Alien bases

[falcon]

Hi,

 

Did anyone knows the numbers of aliens bases ? Does it depend on the difficulty level ?

 

Is there preferred localisation ? The 2 last ones I recently discovered were in Russia (Siberia) and in South Africa...

[NKF]

There's no set number of alien bases. You can keep destroying the bases, and they'll keep building them if you let them.

 

Alien bases are generated two ways.

 

The first is the most common, which is by way of a base construction fleet. This starts off with a series of alien scouts that survey a potential building site. Finally, a battleship comes along to finalise the base and determine where the base will appear where ever it lands. If you destroy the battleship before it lands and takes off, you'll stop the construction.

 

The other occurs when a country defects to the aliens. Sometimes an alien base will immediately appear in the country. Not always, but it can happen.

 

Their location is random, although I find that the first few alien bases are generally within reach of your main base.

 

- NKF

[falcon]

OK but how many alien bases should I expect to see 5, 10, 20, 100 ?

 

Should I destroy them as soon as discover or wait a little ?

[NKF]

Well, it varies from player to player, and game to game. I imagine you can see anywhere between 6 ~ 8 or maybe above 10 bases in the course of a normal game from start to end. You'll get many more if you leave the base construction crews alone or if you choose to draw the game out for a long time before launching the final mission.

 

As for what you should do with the alien base, that's entirely up to you. The alien bases will incur a small area activity penalty for as long as they are active. Of course, the monthly total for the activity of each base is nothing when compared to a single assault on a UFO, but it's still there. As long as you can keep the area activity scores at a healthy level, you'll do fine.

 

I say destroy the base if the activity points are troubling you, or if there are too many base, or if it's a base beloning to a species you really hate (like Ethereals, for example). You may want to hang on to one or two, if it's an easy alien race like the floaters or snakemen. You can go after the supply ships and get a lot of experience and equipment this way. This will get rid of all your money issues and exotic alien supplies, and you'll end up being very good at taking out supply ships.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

OK but how many alien bases should I expect to see 5, 10, 20, 100 ?

 

Should I destroy them as soon as discover or wait a little ?

Well, the max I have seen at one time is 30-31 alien bases. This is atypical because I let the aliens do what they wanted for some researching. Not only that, but the drain on your monthly score is hard to fathom: 30 bases * -5 points per day per base * 30 days per month = -4500 points per month! It's hard to keep your points high enough to negate this drain so getting rid of alien bases ASAP is usually a good idea. On a normal campaign I only have one alien base on the map for raiding. Any other bases that pop up are removed when prudent.

 

- Zombie