The foundation for player made bases in ED already exists in game.

The Fleet Carrier.

Why doesn't FDEV simply expand upon that? Maybe give us 2 or 3 additional slots for our fleet "base" but 6 or 7 options to choose from.

Combat Support Vessel :: Call in a few fighter class or even small ships to fight with you similar to how system security does already, only now you could have that done anywhere your fleet is. This would obviously have to have a cool down of more than a few minutes to avoid people spamming it.

Material Gathering ::

1. Commodities
2. Raw
3. Manufactured
4. Signals

(The non-commodity materials could either go directly into your inventory or be kept in the ship with one of the contacts until you withal them manually.)

Reconnaissance Vessel :: Basically a ship of explorer NPCs that go out and explore the local astrological bodies and nearby systems. Negating the necessity to have to go out and manually scan every single body to get information about it.

Each of these could have their own ship that slowly and passively collects their designated items based on certain criteria that the system it is in currently in meets. You could even outfit these ships manually if you wanted.

This reduces the grinding, gives us more depth to play with, and something to spend our space bucks on.

The Fleet carrier could be so much more than just a Uhaul+ if they would just apply a little bit more to it.