to grow from 3 -> 500

And that pretty much concludes tile regeneration!

The Global News Network supplies regular updates on the events happening around the universe.

After a while the older news entries are replaced by reports of new events. If you have Premium access, you are able to download a limited number of previous news entries in a file. If you are not Premium, then there is no way that you can look back at past news entries in Pardus.

The Global News Network publishes a feed of many of it’s news reports to Twitter – saving them from being lost completely. Twitter provides access for the last 3,200 Twitter posts for each feed – providing you access to a little over 1 month of previous reports.

Snap Bird (link to the Artemis Feed Search) is one of several different tools that allow you to access and search Pardus Twitter feeds.

So now, if you missed it first time, you may still be able to find that elusive message hiding in Twitter.

A recent update allowed pilots to be able to restrict access to services and facilities of their Faction by declaring Faction Outlaws. Pilots become outlawed in a Faction if enough players in the Faction’s command structure (rank 10 or above) hold a grudge against them (and keep them on their foe-lists while remaining active themselves).

Hopefully this recent feature is not something you will experience first-hand!

Should you become an Outlaw – it is much like the experience of having reputation of less than -7500.

When Outlawed at a Faction Planet or Starbase:

• you can’t use the repair facilities
• you have no protection there
• you are not able to trade

You can however pick up and complete Faction missions as well as buy and sell equipment.

When you are in negative APs you can’t move your ship, nor do any activity that requires the use of APs. Obviously this is not something that you want to plan on having happen to you – especially when you are not on a planet or starbase!

Hopefully you don’t find yourself with negative Action Points (APs) very often. Most of the time would be when you are killed with less than 1,000 APs (since you immediately lose 1,000 APs when killed). Even then, you are safely logged out at your Homeworld and can recieve no further damage.
Read the rest of this entry…

The Pardus Manual describes faction smelters as being heavily defended, and having huge production and capacity.

Using the information from the welcome message when you enter the building, and the formula from the Reference section in the Pardus Manual, they are in fact level 20 buildings.