Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

So I think I am on the way to mastering this game. It is a great, IMHO, but one thing still puzzles me:

How do I utilize Space Bases. I haven't actually built one yet, for fear of doing something wrong, thereby wasting rescources.

I guess these are my questions:

1) Space bases can't move, right? Once they are built, they stay in place?
2) can anybody give me some ideas for space base designs, and how to best utilize them?
3) Generally, what are they good for, except defense and late game ring/sphere world building?

Asmodean

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

bases are great for building ships and units as well.

a 500 kt base can hold 1 space yard, command and then there is 50kt left over for a missle or a sat launcher or mine layer and a cargo.

Later in the game bases are great for warp defence...

Some people will deply the base build yard on a 1500 kt base with the mine layers and sat launcher on it and build the 100 mines and sats for the warp point.

Also bases have great mounts so the 2500 kt base with ripper beams on them are quite deadly.

No they cannot move.

I usually place 3 to 5 bases above my home worlds and have them build ships ( colony ships )

And where I have fleet training going on I build about 5 or 10 of them to build units for the ships.

Also if you are in the black with resources bases allows you to build more units and ships per turn.

then when you go in the red just mothball them.

Then when times are plenty again unmothball them and build away again.

Utilizing bases is a very important aspect of the game.

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

That's good advice. Along with the spaceyard and defense bases already mentioned, I also have some specialty bases that I use - rarely, but sometimes they are appropriate:

Repair Base - Has maxxed repair bays. Used in a sector that has at least one space yard to expdite fleet retrofits, usually between my core production and the front lines. Mothballed when not needed. This is great at a training planet. Retrofit and train at the same time!

Fighter Base - (space stations are a bit small for this. If you want to include a spaceyard, use larger bases) with or without a spaceyard, these can hold and deploy fighters for defense. Keeps cargo room on the planet available for other things like weapon platforms. Use fighter bays and cargo bays. This can also be used as a staging point for carriers on the way to the front.

Cargo Base - Very rarely used, but if you want a staging point for units, and you don't have room in the planet cargo, a base can hold lots of misc units and/or population. Any base with cargo capacity (cargo bays, fighter bays, satellite bays, mine layers, drone launchers) can help your population transports. Wrong breathing population can be temporarily stored there until the next population transport comes by without doming the planet. Another rarely used but useful function is to put one of these over a huge breathable when the planet population gets full. This way you can transfer some population to the base to allow the planet dwellers to be fruitful and continue to multiply.

Slick.

[ September 29, 2003, 15:53: Message edited by: Slick ]

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

Remember, units that you build with a base that cannot be stored in the cargo of the base will go to any other cargo space present in the sector, i.e. other cargo ships or planetary cargo. What I like to do is to build a cheap base with only a space yard on top of a planet and let it build weapon platforms. These will be dropped right to the planetary cargo when completed, you can use emergency build with your base (it's a "use only once" base http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) and it will keep the more productive build queue of the planet free to build facilities or ships.

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

Quick question tesco: why put a Satellite- or Mine-launcher on a base orbiting a planet? Planets can launch a near-infinite number of Satellites or Mines every turn. I'm just thinking that I'm missing something in your plan.

Repair Bases are Grreat! Any time you're doing the retroseries thing you want a few of these around. They are quick to build, can be mothballed when not necessary, and are fairly cheap to unmothball.

Throwing population into a Cold Storage base is only something you'd only want to do after you've confessed that you are a micro-manager. That said it's usually a may to recover from a mistake, mistakes like "why did I leave that non-breather population there" or "why have I let population get all the way to the max on this world" or even "why, oh why, did I forget I was at war with half the people on this world". I use them.

Remember to never mothball your Last Ship Yard Base at a remote location.

When I first started playing I shunned the Ship Yard component because it was so much slower than the Facility. But once you have five or six of those babies going at once you see their value. Then you get twenty-three of them going, cracking out hollow, basic hulls and retroseries those into a war fleet with your seventeen Repair Bases.

When using Ship Yard bases it's a good idea to name them after the planet they orbit, that way you can tell where they are when you open the Construction Queues window (F7), and sort by name. I name mine something like "Errul II Alpha Ship Yard" or sometimes just "Errul II A" depending on how many moons Errul II has.

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Quick note, in case you are not going to scrap the base right after it's done with it's Emergency Build: a mothballed base will not use up 'Slow turns'. That is, a base with 10 Slow turns remaining after a long stint of Emergency Building, will still have 10 Slow turns left when you unmothball it.

