Commanding a Starbase doesn’t end once you have upgraded from a Trading Outpost. Failure to keep the worker population supplied with Food and Water will cause them to leave.

The Pardus Manual explains that:

If the population ever drops below 500 workers, the Starbase downgrades back to a Trade Outpost, losing all structures and stored commodities in the process.

The loss of a Starbase can equate to a significant amount of credits – not to mention all the APs that you spent building it up in the first place!

It takes about 26 days to nurse a starbase to 50,000 workers… yet it takes only 11 days for it to revert back to a Trading Outpost if no upkeep is met!

Starbase Population Milestones

A newly constructed Starbase begins at Stage 1 with 1,000 workers, and as the population increases, various milestones are triggered:
Read the rest of this entry…

The main issue I had with the economy articles is the fact it seems to be based on a large sector with asteroid fields and plenty of space. Nothing wrong with that, but I’ve been looking primarily at pass sectors, and to me those tend to have a hard time staying at 30k (for the black market) and don’t have any asteroid fields nearby. Maybe I’m looking at the wrong sectors, but if the SB isn’t populated at 30K, you can’t have 16 building slots. Also if the ore isn’t nearby, your forced to import the stuff. That just raises the cost of building the scrap parts.

Also, those SB should have a more natural defense posture. If they rely on the MO’s defense before they build their HDAs, they won’t have but maybe a SDA if they are lucky, and could quite possibly be hit before they get any additional defenses up.

Most of them are two sectors away from a planet. Some are one, but those planets tend to be Class I. Thus they are still short of a good food supply.

I haven’t found a good solution to this ‘problem’. And to be honest I’m starting to question the purpose of those SBs. If they don’t have a good economy around them, they tend to fight to stay alive (or at least mine did).

At the same time, isn’t the front lines where you want your weapons? That way they are readily accessible for combat.

Anyways, enough rambling.

Thanks,
Camper

Rylar’s Response:
This post by Camper is exactly why you should never develop any system that is not connected to a Class M planet, within 3 sectors of Exotic Matter, and near a player starbase.

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but chances are, no one in your entire alliance has a clue how to run a starbase. Even the oldest, most experienced alliances in Pardus run starbases poorly. We write a lot about economies and prices and how to build scrap economies. But, sadly, almost no one implements our advice. Instead of creating massive empires, pilots construct tiny economies and use force and charity to keep them running! Most system owners have no goals or just don’t really know what their goals are.

The goals of a starbase owner are:

1. Produce Credits
2. Build Ships
3. Build Weapons
4. Store Goods
5. Offer Repairs
6. Defend the Base

Producing Credits

Imperial starbases are by far the best at creating wealth. They produce the highest quality, most valuable goods that rely on the most advanced items to produce. If most of your bases are not owned by imperial pilots, find someone to go Imperial and run a base for you. A single Imperial starbase will support 11 battle weapons factories. By contrast, a 200,000 population class M planet supports only 4 advanced buildings.

Producing Ships

Base owners invest heavily in ships. However, an entire alliance of 90 players only needs a handful of ships per month. A large alliance with 6 or 7 starbases has no need for 21 shipyards. Building ships that never sell is a waste of credits and the shipyards waste valuable starbase buildings. Allowing starbase owners in your alliance to compete with each other breeds hostility, creates waste, and drives your prices down. So, select your best location and consolidate all ship production into one base. You can always keep 2-4 of each ship in stock, and your alliance and neighbors will never have to wait for a ship again.

Build Weapons

Keeping a store of weapons is important to rankers. Supporting your team is a key mission for a starbase commander. You should always have a healthy stock of missiles and keep 1 weapons factory producing missiles constantly. These weapons slow down the production of scrap, but you already have the weapons factories, so you might as well offer a full range of weapons.

