Base design

[XT]

I don't see many guides on what you really need in a given base. Are there any base design guides out there?

[Ozone]

You need everything.
The strategy part is to know which order will you use and how many will you build.

Just play the game, Building the base is part of the learning experience.

[Twelvefield]

You need one of everything, at least, in your main base. The most critical things you start out with: elevator, hangars, living quarters, power, engineering, storage, radar, and science.

As you make progress, the usage markers will turn red if you don't have enough capacity in your base, so build another of whatever that is. There are adjacency bonuses for grouping similar items together, which are listed before you commit to building. That's pretty much it.

You're the Commander, so it's up to you how to spend your budget. The choices for the main base are informed by your immediate and future needs, so they are straightforward. You will run into budget problems if you build too quickly. It's not like XCOM where bases sprout like mushrooms. In Xenonauts, you generally rely on your main base and then have one or two satellite bases that just have elevator, power, radar and hangars for interceptors.

The only variance comes with ground batteries. Do you build them? If you have the funds, why not. They will offer significant protection against having your bases attacked by UFOs. But the UFOs have to find your base, first, which isn't easy for them. Likewise, do you staff those bases with troops? Chances are you may never need them. It all depends on how you handle your budget.

EDIT: I didn't mention Training and Medical. Get those as priorities. Without them, your troops become brittle.

[Purple Eyestabber]

Holy crap, what a bunch of useless nonsense that doesn't address the question at all. Your main base needs 4 hangars, at least 4 labs, 4 generators (you may have to build 5 pre-upgrade) and you should decide whether or not you will put manufacturing on the second base and how many reserve soldiers you need. That will tell you how many living quarters you need, but 4 is the bare minimum. Don't see a point in expanding the storeroom and AFAIK radar only matters up to three, 2 training stations and 1 medbay. So you should plan your base with a living quarters block, a lab block and a generator block, bare minimum. Everything else you fit wherever you can. Oh and the storeroom gets adjacency bonus from the elevator.

[Gamerzilla]

^^^

Originally posted by Purple Eyestabber:

Holy crap, what a bunch of useless nonsense that doesn't address the question at all.

He asked for a guide, not a rant.

[XT]

Thanks, that helps, since I don't know what base upgrades I might get in the future.

[Stan]

Good question XT
Now your on to something.
Arguably the most important set of decisions you can make in the onset of the game.

[BoydofZINJ]

The base grid is a 6 by 6 grid [36 tiles] and 1 tile is the mandatory Access Lift.
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Your first default base is mildly inefficient and Generally speaking you need your first base to be a jack-of-all trades type of base

Your other bases u could them into either specialty outpost or a bare minimum radar outpost.

I am not sure if this is efficient or not. On every new base i build I will always build the following:
The Access Lift [Elevator] (it is a requirement and needed, so duh)
1 Generator (even a bare minimum outpost will need at least one generator)
1 Radar (u want to be able to detect them alien immigrants and aggressively deport them)
1 storage room (If u collect junk, you can now store it)
1 Living Quarters (just in case u want to turn your outpost into a launching pad or a place for ur engineers or researchers)

All my new bases I will build the above 4 things. After that, i will look at the area and my needs and determine what to do next, If u build a base and it looks to be in a terrible location. Just leave it with the bare minimum and hope to uncover a few random UFOs. Otherwise, turn it into a specialty outpost.

What is a specialty outpost. Let us assume you are in dire need of weapons and want to make them quickly. U want to have one of your bases have 3 or 4+ adjacent workshops to let ur engineers make stuff faster. Likewise, u notice the country or area is being hit hard by those alien immigrants who want to illegally enter earth. Then u can build hangars and additional radar and generators. Or maybe you are lacking in research and have a ton of research to do, then build a ton of research buildings.

The optimal EARLY layout would be 2x2 grid

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Each building will have 2 adjacent buildings as a bonus and it is only 4 total buildings. U could expand it to 6 (either a 3 x 2 or 2x3 grid)
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or
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Either way you now have 6 buildings with 2 adjacent bonus each [the 2 in the middle will have 3 adjacency bonus].

Depending on your situation, funds, and area u want to build as many adjacency buildings as possible. I am guessing the optimal layout is a grid of 3 x 3 x 3 (9 total buildings. 3 adjacent per row and column)
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This will give all buildings at least 2 adjacent buildings with the buildings in the middle having 3 adjacency and with one in the absolute middle having 4 adjacent. Will u have enough funds or the need for 9 buildings? Pffft maybe if u like the slow long game.

Best of all, u can expand the 2x2 into a 2x3 or 3x2 and then u could expand it into a 3x3x3.

If u put the required elevator shaft in the middle that means u could have 4 grids of 9. Realistically speaking funds and space and other random buildings will also need to be placed. I would plan on having at most 2 grids of 9 per base and the rest of the spots dedicated to other stuff. One of the grids of 9 would probably be generators, though. If u are seriously building a ton of stuff on one base, you will need POWER!!!!

This is why u should think of your bases as a specialty base. adjacencies better than jack-of-all trades. With t1hat being said, how many bases do u plan on buildings and how many can you afford?

Going the 2x2 is probably good enough for most things and even then that will also eat up a ton of power, so expect to also have 2x2 generators as well.

Remember, Radars are limited to 3. Having some base defenses and troops might be worth it for your main base and a large secondary base to protect ur investments.

Every game is different and with the RNG it can change in what u need from game to game.

Since there are 36 tiles, could u fit 3x3x3 grid in it? Yes! Technically u could fit four 3x3x3 grids. However, the mandatory access life, the main elevator shaft, will each 1 tile and thus at most u could only fit at most three grids of 3x3x3. Realistically speaking 2 is probably pushing it. I would expect most people to lack the funds and time to make a 3x3x3 grid and so using a 2x2 or 2x3 or 3x2 is where i would settle in for.

