So what price do you put on the fact that you aren't using tactical slots for the hangers?  What price do you put on the fact that you can put these hangers anywhere?  Even in gravity wells you don't own, and neutral gravity wells?  Also hangers in a star base are a hell of a lot more defended than normal hangers.  The price increase seems justified to me.  If it wasn't for the fact that they take up 1 of my 8 upgrade slots I'd get them quite often.

Considering that the actual hangar bays have added effects that the SB hangars don't? Not much. The Starbase upgrade slots are better spent on other things.

If it was 4 squads instead of 2, then it might be more valuable.

I'd rather have flak.  I'd rather have an ability to disable enemy strikecraft.  I'd rather have structures that grant other nearby structures shields (particularly when they have none to begin with) and therefore the ability to have shield mitigation.

And perhaps most importantly, as you have addressed as well, I'd rather have a base with more hull, shields, armor, and weapons.

For Advent and TEC, that's 5/8 upgrades right there.  For Vasari, it's 6/8.  Doesn't leave much room for squadrons-or anything else, for that matter.

So, again, maybe we need to be able to have more than eight upgrades on a base.  (How's ten sound?)  It's still going to cost us, and if the upgrades are in line with what they give us, it wouldn't seem to result in every planet being Fort Knox, as we're still limited by credits and resources.

I may have neglected to state that if the number of squadrons is increased sufficiently then obviously the price wouldn't need to change, much.  I thought it was clear I was doing a comparison on cost per squadron, which would improve if the starbase fielded more squadrons.

Per Starhound's post, four would seem to be a good number.  This still makes them somewhat more expensive than squadrons from a hangar bay, while making the squadron upgrades actually useful.

I think Sole said it, but I agree with bumping up the number of upgrades to maybe 10. This way you can fully upgrade the weapons and defense and give your base a little something extra too.

Don't have tact spots in wormholes or nebulas.

Valid point, I suppose, but the cost would seem to need an increase as well.  And then there's the fact that it would make civilian starbases as powerful (without accounting for abilities) as military starbases.

I understand starbases are primarily supposed to be for defense, but if they aren't supposed to have a civilian purpose as well then why do they have non-combat modules?

Currently I would if it was in an uninhabited system that was protected.  Once the 1.12 update makes it into Entrenchment, then that won't be necessary since the uninhabited systems won't break the trade lane.  So, the trade module for the SB will probably be next to useless in the future.  It really makes more sense that way I guess.  I wonder if it will be removed or replaced with something else.

1800 credits + 275 metal at 4.5 credits average value + 150 crystal at 4.5 as well

= 3712 credits total cost basically to earn 0.8 credits a second.

So it takes something like 4500 seconds (75 minutes) to pay for itself and start making money?

If I actually got that right I've heard better deals - some oceanfront property in Nevada comes to mind...