I found this thread whilst looking for pretty much the same subject.
Depending on whereabouts in the world you are reading this, you could well be in a state of Lockdown. That leaves you with a great opportunity to get in the darkroom if you are working from home; or even more time if you are home but not working.
I have got some Kodak Ektacolor (RA-4) chemicals that started out as a 4x5L Developer Replenisher RT/LU kit. I mix them by the litre and store them in smaller bottles for use with my manual tube processing.
The problem is that I have run out of Starter. The only way to get a new bottle would be online mail order (assuming my stockist has any), for which the delivery charges would be half the cost of the bottle of Starter added on top.
I have read previously what the existence of this thread appears to confirm: it is possible to use the chemicals without the Starter. Simply mix the chemicals following the instructions but miss out adding the Starter and just put the equivalent amount of water in instead.
So that looks like no issue as I can start from scratch with a batch of chemicals mixed without Starter, develop the test strip prints, adjust the colour by analysing the test strips and then print full prints.
Ordinarily with the chemicals mixed including a Starter, they can be reused a number of times depending on the size of the prints following the guidelines on the Kodak Alaris (J39) technical notes.
So what I really need to know is whether anyone can advise about how many times the Starter-less chemicals can be reused; and how long they are likely to keep in tightly capped bottles (days or weeks). In both cases, the answer may well be that absence of the Starter makes no difference to capacity or longevity, which would be good news.
