Going from your "Modding Help" post, your using a 1.83 Map file, which removes Administrators since they were not added to this file untill 2.0. You will have to add them in. Unless your happy not to have Administrators.

Look at the top of your resources and relics quantity list.

After this night patch we have on insane map only 32 administrators + 50% from research!

Please, change it, it is impossible on insane-size map almost without bases... Yesterday it was almost 90, and is it not enough to play normally.

Looks to me like we would need a game setting for starting administrators to directly set the desired number for the personal play style within a certain range.

It got tweaked because players were saying the starting N number of starbases was a bit much. Overall I quite like the system, but in my run through I thought the initial number could be reduced in order to force you into thinking about where you would use them a bit more, particularly early game. However, If I'm reading the latest patch notes right you get a lot more from teching up now. Unless you were a starbase mirco-manager prior to the admin system (how do you like them clicks? ) I don't see how it makes a game impossible, especially when you can build out planets themselves way better than the AI ever could by virtue of using specialist buildings and planned hex hubs alone. Currently the AI can't really compete with the production a decent player can get without significant bonus' because they don't use hardly any of the special buildings (the reason I would like AI govs to have another pass).

You actually get quite a bit more than that.  If you go through the tech tree you'll see you get 20% bumps to it per high level tech plus a couple that give you more admins outright.

I don't like the idea of administrators limiting the number of starbases you can build. I may not have played this game as much as others, but my experience has shown me that spamming constructors and starbases is a good way to fall behind on military ship construction. Shouldn't this and starbase maintenance be factors that limit how many starbases you build?

Only in early game according to my experience. Later it's no problem to keep up a good military *and* spam constructors ...

I still support a soft cap rather than a hard cap..

Administrators represent free to build starbases....

once you run out starbases cost 1000 credits to build and say 25 to 100 credits a turn to support....    This can be reduced with research but never eliminated.

if a player just REALLY needs that starbase, they will be able to build it.  But at a loss of revenue or other options to spend money.

I really think that just eliminating the over-lapping stacking effect of economy starbases would go a long ways to cutting down on the constructor/starbase spam.  In other words, just make it so that colonies can only benefit from the effects of 1 starbase.  Just that one change would alleviate many of the problems of tech research snowballing too fast late game, problems of the AI not being able stay anywhere close with player production, constructor spam, any many many many other minor and major issues.

Just a thought.

Er... no,  that would just kill the concept of "tall empires" dead.   Do not like.

A hard limit (with bonuses from tech etc) is fine with me.   It might be a bit more 'realistic' to have a softer limit and make starbase maintenance costs above that limit grow in an exponential fashion,  but I don't want to have to evaluate whether or not that would be "worth it" - I'm not an accountant.   Hard limit preferred.   I think Brad is absolutely going in the right direction with Administration limits.

You know how planets sponcer shipyards. This is already in the game can we have this as an optionally sponcer starbases. Have a screen like shipyards for starbases where instead of planets you could have shipyards. You could have one shipyard, one shipyard for multiple starbases, or multiple starbases for one shipyard. This would be for automated constructors. If you didn't want automated constructors then you wouldn't need a sponcer. This way I could dedicate shipyards without a lot of deleting. Cutting down on micromanagement. If you had multiple starbases for one shipyard the shipyard take turns sending constructors to starbases. The starbases would become empty when there are no modules. 

Can we have Back the shipyard shutdown button.

Bach!  Yes, we need more classical music!

Sorry

Have you considered instead of just consuming 1 administrator per starbase, you consumed a partial administrator per starbase module?  Perhaps a starbase consumes 1 administrator, but each module consumes 0.1.  Letting you make decisions about how generalized you want starbases to be vs how many you need.  That gives you some nice tall vs wide gameplay I'd think.