This seems simple enough, and a pretty logical question to answer, but what happens to any base production that is not collected during the 24 hours it is available?

The way things are right now, if a member doesn't collect their production for whatever reason, it just disappears. What I propose is that any uncollected production be added to the totals for the next day, to be split by those who do collect. It shouldn't be difficult to add in, and as I said it's a pretty logical addition considering the production wouldn't just expire and go bad in the base cargo hold.

Or auto send to the player if not collected within 23 hours of being able to get it

That could work, although I'm pretty sure Dan wouldn't want to reward players for not signing in since he has added so much to the game dependent on logging in at least once every 24 hours. If it auto-delivered you could just sign in once a week and have 7 days of production to use

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17203

your idea is what already happens

True, although from the sound of it no one was ever able to prove it one way or another. No harm in bringing it up again several months later to see if anything has changed.

wouldn't it be fun if all the unclaimed base shipments were randomly sent to another active player in the game each day.

The problem lies in:
a legion of multis, all are active, but only 1 person(main) collects.

So the shipment needs to:
1. go "poof"
2. just get randomly distributed in the legion
3. get sent to the unclaimed but eligible party

If it's a legion full of multis, they would still have to put in the time and effort to get a base producing decently, which requires a huge investment for just one ships benefit, and they already have the ability to send all minerals to 1 ship. Not to mention, they would just set the main ship to leader, and have production set to be received by just that ship, so this wouldn't actually make things any easier or harder for that to happen. This could only serve to benefit actual legions with different account and production set to even distribution.

That being said it seems from the other threads that things are already possibly set up that way, so if anyone has come across further proof of that in the past couple months plz let me know.

The ideal solution to this problem would be for base payout to be sent out automatically as a usable artifact similar to a Smugglers Cache. Everyone (eligible) gets one in their artifact list and they can use at at the own discretion. 3 versions. One mining, one research and one artifact. I don't know how hard it would be to code though, because most base payouts change daily due to activity, loyalty, and disables. Each individual Base Cache would have to track the exact payout for the day it is "claimed."

I meant every unclaimed shipments at a certain time get sent to random player in the entire game

True, the simplest solution would also be the easiest to abuse, since you could solve for the reward amount by rewarding whatever the current day's payout is. But that would let people stockpile them, head to another legion with better income, and cash in. So not sure how that could be avoided with cache-like artis.

Is there some reason why we can't simply add the unused production to the next days total? (As stated before this may already be happening so disregard if proof can be shown)

And lol Sparky everyone would love to get an unclaimed Namalak payday

What about my proof? My old leader claimed a shipment on the second day of %, at the time all 3 leaders had contributed evenly to the base so each was getting 1/3, he said he claimed nearly 1/2, more precise would be 44%, because one of the other leaders was sick and could not claim his share the day prior.

Any other legion the bump is so insignificant no one is going to notice. If a 50 person legion is on even and get 30k daily and one person doesn't claim the next day they all get 600 more, so 30.6k There is no way anyone is going to be able to prove it any better than mine, just accept it.

moving on...

There are also competing theories provided within the very thread you posted to me as evidence, that were never so much as addressed. I'm not arguing that this is the way it is, or isn't, but if the only evidence is one 2nd hand anecdote, the topic is far from settled. There's no harm in asking for a consensus before moving forward, and as of yet one has not been presented.