Approaches to Base Building

[FiendishDrWu]

After not touching XPiratez for a while, I've gotten back into it this last week.  I'm liking the changes, particularly with regard to events.  Throwing/bows also seem to have gotten some love, which is nice!  I've been loving the throwing axes.

Unlike vanilla X-Com, where you could get away with it, you can't just build a couple of "Do everything" bases and call it a day - there's simply too much stuff to be built and done.  Here's my current approach, in July of the second year:

- Main base, Isle of Lesbos in the Med, all the research happens here.  I have two hangars, one for El Fuego (heavy intercepts) and one for a Turtle (undersea and general combat).  Also 50 runts working on Chateau and X-Grog whenever they're not doing equipment/extraction/gambling/tokens/enslavement/recruitment stuff.  Goal is to transition this to ground missions and science entirely.

- 2nd base, China, 2 hangars, with Airbus (w/ assigned Lokk'Narr team for sneaky missions) and Pachyderm (for orbital or do-this-in-a-hurry ground missions.)  Also setting up large living quarters and one or more dojos; the plan is to have a large population of Gals in training here, as well as being my second point for launching ground missions.

Next two bases are more peripheral; they're staffed with Peasants constantly training in Dojos and with second-line gear, which has been sufficient to fight off the Ratmen and Doom raids they've had (albeit with casualties from the Doom Imps!).  They also have a single hangar, currently empty, waiting on good interceptor craft.  One is in Antartica and I'm working towards making that my Mint/heavy workshop base - I just got the Mint and am constructing it; for now it's 65 runts making X-Grog, and the other is in Brazil and has 4 Sectoweed farms going. 

Once I've got a little more cash, I want to set up  hyperwave/hangar with interceptor/token garrison bases in North America, Austrailia and central Africa as well. 

What are other people's approaches to base building? 

[FiendishDrWu]

WHAT THE FUCK

Missile strikes are BULLSHIT.  Two in the span of a few days???

[Solarius Scorch]

WHAT THE FUCK

Missile strikes are BULLSHIT.  Two in the span of a few days???

You've been warned! Black Dragon says this explicitly (only Jack Sparrow has early missiles).
If you don't like this, edit your save by changing difficulty from 4 to 3. It won't change much, but will disable the "ruin my day" features.

[FiendishDrWu]

I seem to recall setting the Difficulty at John Silver, which makes sense - save file has "difficulty: 1"

I'm afraid I have no idea who Black Dragon is or what warning was sent my way.  I've encountered a White Dragon who I've bought some tokens from. 

EDIT: reading the save file, apparently I'm 23 months in, not 18 like I was thinking.

Spoiler:

Two Flak cannons seem sufficient to stop the missile, assuming they both hit. 

[Solarius Scorch]

Sorry, I assumed it was much earlier, since that's what you get for playing on Jack Sparrow.

In your case, you pissed off the wrong powerful person (AFAIK there's a warning before that, but I could be wrong) and now they'll throwing missiles at you once in a while. The answer is build more defences or intercept the missiles en route. Or just swallow it up and rebuild.

[Nalca]

Better build base defenses, even if it is Flak cannons.
They can shoot missiles, demonic invasions and marauding ratmen. Even bigger threats if you have enough of them.

And they can shoot them on the world AND during a base defense.

[arbee81]

I'm in a similar position, the last time I played missile strikes weren't a thing (or at least I don't remember them).  I recently had a base blasted down to the access list and 1 hangar.   There was no warning, but then I also didn't have radar at that base.  Would that make a difference?

In my case I definitely recently pissed off the church (some shrine ships landed in my backyard), and maybe the Guild (I shot down some passenger ferries, no big, right?).  Are the missile strikes always tied to something like that or are they random?  I had a church hideout assault around the same time that I assumed was triggered by the shrine ships getting sacked.  Is there a chance for missile strikes and a hideout assault to trigger from that, or maybe a chance of each from each ship?

My approach to base building before was to spam them out as quickly as I could and focus on establishing some basic defenses (hands and some gear) and then workshop stuff to make money, then build them out and specialize as needed.  Most of the time I don't even bother with radar until I get hyperwave decoders since my interception options are limited.  I'm thinking I need to slow down a bit and turn these more into fully fledged bases.  It's weird, I usually never bother with base defense buildings until the late game, even in vanilla.  But then I guess that's the point of the missile strikes, huh?   

And since this is a base building advice thread, I've been toying with the idea of surrounding the access lift and hangars with security corridors to block off the sewer layer and spread out the gals more.  The way I usually build bases is to have the hangars and access lift isolated so that the access lift is the only point of entry to the rest of the base on the main level, but then the gals are so densely packed around that corridor that explosives can easily take a few out each turn.  Has anyone tried the corridor thing and how did it work for you?

One thing Piratez always teaches me is that I really suck at base management

[arbee81]

Ha!  Spoke too soon.  The missile strikes weren't done, and now the hangar is gone.  Still got a pretty sweet access lift, though.  Suck on that, factions!

[Solarius Scorch]

Neither the church nor any other main faction uses missile strikes. Only one very specific faction does, and they announce it openly before they do it. There's no way you can miss it.