Hey everyone, I was hoping to get some tips on base management.
In vanilla I do everything in my first base, all the research, all the manufacturing, etc etc. I set up additional bases as Storage Facilities to hold all the crap that ive got piling up, whether its alien alloys or e115. And I make them double as radar outposts too.
In piratez I was forced to make a second and a third base for manufacturing. My secondary has an industrial printer. My third has a factory.
My first one doesnt have anything special but since its the place I launch attacks from I need on-demand manufacturing without a shipping delay. Also since its my research facility due to the unmovable Laboratory I need my prisoners there too, so thats the only place ive got a prison (I eventually built a second prison cells building due to wanting to capitalize on slaves).
In piratez I was forced to upgrade my storage facility bases with a few extractors and about 30-50 runts each. And all they do is mine Hellerium. Because late game you're going to need at least 25,000 Hellerium racked up and probably more in order to have constructed the 500+ Hellerium Fuel Cells necessary to build the endgame ship (I say more because it probably needs extra hellerium to boot, and also because hovertanks require fuel cells to build and they're worth it).
Usually bases like these are stocked full of Power Stations so that they make money for me just sitting there, but since ive got runts mining hellerium and making no money on their own it offsets it.
Note: if you have alot of Hands you need to either get them killed off in suicidal charges (blaze of glory as it were) or just sack them, a few revisions ago salary bonuses were instituted for hands and the ability to demote their rank was removed (from the engine itself).
TL/DR the higher their rank the more they're draining your pocket dry arbitrarily. Keep your number of hands Low and kill off the senior officers so that way they don't start charging you like 100,000 or 400,000 per month.
You should never have more than about 15 hands at the primary base, and no more than 3 at radar outposts (supplement their combat ability with tanks, and base construction with those fire pit structures). If you dont keep them under thumb they'll bleed your operation dry, the brainers already eat up too much as it stands.
(in my personal modded version I got rid of most of the salary increases, they just go up to about +40K per month tops. Plus I made brainers cost 25K salary like vanilla)
BTW, battletank m1 has the same $/hr as m1a if you buy the plastasteel, so there's no need to fuss around with buying stuff.
Why buy plastasteel when you can make it?
My secondary base has the printer and the mint. Just about all they do there is either counterfietting chips, or doing Scrap Metal + Chems = Plastasteel.
Then they ship the plastasteel to the base where the factory is, and it gets used to manufacture the battle tanks.
Otherwise I typically have a big surplus of it flowing in from attacks, it often makes me have to ship it away from my primary base, so fabricating plastasteel in addition to that - the Battle Tank manufacturing gives me somewhere to invest that plastasteel into without simply selling it (though I realized that Boom Gun ammo is also rather profitable to put it into also).
And where do you plaece your bases? Any hints for "minimum bases to maximum land coverage without gaps"?
Pictures related. Though ive got 7 bases, two of them are bargain basement and dont have hangars. My first base was setup smack dab in the middle of Europe.
Also I HIGHLY encourage you to do the following things for game start:
* Sell your standard radar so you fly blind for the first few months. You'll be able to advance well enough from popped missions anyway. Even though you could follow ships to landing spots its rare that any of them land, so its no benefit to you to track ships until you can shoot them down. That starting radar system will give you I think ~300,000 bucks to work with at the earliest part of the game where it is dreadfully needed.
* Temple maps are money hauls, even into the start of late game. If you club/harpoon everybody like you're supposed to - you can net probably 500-700K per mission, but you're going to make less than that because you're going to want to interrogate as many of them as possible until their tech options dry up. That's how in early 2604 I ran out of data disk topics. NEVER KILL SHARP GUYS, they're 40k and barely armed.
* Reticulan Plasma Charger is the best starting aircraft gun, you can shoot down civilian traffic without blowing it up (ive only seen this happen once maybe?). You go in and club/harpoon civilians and ransom them, especially Sharp Guys. Later on Charger Laser is ideal but its harder to get to than it used to be. Gauss Cannons are the serious anti-ship weapon and you can get those long (long) before you're able to actually use gauss on the ground.
* Dont build radar AT ALL (anywhere) until you have Overcharged radar, and even then only at your primary attacking base. Between Missions and whatever crosses that radar that you can chase it will "do well enough" because of its wide spread. The radar that the "outpost" facility has is pitiful but if you have a craft at those radar bases it still allows you to go right after someone vulnerable who gets too close, I could care less whether it had radar or not, I just like that it has lodging and space to provide base assault defense without me having to make a barracks and vaults.
* rush Hyper Wave Decoder tech, and feel free to build THOSE in all your bases. Thats why you dont want to waste money outfitting bases with dedicated radar systems, its money that will be tied up until you eventually sell them because you got your HWD up and running (early game, first year, you
do not want money tied up in things, Power Stations are the only exception id make). And I got mine going rather early into midgame, I forget when but I had HWDs in 2602 without a problem.