Store Goods

A starbase should store Robots, Droids, Hand Weapons, Metal, Ore, Electronics and sometimes Exotic Matter. The only starbase that needs a warehouse is your main shipyard, and starbases near to exotic matter. Any base owner storing large amounts of crap is wasting prime buildings that should be converted to weapons factories.

Offer Repairs

If your base is near a good NPC like pirates, dragons, roid worms, or space crystals you should offer repairs. Otherwise, replace your repair bay with a weapons factory. The income from repairs is minuscule and the discount is only a tiny benefit to other players.

Defend the Base

Most managers rely on 4+ heavy defense artillery. These buildings are not only useless in 99% of cases, they cost you 25,000 credits per day in lost income. Ask your alliance when the last time a starbase was attacked. They will either not know, or have some vague story from many years ago. HDA do not protect your starbase. If someone hires squads and uses them to assault your base, Bomber squads tear through HDA like they aren’t even there. The only defense against attack is having defensive squads in place. But, at 100 HWP per day for a squad to exist, that can only be done if you’re online when the attack happens.

In short, you cannot defend your base and must rely on strong pass MOs to protect in. When your pass is breached, build 2-4 HDA and hire a squad to place over one. But, during the 12 months of peace between wars, those HDA are just costing you credits. The entire economy suffers. Shipyards will probably ignore this advice to prevent pirates from attacking, but if a pirate managers to hire squads and charge their AP next to your base, your puny HDA won’t stop them. They won’t even last 60 seconds.

How Many Weapons Factories is Enough?

Our shipyard runs 6 or 7 weapons factories. But, everyone else in the alliance is required to run at least ten. However, the ideal starbase will run 16 weapons factories. Yes, 16 weapons factories in a single starbase. TW has yet to manage this. Our best base is running only 13 factories, because we haven’t yet finished the construction of the required 22 L8 BWF. Each starbase should support between 10-12 battle weapons factories. In a large system with 3 starbases, that means you can support 30! If only you could find enough fuel tiles for them all…

The Union are technologically specialised in defensive and special ship equipment, the Federation in ship construction and ship drives whilst the Empire is technologically specialised in weaponry.

The Backbone of an Economy

Each faction can benefit in multiple ways through the use of their specialisation. One such benefit for the Empire is the humble 140MW Particle Laser.

It is not out of the question to expect a profit of 3,500,000 credits to 3,750,000 credits per week

The 140MW Particle Laser retails at Imperial planets for a solid 1,400,000 credits. It represents a very good choice in weapon – albeit limited to Empire pilots who have achieved the rank of Earl and above. However this weapon is particularly appealing to the Imperial starbase owner not because of the damage it deals, but the remarkably low cost of production.
Read the rest of this entry…

Note: Once you have 300k experience, this guide no longer applies to you.

Every pilot wants to know what they should be fighting because your enemy has a huge impact on the skills you gain, the exp you make, and the risk you take. Picking the right target is the key to becoming a top pilot. And, one of the main accomplishments in Pardus is to become a fearsome pilot. To do that, you must skill. But, to skill requires experience points. Gaining too much skill too quickly can cause you to become overskilled. Being overskilled prevents you from gaining skills quickly and makes it nearly impossible to earn advanced skills. So, you need experience first. However, it’s hard to gain experience without good weapons skills first.

So, What’s my Goal?

So, your goal should be to focus on raising your hit accuracy (HA) while gaining experience at the same time. Many people believe they should purchase gatlings, 1mw particles or biospore arrays to skill quickly. However, the best way to skill to 65 HA is to do it with powerful guns like the 120 MT electromagnetic cannons.

Why Electromagnetic Guns?

EM weapons do massive damage and the universe has huge numbers of conventional and organic targets. Yes, big guns costs more to repair, but they kill targets more quickly which gives you more experience. The limit on early skill gains isn’t how many shots you fire. It’s how much experience you have.

