The Warbarge is new since I quit a year ago. What's it good for and what is the best way to fit/run it? I searched but oddly couldn't find a dev blog or post on it.

Holy Crap!!

! Is this THEE Skihids? The VETERAN from 2011/2012, long before I even learned there was a game called Dust?

Players, salute! Skihids is the author of the still-accessible Dropship Flight School Thread,GǪ considered by most DS players to be the NATOPS of Dropship operation (err, NATOPS is the flight bible for US navy fighter pilots, for those who didn't know). Skihids' thread is the bst thing I've ever seen written about the DS. If you're that same player, salutes to you Skihids!

It's an honor to try to answer your question:
The Warbarge is the only "spaceship" from EVE game world, that a Dust player is able to own.
We can't fly it, but it acts as a personal chamber in space holding all your accumulated wealth, like a free storage garage. This garage has enough internal power and CPU to generate "warbarge components", a sort of sustainable 'nanobot' material that the warbarge in turn stores up in its holding-bay for future use, and uses to build its own additional internal operating sections. Each section that is built (called a "subsystem") becomes its own sustainable small-scale factory, churning away inside the hull of the warbarge,GǪ like a mini version of the mining setups EVE Online players can create.

GǪBut the primary internal factory, the Warbarge-Components factory, is the key to running and improving everything else in the barge.

I suspect that in the future there will be subsystem factories in your warbarge that can experiment on captured vehicles/gear that you looted from your battles, or make communications with black market agents willing to buy your salvage more profitably than Jara Kumora, or grind up the broken scrap parts from your salvage, or repair your broken scrap to increase their resale value.
But for now, there are only 5 subsystem-factories you can build in your warbarge. Not all of them will interest you the same, but you have no choice about WHICH subsystem you want and don't want---the subsystems must be unlocked in sequential order.

As long as the first subsystem, the warbarge-component factory, has produced a huge enough pile of components (I recommend producing a pile of 9000 or so first), you can unlock a subsystem and "upgrade" its output whenever you please, 1, then 2, then 3.
But think CAREFULLY about rushing to unlock each new subsystem right away. Doing so not only takes more and more warbarge components, but also pushes the warbarge to go offline cooldown phase, leaving you waiting for days before you can reactivate the darn barge and collect any of its produced goodies.

Skihids?


GǪ.Other than that the warbarge requires a prohibitively high investment of AUR and I'd stay away from it.