[Charles]

You are overthinking it. The base design is really simple. You have stuff that gets adjacency boni and things that don't. You have things that are fixed in the amount you need and things that you scale with your need. Beyond adjacency, placement matters little. Also what you see is what you get. You will get upgrades but won't unlock any new buildings that I have encountered.

Place wherever, it does not matter:
-3x Radar: you need these to extend radar range. 3 is max range
-1x medbay: only if you station troops at the base. You really shouldn't for most bases. Does not stack
- Hangars: Build 1 per aircraft, only build them when you plan to fill them. They have monthly upkeep costs.

Adj boni: So with things that you want a lot of I think the most efficient layout is 3x3 and then extend it in lines of three. So this
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You can also just do a cube for low volume stuff. You need 9x+ for the 3x3 to be efficient.
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Play around and use your brain. The idea is to maximize the number of adjacent buildings. There are probably better combos, but 2x2 and 3x3 is the best I can come up with.

ADJ buildings:
1-3x Storage: Depends on how much stuff you need, but vanilla you won't really need more than 3. Probably could do less just fine. You can just leave blank spaces for future expansion. PLACE IN 2x2 WITH ACCESS LIFT! That building gives adj boni with storage. If you run out of space try selling junk.

Living quarters: You only need as many as you have troops and lab/workshop personal. Pilots don't count. Expand them out in a 2x2-3x3 as you need them.

Training centers: You only need as many as you have troops at that base. Many bases won't even need them, and 2 should be more than enough unless you want more troops for some reason. Just place them side by side.

Power: Early in the game you will unlock an upgrade to this and can get away with a 2x2 cube most of the time. Expand as needed depending on base. It will tell you if you don't have enough.

Engineering: For the starter base I would do a 2x2 cube of them. If you want more later you can do a specialty base. Each one allows more engineers so you will need more quarters and power.

Lab: Same as engineering really, 2x2 main base and expand later if you need it.

Missile battery: Don't bother building it unless it's for visuals. You can use fighters to render them redundant, and you can already wipe the floor with aliens in base defense.

I think that's all but ill give you some base types.

Fighter base: Mostly radars and some fighters with some storage. Just there to extend coverage and shoot stuff down. Most of your bases should be this.

Engineering base: You build one of these and probably won't need more. They are expensive. Make sure to do 3 storages so you can cram all the resources in it. They do generate money when idle... but idk if it is worth building them for that. They need empty hangars to make planes. They can only work on 1 at a time so you just need 1 extra unless you wanna reduce micro.

Science base: Don't really need much storage but is just there to expand research. Not great passive income. They don't scale as well as the engineering,

Storage: Don't need it really. not much stuff to store. Could be nice if you wanna keep all the corpses/weapons of your kills on a longer game.

Training base: Don't really need it. You can generally avoid loosing troops and a whole base dedicated to training would be if you plan to go through dozens of dead troops. There is a better way than troops to defend bases.

Base defense:

You don't really want to use troops to defend your base. 1-2 Squads with a half squad each of backup personnel is all your really need for missions.

Your first defense is your fighters. If you have good fighters you can just shoot them down before they attack.

Your second defense is the sentry bot. You get it with the vehicle research. Build 16 per base and they should eat up anything that comes knocking. 16 is the deploy limit and they are cheaper than troops. You start in the access lift and just park them on all sides and camp there until the enemy comes to you and gets destroyed.

I think that is all really. Mistakes aren't really that bad and you will figure it out in no time.

[cANe]

Absolutely baffling they added the adjacancy bonuses without letting us choose the layout for our first base. What the heck were they thinking?

[Twelvefield]

It's your second base, and it was the General who you snuffed who made those decisions. It's too late to ask him now, isn't it? You can always delete rooms and move them around.

[Charles]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

It's your second base, and it was the General who you snuffed who made those decisions. It's too late to ask him now, isn't it? You can always delete rooms and move them around.

I don't think the access lift can be moved can it? I haven't actually ever tried, but the base requires it.

[Gamerzilla]

Originally posted by cANe:

Absolutely baffling they added the adjacancy bonuses without letting us choose the layout for our first base. What the heck were they thinking?

All adjacency that matters you can get with the first base:
1. Generators on the left, only need 3.
2. General Stores on the right, only need 2
3. Science below on the right, only need 3
4. Workshop below on the left, only need 3.
5. Living quarters below in the middle, only need 4.
6. Training center and medical below living quarters.
7. Hangars along the top wherever they fit, only need 4.
8. remaining spaces on the bottom for anything extra. Most people do base defense turrets.

[[CB] Pandasama]

Originally posted by XT:

I don't see many guides on what you really need in a given base. Are there any base design guides out there?

Day 322 (i'm going to assault UOO), my main base looks like this
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3707152351

my second base have only 3 radars, 3 hangars and 4-5 defense system (and generators, of course)

[roobs]

Originally posted by CB Pandasama:

my main base looks like this [...snip...]

A fine base! With many adjacency bonuses.

There are many hangars conneted to rooms, so if the aliens did attack, there are many paths they can follow from the hangars to advance into the base - they may be able to attack your defenders from multiple sides. But, perhaps that could make it easier to defend -- if they split into multiple smaller groups that hit you at different times, rather than advancing in one giant group.

[[CB] Pandasama]

Originally posted by roobs:

There are many hangars conneted to rooms, so if the aliens did attack

Yes, I get 2 base attack - one rather early in game, second - in the middle (but part of attackers was destroyed by AA guns). And they always go from two direction. I think it make base defense more easy, but - cause it my 1st game (ok, 2nd, 1st I dropped after 100 days) - I didn't think about defense when place hangars, I think about place for adjacency bonus for future rooms.