Why do I need my HQ?

[iXenon]

In TC/AP I never had my own headquarter although I think it was possible in general. But here in FL it's given at the start. I was trying to find a use for that, collected some blueprints and produced some lasers but now it looks like it's much easier just to bail pilots or board the ships. Almost everything you need you can buy, for rare goods you can build complexes and so on. So, now my HQ is just idling, I haven't been visited it for a very long time. Now thinking to produce a Khaak corvette, but then what? Does it have a really good usage or this is needed for building TOA mainly?

[Cycrow]

There are several things the HQ can build that you cant get elsewhere. The relay beacons for unlocking additional HSAP and the TOA construction kits, and there are several ship and weapons that you cant get anywhere else, you will find the blueprints for these.

It can also produce station, so you can become enemy with races without losing access to buying stations. This also includes unlocking equipment to install on your ships so you are not relying on the other races.

The HQ also includes other functions like the spray shop to colour your ships, and the loadouts for equipping multiple ships.
You can also recycle ships and stations to get wares
The drone carries also require the HQ to replace its drones (only the boron drone can be bought, the rest have to built at the HQ)

The HQ is also the homebase on your agents, so its needed for diplomacy.

The biggest advantage is to allow you to go fully independent from the other races, especially useful if you go pirate

[Deathifier]

To add to Cycrow's list, esp. if you aren't interested in the ship and station reverse engineering and construction:

• The HQ is great at producing Boarding Pods, should you like boarding capitals.
• It is the only structure I've found that can dock several capitals so you can use it as a centralised place to park and resupply those capitals.
• Massive cargo hold, useful to store equipment that you want to stock in larger quantities (e.g. missiles).

With respect to it being the homebase for agents, the effect of this is the travel distance to an agents destination is calculated from the HQ - so put the HQ near races you want to frequently interact with.

[Jimmy C]

the effect of this is the travel distance to an agents destination is calculated from the HQ - so put the HQ near races you want to frequently interact with.

You can use the Hub to make the distances even shorter. Connect one Hub pair to your HQ's sector. Connect the other two to sectors with two different factions on either side. For example, Kingdom End/Three Worlds gets you Argon and Boron, Teladi Gain/Family Whi gets you Teladi and Split. Put the last one to a Paranid sector, and that's all 5 of the major races. If the HSAP sectors south of Unseen Domain and south of the Unclaimed sector to its west are available, take that one. That's three claimable sectors on just one Gate link.

[Sovereign01]

I put together a small table that lists how many border sectors there are between the races, the Boron and Tealdi have borders with everyone, and those are the only two races to share borders with the Split. The Argon and Paranid each border three, however, the Paranid only have 5 border sectors to Argon's 8.

[Jimmy C]

So, which would be your suggestions for Gate links? I chose those two because they're far enough from hostile sectors. Teladi Gain is also close to Ceo's Sprite, which is also a very useful yard.

[Deathifier]

Remember that there are also the Terran along with minor players, so whilst the hub can help it's not perfect.

Instead of moving the hub gates around I set them up to try and minimise jump times to my main sector (with its production facilities, and the eventual HQ destination) without inviting the Xenon in.
Then I moved the HQ around to try and minimise agent travel time, ideally with the HQ in the same sector as the target, until I'd picked up all the station blueprints and whatever else I needed to get via agents.

[Jimmy C]

Well, my HQ will be busy with production projects, so it won't be moved around much.

[Sovereign01]

Thanks to various boarding actions I've got nearly a dozen ships in the reverse-engineering queue, the only inconvenience is that if I acquire a ship that I need to RE right away, I have to remove all the other ships waiting in line to get it to the front and then re-add the rest, it's not possible to re-order the queue.

I did wonder why the travel times were inconsistent, I'd forgotten it was tied to how far the HQ was from the target sector.

I've currently got the HQ located in the hub sector, and I've placed jump beacons by both it and the hub itself so ships headed for either have both safer and faster transit. Particularly handy if I have a slow TS bringing in a large shipment, practically instantaneous OOS.

As for the connections themselves, I've linked to The Hole/Atreus' clouds, Company Pride/Thuruk's Beard, and Sacred Relic/Interworlds for connections with Argon/Boron, Teladi/Split, and Paranid/Argon, respectively. I'll probably move the first one to Kingdom End/Three Worlds to space those out better.