Newbie Questions (Soc/Military Slider, Starbases, Ideology)

Hey guys, I have a couple of questions that hopefully people can help me with:

When a planet has all tiles used and is just pumping out one of the +10% bonuses (Research Project, Cultural Festival, whatever) the amount of social production going into producing that bonus appears to modify the bonus somehow, for instance my Influence Growth per turn goes from 4.2 at 0% social to 4.4 at 50% to 4.6 at 100%. Does anyone know how this is calculating? The tooltip that suggests it's a 10% bonus seems like it isn't really true most of the time.

EDIT: I think figured this one out, it looks like in the list of modifiers to any given production it lists whatever production bonus you're working on and at 50% social I'm getting +20% and at 100% social I'm getting +40% for whatever one I'm using, the tooltip still doesn't seem helpful, though.
Do people tend to think these bonuses are worth it or just go straight Military to help your shipyards? (Would still like opinions on this if people have any, this seems way more valuable than using half your production for the planet on a 20% bonus)

Would it be possible if a planet has nothing in the construction queue for that social production to assist the shipyard without moving the slider (I do not believe this happens currently)?

(This is about non-mining starbases) Starbases seem to give pretty minimal bonuses at the beginning of the game for a significant amount of investment (in time building constructors) but I've seen people on here talking about building multiple starbases for each planet and limiting themselves to a certain number so that it doesn't become "cheesey". I feel like I'm definitely missing something about starbases and would super appreciate either some help understanding them or a link to a good discussion or guide to them.

Ideology - It seems like the idea is you're supposed to pick one tree and stick to it because taking a trait in any tree increases the cost of traits in the other trees. For other people playing very large maps (say gigantic and up) are you sticking to one tree or using multiple? I'm feeling like using two trees has been quite beneficial for me since I never have to take a bad event when settling a planet and I get about twice as many ideology points per turn (since I have ideology buildings for two trees). Am I totally out of line here and seriously gimping myself?

I want to sneak in this UI question not mentioned in the title - Is the minimap zooming a known issue or am I the only one experiencing it? Have they said anything about possibly fixing it?

If no one knows what I'm talking about it will only let me zoom in on the middle of the galaxy, no where else, and every turn it resets to a zoom level of it's choice (again, focused on the middle of the galaxy).

Thank you to anyone who can answer any of these questions!

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When a planet has all tiles used and is just pumping out one of the +10% bonuses (Research Project, Cultural Festival, whatever) the amount of social production going into producing that bonus appears to modify the bonus somehow, for instance my Influence Growth per turn goes from 4.2 at 0% social to 4.4 at 50% to 4.6 at 100%. Does anyone know how this is calculating? The tooltip that suggests it's a 10% bonus seems like it isn't really true most of the time.
EDIT: I think figured this one out, it looks like in the list of modifiers to any given production it lists whatever production bonus you're working on and at 50% social I'm getting +20% and at 100% social I'm getting +40% for whatever one I'm using, the tooltip still doesn't seem helpful, though

Project bonuses are calculated as follows:

[bonus] = ceiling([social fraction] * [manufacturing fraction] * [planetary production] * (1 + [manufacturing bonus]) / 10) * 10%

This bonus is then added to the bonus to whatever the project is for.

Do people tend to think these bonuses are worth it or just go straight Military to help your shipyards? (Would still like opinions on this if people have any, this seems way more valuable than using half your production for the planet on a 20% bonus)

There's a limit to how much manufacturing production is useful, and there are times when you probably don't really need or want more ships. It's also the case, at least for me, that not all my colonies will be sponsoring a shipyard. Lab worlds and purse worlds have better things to do with their production (or, at worst, marginally less efficient things to do with their production) than spend it on manufacturing to boost a project, but an influence world has little reason not to pump its manufacturing into a Cultural Festival, and it can be useful to dedicate a world or two to Birthing Subsidies and draw population from them when building troop or colony ships rather than from your larger factory, lab, or purse worlds.

(This is about non-mining starbases) Starbases seem to give pretty minimal bonuses at the beginning of the game for a significant amount of investment (in time building constructors) but I've seen people on here talking about building multiple starbases for each planet and limiting themselves to a certain number so that it doesn't become "cheesey". I feel like I'm definitely missing something about starbases and would super appreciate either some help understanding them or a link to a good discussion or guide to them.

The bonuses from Economic and Cultural Starbases are cumulative with one another, and at the standard AoE of 5 tiles from the starbase, you can get up to five starbases to affect a single planet. That's +0.5 to the base production multiplier with 5 economic starbases (this bonus is multiplicative with manufacturing, research, and wealth bonuses), plus the bonuses from whatever other modules you've stacked, or +0.5 to the influence multiplier for 5 unupgraded plus a bit more for whatever upgrades you've put on it. At the +4 starbase AoE extension (AoE of 9 tiles), you can stack up to 12 starbases on a single planet.

These are maximum values, and are not necessarily attainable for any given world. It still should give you an idea of what the issue people see in starbase stacking is.

Ideology - It seems like the idea is you're supposed to pick one tree and stick to it because taking a trait in any tree increases the cost of traits in the other trees. For other people playing very large maps (say gigantic and up) are you sticking to one tree or using multiple? I'm feeling like using two trees has been quite beneficial for me since I never have to take a bad event when settling a planet and I get about twice as many ideology points per turn (since I have ideology buildings for two trees). Am I totally out of line here and seriously gimping myself?

It might perhaps have been the idea, but in my opinion the execution failed to encourage it adequately. On larger maps, there's generally more than enough ideology points to go around filling out as many trees as you want, and if you do put each ideology building on a large number of worlds, it'll more than make up for the cost inflation of going with more than one tree.

I want to sneak in this UI question not mentioned in the title - Is the minimap zooming a known issue or am I the only one experiencing it? Have they said anything about possibly fixing it?

If no one knows what I'm talking about it will only let me zoom in on the middle of the galaxy, no where else, and every turn it resets to a zoom level of it's choice (again, focused on the middle of the galaxy).

We know what you're talking about, you're not the only one experiencing it, and it's been mentioned before. I have no idea if there's any mention of plans to fix it or not.

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To give an idea of the starbase stacking

lets assume a world with 10 pts production ( not to be confused with manufacturing)

now if i place 12 economic starbases around that world i get 1.2X bonus to production for just going econimic and a couple of range extensions

so my production is now 22

now lets specialise shift those 22 points of production into 100% manufacturing and put max level factories on those starbases ( lets call that 15% each)

so that will add another 180% bonus to manufacturing so now we are up to 61.6 manufacturing

now theres at least on tech that adds 20% to either military or social manufacturing if we put all those points to ship building and have that 20% bonus we are producing 73.9 points per turn from a planet that has a base of 10. 12 starbase has increased the output of the planet by more then 6x its original value without using a single tile on planet

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Thanks a lot for both answers. With respect to econ starbases that is nuts, so naturally I had to figure out how to get 12 of them around a planet:

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that design looks like it works ill share mine.

the advantage to mine is that the first 3 are in immidiate range the second 3 come in range with 1 range extension tech and then 6 more with the second range tech

it looks like you get 3/0/9

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