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

Lets not forget that a Starbase or any base with mining bots can help pad your resource influx each turn. I usually create a Base Ship Yard that then creates resource bases that usually have an output between 5K-30k+ a turn for specific resources. It takes more than 10-15 turns to build a good asteroid mining farm but once that supplemental income starts coming in, I found it to make a HUGE difference that has pushed me over the edge. AND none of the resources gained by mining given to any of trade treaty.

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Loser it is a warp point deployment.

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

I believe he referred to that part:

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I would believe such bases are over planets, except if you are willing to put them in danger over warp points. And in the early game, you cannot put a Space Yard on a ship, until you have Cruiser technology.

[ September 29, 2003, 18:32: Message edited by: Alneyan ]

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree, though I suggest that in a PBW game you try not to use such obvious names. Best to fool the enemy for as long as you can. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

As mentioned, bases are good for a number of reasons. As to what weapons etc to use, it would depend on where they are deployed. Example, if you use them for a wormhole defense then some good powerful short range weapons with some longer ones mixed in, torpedos are good for the quick hit. Over a planet, they you might want to consider missles and longer ranged weapons. Use these in conjunction with Sats (pds etc) and they can cause some heavy losses especially on wormholes.

In addition, as you expand your empire, you will find that you outrace your space yard production and it takes longer to get from way back to the front. Build space yard bases over foreward planets or a system behind and you keep you builds coming faster, in this case you mothball your backyard ones until/unless they are needed. I usually take 1-3 planets per system and build 3-5 spaceyard bases over them. This gives me the capacity to build lots of ships and get them to the front quicker.

They give you more building power/production then if you only use planet bound ship yards.

Weapon mix again depends on what you want to accomplish and the type of racial trait/s you've taken. best way is to experiment until you find what you like. Remember tho, each game is different and therefore you may have to change your base makeup each game again depending on what trait/s you took and who your are fighting in the game.... enjoy

just me 2 cents worth
just some ideas Mac

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

someone else to welcome to the forums!

hi, welcome to the forums! according to a
recent unbiased poll, i'm the craziest person here!

[ September 30, 2003, 06:02: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What exactly is the advantage to this, as opposed to building completed ships??

Asmodean

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What exactly is the advantage to this, as opposed to building completed ships??

Asmodean</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Might I direct you to this web page, it links to a lot of common questions.

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What exactly is the advantage to this, as opposed to building completed ships??

Asmodean</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Let's say you can build two ships. A weak ship with DUC weaponry and another one with, ten Wave Motion Guns. The first one could cost 4,010 minerals, and the second one 6,001 minerals. You would need 4 turns to build the first one, and 6 turns to build the second one with a spaceyard whose rate is 1000/1000/1000

If you build the first one and then retrofit it into the second one, you will need five turns if you have a fleet of Repair Bases. On the other hand, without retrofitting, you will need six turns. But it isn't that faster there.

You could use several retroseries to build a ship much faster, the first one with only standard components, the second one with more components and the Last one completely functionnal. Here, you would need only four turns. Retrofitting is useful when the ship is rather long to build, say a Stellar Manipulaiton ship, but quite expensive. (And the other asset of retrofitting is when you have to face an emergency, but that's another story)

Some tend to use retrofitting when building fleets, they should be able to give more and better reasons to explain their choices. However, retrofitting can be time consumming, when you are using ships needing several retrofittings, and when a hundred of theses are involved. I hope you are patient enough then. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

All the above is true for Simultaneous games. In turn-based games, retrofitting is unlimited, meaning you could transform the most basic ship into a ship featuring all Stellar Manipulation components, if you had enough resources, in a single turn. But I would believe that is overpowered.

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

i do not like retro as it is too much micro management.

Old ships make good targets http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif And with having the extra space yards just build more ships and waste your coin that way. P.S. if your going to retro mothball them first at a location with a resupply.

And I take 52% repair rate anyways to Retro will kill me.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes at the beginning they are over planets as you will not have a 500kt ship for quite a few turns.

And I feel it is better to build the complete package instead of the guts then the fluff.

Upgrades I would think of doing is upgrading the duc IV to V or point defence.

Thats about it.
But this is all do to time factors. I play a few pbw games so I do not have the time to go around and select many ships and upgrade them.

Now if there was a upgrade all ships then yea i would do it.

Re: Help a N00b with Space Bases
 

I don't do much retrofitting either. I usually have enough problem with managing all my units and diplomacy in some games to bother with optimised retrofitting.

The only circumstances where I do retrofitting is during emergencies, or a ship here and there. If some of my ships are simply too old, just throw them away against the enemy, it will also make him a bit more confident. That is, if you do want to get rid of these ships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif