Extra logistic slots

You can get 4 on neutral gravity wells (gas giants, asteroid belts, space junk, plasma storms)

There are two reasons to build more media hubs.  First, culture spreads faster, and second you can drive off competing enemy culture more easily.  If there is no competing culture, the only benefit to multiple culture centers is how fast it spreads.

Usually trade ports.  If it shortens your maximum trade route, you may have to make a decision.  If you decide not to put trade ports on the planet, and the loyalty or resource levels are too low to build refineries, there may not be any use for those logistical slots.  However, sometimes having 4 or 5 factories on one planet can really help churn out units if you get in a fix and need rapid reinforcements.

Leaving those logistical slots empty isn't necessarily a bad choice.  It costs you nothing and you still get all the other benefits of the planet.

I'll try to give my best input. 

For Trade Ports, the game's A.I. will choose the path that gets you the most money, so you don't have to worry about shortening a path or something.

I don't build refineries much, but each refinery sends 1 refinery ship to each extractor at its own well and each adjacent well.  So typically build them when there are a bunch of resources at that world and nearby,

Media Hubs can give you a race specific culture bonus if you fight in a world controlled by your culture, and as long as you research the bonuses.  Plus, it can make planets neutral after a very long time, and decreases tax income constantly until the culture spread is stopped (by your own media 'outlet' or capital ships.  So if it's deep in your territory, you better watch your planet's allegiance and income. 

Well, someone told me to save the first desert world for putting down labs for research, then later ones use for factories and trade.  Culture can be spread from behind the frontlines, albeit a bit weaker.

I hope that helped. 

Cheers guys, very helpful.

I'm now wondering if it's possible to ALT-GROUP up shipyards across severals planets and have them all build units and send to a specific location. make for some nasty reinforcements when coupled with phase gates.

on newplayer's response:

Although the games AI may choose a path to give you the best benefit it will still only pick this from a list of shortest paths. I try to force it it following a snake path around my systems with a trail of trade hubs. The real question is am i making money by leaving some systems bare?

You do have to worry - you can hand craft a route that forces the game to give you a better path then it would otherwise pick if every planet had a TP on it

Putting extra culture down is not a bad idea, but culture looses "power" passing through a planet. The amount of power is also evenly devided amongst all phase lanes. Based on this knowledge, you need to decide if you want to increase the power by stacking on a planet and if you want culture pushing the enemy harder which can be achieved by stacking or placing culture strucutres closer the the enemy culture (thereby avoiding the penalty for passing through a grav well).

A lot of people will turn there dessert planets into eco centres - 9 trade ports (10 for TEC if they get the bonus)

Just click on the planet and select the "create frigate" button from there.  It will automatically split the work between your frigate factories.

As Hack mentions, you do need to hand-craft your longest trade route.

Oh woops.  Sorry guys.  A.I. always seems to pick the long route for me. 

So if I had that problem, how would I handpick my route?

Picking what to build where can really depend. I play TEC mostly, and when I run into desert world my usual inclination is either to turn them into an econ giant or a forge world with as many shipyards as i can cram into it. Of course, it varies based on your situation and map. If there's only one desert planet but it's at a great spot for attacking or defending, you might want lots of shipyards. If it's farther back, trade ports are probably better. I suppose you could put a ton of research stuff into it, but generally i'd think it would be better to spread those out to prevent a single attack from knocking you back to the stone age, so to speak.

Culture is another option, one which the ai occasionally seems to like. It's annoying, but since culture weakens as it passes thru each gravity well and divides itself up across phase lanes, your money is probably better spent dividing up the culture generators and going with one of the others, unless you're in a culture war for some reason. That said, I played a game against the ai where it pulled an all-culture desert world on me, and between that and having a half a dozen broadcast centers spread out across adjacent jumps, i ended up losing several gravity wells and almost losing a few more before i built enough of my own to counter them. As such, in some situations it's possible for culture to be a good choice, assuming the planet is well located and you get the element of surprise. Just make sure to capitalize on the situation before a) they build a bunch of their own culture centers or they send a huge fleet to pull an Alderon on you... unless, of course, that's what you want them to do.

Overall though, culture is too slow to make much of a difference compared to either of the other two main options (loads of money or mass production - i imagine the vasari could do really well with a single centralized shipyard and some phase gates). The bonuses it gives are nice, but not earth shattering. Im not sure off the top of my head about the Advent or Vasari, but the TEC just get extra antimatter regen IIRC. As such, 9 time out of 10, extra logistics are best spent on a well planned trade route, particularly if you can route it through a desert world. Just make sure when you start building to have a clear idea of what your current territory is, your likely future territory will probably be, and plan ahead. Put research stations away from your best possible trade route where possible, if you're the TEC remember you can research to get an extra 4 spots at EVERY colonizable gravity well (even the dead asteroids), and if the game is likely to go on long enough, make sure to plan for the possibility of enemy culture on border worlds.

The game does pick the longest route, but you can force it into a longer one by not building one in certain places. If I built a complete circle of TP, the route would be shorter then if I removed one of the links. this is what we mean about manually building the route... Remember trade can go through suns and wormholes too.

Again, thanks for the thoughtful replies, guys.

Do suns/wormholes allow trade routes to pass through them in Entrenchment as well? Or have they removed that since it's possible to build a conducting starbase on them? I have a lot of testing to do when I get home from work! I'm also keen to hear what some of the longest trade routes have been.

Again mentioning the using the ALT+# groups for shipyards, I don't recall if you can hotkey structures, let alone across several planets. But this would be great for pumping out huge quantities of ships fast.

You mean selecting frig factories from several grav wells and putting them all in one group?  I tried this and it doesn't split the work scross the factories.  It just uses the first selected grav well and the frigate factories located there.

Ah well. Nudge nudge devs. heh

Probably worth filling an entire desert planet with shipyards then rather than splitting them up

Only if they are close to where you are fighting, or you are vassari and have phase stabalisers up

The most extreme example I've seen, is each trade port earning 4.4 inc/sec.  That illustrated example also includes a good explanation (and illustration) of the negative result of 'spamming' tradeports.

On the small Derelict map, there are a couple ways to make an 8 chain route with just 2 tradeports!

It also easy to make very long trade routes on the small Agamemnon's Bounty map with few planets, and that might be what the map description: "only the most cunning grasp the greatest rewards" is referring to.

Mind you, these are using vanilla Sins.  As mentioned above, Entrenchment traderoutes DON'T automatically extend thru uncolonizeable grav wells like the original Sins did.

Regarding culture, only ONE media center can eventually accomplish the same increase in allegiance/income as many. 

Trade ports are usually your best use of extra logistical slots.  But sometimes, building enough [8] civil labs to get the 'super techs', like Pervasive Economy or RA can be a better payoff.  Finally, lots of military labs [8] are required for the super weapons.