Big Guns = Big Experience

If you skill using big guns, you’ll delay overskilling. So, now that you know what you need to do. Here’s is the Pardus NPC list for the WESC:

1. Young Space Dragons – 28 HA
2. Space Worms – 33 HA (Optional)
3. X-99 Squads – 41 HA
4. Roid Worms – 55 HA (Optional)
5. Medusa Swarmlings – 60 HA
6. Energy Sparker – 63 HA (Optional)
7. Nebula Mole – 65 HA (Optional)
8. Z-15 Scout – 70+ HA (Optional)

Ship Choices

Your primary goal while skilling is to gain experience for a BBB. So, your ship choices are limited to ones that skill and EXP quickly on the cheap. The only real choice for Imperial players in the Hawk. Here are three setups I would be happy to use.

1. Ultra cheap, but gets it done.

2. Ultimate dragon slayer… the fastest way to go.

3. The most fun you can have in a Hawk… Bio slayer.

Once you reach 60-65 Hit accuracy, you’re ready to begin your EXP march to a BBB at 330k exp. Already have a BBB? Read part two.

Regardless of the type of building you choose to go with – an Asteroid Mine or a Droid Assembly Complex.. you will still be able to see the same profit levels when you have expanded it to level 7 or level 8 in some cases.

The Waistelands M-Class pricing model ensures that all pilots get a fair income from the buildings they develop!

All M-Class sector buildings that contribute to The Waistelands Economy can return between 120,000 and 140,000 credits per week – each.

This means you need not worry over-much about what kind of building you are going to build… just jump right in and help out the alliance with any building projects it has on at the time. Obviously you want your building to be well traded – so it will eventually come down to three things: location, location and location!.

Talk to one of the sector managers about building opportunities. Sector Manager for Oldain is currently Makeda Melikian, while the Sector Manager representative for The Waistelands in Edvea is Albian.

Read the rest of this entry…

Harvesting a little Energy from a tile once and a while isn’t going to bring the Universe to a stand-still. But at what point does taking “a little” become taking “too much”? At what stage do you cross the line from “Intrepid Adventurer” to “Evil Stripminer”?

The generally accepted line is drawn somewhere between 300 and 350 depending on where you are in the Universe. A good rule to go with is that if you take a tile to less than 300 – you have stepped over the line. There are always going to be emergencies where you mined a fuel tile to allow you make a mission run in time – but in reality these are rare.

A tile that has been mined to 350 will take 7 days to replenish to 500 again. A tile that has been mined to 300 will take 10 days.

Intrepid Adventurers never mine a tile that has less than 350 resources.
Read the rest of this entry…

Baglodorf put up an Alliance Message recently – encouraging traders to stock his buildings in Edvea by suggesting a nice trade route that he said would make a good profit.

I was in the sector and decided to see just how profitable his route would be. If nothing else it would allow me to see some of the local buildings whilst making some pocket change.

His route is marked on the map below – and I have marked the order that he suggested the buildings be traded in. I started from the Planet and took a direct line to the Asteroid mine and afterwards went directly from the Droid Assembly Complex back to the planet.

Read the rest of this entry…

The fully automated Cybernetics Station is located in the West Pardus Rim – close to the center of the universe in HO 2296 [5,1].

Inside are facilities that allow you to initiate construction of the delicate Neural Stimulator and the practical X-993 Repair Drone. To build these robots all you need are a handful of resources and a few credits.

Nobody knows where the Cybernetics Station came from, nor who is responsible for it’s arrival. Since appearing out of nowhere, nobody has been observed supplying it nor servicing it. It’s origins remain a mystery to this day.

Read the rest of this entry…

Drugs (aka Candy or Candles) allow a pilot to increase their current Action Points (APs) and are often all that stands between a failed or successful mission.

They are expensive – costing upwards of 16,000 credits per ton (or 30,000 credits if you buy them from the Black Market) but regardless of their status as illegal contraband, they are an integral part of the game and hard to ignore.
Read the rest of this entry…