Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Airpower

Yeah it's definitely broken. My hope is that when the Dev team sees this, they'll make the suggested fix (disallow commerce centers on star bases) and not do anything heavy-handed that would break other aspects of star base utility (specifically as fleet refueling stations).

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ORIGINAL: Retreat1970

I would rather restrict mining components to mining stations and mining ships, but your idea may work better. I like to throw a commerce center on my bases (SB or DB) and use them in lieu of small space ports. No construction or repair, but trade and storage. Maybe I just think that works, but that's how I play dammit!

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ORIGINAL: Jeeves
Out to be added to the guide to guides thread.

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In your experience, what advantages does a resupply ship have over an exact duplicate design that is set as a different ship class (Escort, Destroyer, Frigate, etc)?

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Dantha 26%      Tick 1  Tick 2  Tick 3  Tick 4
3 luxury        7       14      21      28
6 luxury        15      30      45      60
9 luxury        23      46      69      92
12 luxury       26      52      78      78
15 luxury       26      52      78      104

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ORIGINAL: Skasski

There appears to be a little error in your first "In-game numbers:" table. Dantha Tick 4 with 15 luxury shows an output of 104 instead of 78.

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Dantha 26%      Tick 1  Tick 2  Tick 3  Tick 4
3 luxury        7       14      21      28
6 luxury        15      30      45      60
9 luxury        23      46      69      92
12 luxury       26      52      78      78
15 luxury       26      52      78      104

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ORIGINAL: Aeson
It can be much, much bigger. That's not an advantage in all cases, and you can certainly make up for it with multiple ships, but it's hard to say that one giant block of shields is worse than the same size worth of shield components spread over a bunch of smaller ships. Of course, that really goes to the point that the Resupply Ship is potentially more useful acting as a giant battleship/carrier/troop transport than in its intended role, despite sacrificing ~20% of its size to noncombat-related components.

There's also a slight advantage in it being more of a set-and-forget semi-mobile refueling point than the tanker-battleships are, and that the 100 size or so of a long-range scanner component is a rather trivial cost for a ship that can be well over 4000 size (this is more true earlier in the game when the ship sizes are more limited and ~100 size units for a long range scanner plus the static energy cost is a nontrivial addition to any ship that isn't huge or dedicated to carrying the scanner). Going along with the not-yet-late-game tech state, it's also not really a trivial decision to set aside enough space on a warship for refueling purposes if your ship sizes are still smallish, especially if your designs are relatively fuel-hungry.

Resupply ships keep the refueling capability in a single hard-to-destroy target that, if used in the intended role, mostly stays out of fights, while tanker-battleships put the refueling capacity on the warships, reducing the effective size of the warship in question. I don't think that there's any real question that in an equal-tech engagement the tanker-battleships are at a disadvantage against true battleships of similar size, especially if present in similar numbers, but the computer isn't all that likely to put you into that scenario after perhaps the middle of the tech tree. Resupply ships could possibly use a buff, but on the other hand I really think that tanker-battleships would be much less attractive if the computer player was closer to being an equal opponent, especially in the design and fleet utilization departments.