I could probably do a patch to reduce the abuse-ability of scuttling stations. I agree that especially for the Multiplayer it would be important to have some balance there. Which hopefully will come out in April-May if I'll have the time.
Viewing post in version 7.5.0 starbase scuttling
Nice. Thanks for getting back to me. As I'm sure you know, incremental improvement is key more than getting any particular fix in time. I did want to make sure you knew about this issue because there is no way of getting around the exploit even in single-player; it seems pretty clear to me that a bit of leap-frogging with outposts to expand range is key for optimal expansion strategy. But once such outposts' primary purpose is served and the new colonies are started, it becomes attractive to scuttle and save on maintenance costs. An outpost in a non-system sector has relatively little defensive value, except for some detection capability.