Back to the maintenance issues...and a big thank you for the "designate colony" information that is working just fine. The team is busy demothballing the alien artifacts...no colony seems to make the progress slower though.
My questions is regards to frieghters/civillians. Can you overhaul freighters without a civillian freighter facility? I'm planning on establishing a maintance base as part of the expansion plans but do I need to build a freighter maintenance facility there or can I just use the standard maintance facility and the overhaul command for freighters? Also do I need maintence facilities to maintain freighters or a civillian freighter facility?
Yes, you can overhaul freighters, as long as you have maintenance facilities on the planet in question. However, there is usually no reason to do this, as the "Freighter Maintenance Check" order allows what is effectively an overhaul to happen instantaneously as long as there is a freight facility present. IIRC, in the absence of a freighter facility, a freighter will act like a regular ship in regards to maintenance faciltiies. In other words, they won't accumulate time on their clocks if in orbit over a world with maintenance facilities, and can be overhauled normally. It makes much more sense to have a freighter facility available, though, if you are going to be doing a lot of this.
Do the civillians build civillian spaceports on different worlds or just on the homeworld? If so what do you need to trigger this?
I've almost got sufficient data from scanning for jump gate construction 180...but it has taken quite some time...probably close to a couple of years of scanning a gate.
AFAIK, civilians will build spaceports on any world, but as the construction rate is tied to population levels, it will take a long time on low pop worlds.
I think my answers above were right, but Steve might be the only one that knows the answers for sure.
Kurt