Help a N00b with Space Bases

[Asmodean]

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

[tesco samoa]

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.

[Slick]

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 ]

[Mephisto]

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 ) and it will keep the more productive build queue of the planet free to build facilities or ships.

[Loser]

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.

[Loser]

Originally posted by Mephisto:
you can use emergency build with your base

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.