Using cap ship slots for Starbases is not an arbitrary limit and it makes sense to me. You have a certain amount of crews trained and you have to decide how to distribute them.
One Starbase per planet is comparable to allowing only one Frigate factory per planet, arbitrary.
I mentioned it in my earlier post that the amount of capital crew slots should probably be increased.
Since when was choice a bad thing? If you want to build nothing but Starbases with 2 planets it's a losing strategy. But it would be possible.
Another strategy that would cost you the game before you'd manage to build them all. That's not really relevant. You can also play the game building only Trade Ports or any other silly strategy that doesn't work. To be reasonable though, the number of Starbases could still be limited to one per location even if they cost a cap ship slot.
That's Ironclad's design so ask them.

For what it's worth, I'm not talking about someone beginning with spamming starbases-just that if you ever run into a planet with 16 Vasari starbases, it's going to be about impossible to crack.
I'm not seeing why they'd need to cost a capital crew slot if they remained limited to one per gravity well and were modified in both initial cost and upgrade costs to reflect the capabilities that the upgrades give them...which should already happen as the upgrade prices are placeholders, and even the initial cost isn't set in stone, to my knowledge.
Starbases don't necessarily need to become increasingly more expensive as you build more of them-they just need to start weak(er) and cost increasingly more to make them stronger. That way even though you may run into a starbase at every planet, most of them will have perhaps one or two upgrades on them, if that...but yes, if a game goes on long enough, which it is my understanding that MP games generally do not, then it could in theory be possible to have every planet fortified with a badass base.
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I think adding a new research bar to the fleet research would be best for limiting Stations. Have each one you can build after the first one take a bit of your economy to maintain. Where the player puts them is their business. Some defensive research might be able to reduce the cost
A similiar thing could be used for mines. Maintaining large minefields has to be expensive, have each on you lay over a certain ammount per system affect your economy.
Perhaps have mines also affect your nonmilitary ( I forget the word) slots in a system as all those mines can be dangerous to labs, factories, etc.
Then the best place for mines would be on front line worlds, not deep in the core.
I've been thinking about something like that, actually. I'm not certain that a maintenance exactly would be the best way to go about it, as it would seem the best way to do that would be to tie the limits into the fleet supply tech. But it might be a good idea to limit both mines and starbases based on the same kind of support tech that capital ship crew slots currently take up.
I'm not certain that even this will combat the mine spam present in the game at the moment, though.
And if there's going to be a starbase limit, it needs to be relatively high. There's nothing quite so stupid as playing a map with a hundred some odd planets and only being able to place 5 or 6 starbases. Even the 16 that the capital ships cap at currently would seem to be a bit low-then again, it seems others feel that the limit for capitals is too low as well.
This doesn't mean it can't start at a limit of 1 or 2 total, though, where you research your way up to be able to construct more.
Mines using tactical slots is not, I repeat not a good idea. Mines using logistics slots is an even worse idea. Whether it's a mine per tactical slot, a mine field per tactical slot, hell even a hundred mines per tactical slot (okay that might be worthwhile but you're missing the point-that's not a good idea)-mines are not going to be worth losing out on static defenses, particularly as Entrenchment has improved them, with any kind of minesweeping agent-which we'd still kind of need.