Base Layout Suggestions

[ragen311]

I haven't found much on this topic, but I was looking for a guide that goes into details for the most efficient structure placement.

Some Examples:
- Repair tower placement to maximize coverage of each tower and minimize overlap throughout entire base in case of map spanning earthquake
- Cultivator and Harvester layout to maximize income
- Defensive tower and gate placement. Something like a repeating defensive section for different stages of technology.

I have been playing around with this stuff, but still lacking...especially with my understanding of cultivator/harvester placement.

[adder007usa]

Some off hand observations in my short amount of time playing

Clustering structures is a good idea if they're easy to protect. Small things such as wind and solar power can be drag-built in lines and blocks, meaning you can kind of make a grid around repair towers if you're in an area where they're going to get hit by environment hazards. If you're in an area with significant attack risk, make sure your power cables are redundant, or at least shielded by walls/other structures so that the enemies don't just have to pull the plug and your tower network goes down.

For defensive towers, there's the obvious setup of flame and regular turrets in front, medium range stuff behind them, artillery in back with radar. The big thing though, is to remember that you can have more than one layer of walling; this is particularly important early on in the hazenite outpost; the enemies in question are stealthed, so they can get right up to the gate and do enough damage to it before turrets can kill, so you want to make sure they have plenty to chew through.

I've also found that rushing geothermal and gas power is very important. They're not as subject to the whims of the environment, and their power output is massive compared to your renewables. Sludge should be seen as power generation, not water sources, at the beginning two pumps, two gas plants, 1 gas power, is 500 energy, which is huge. It gets even better when you get liquid handling 2; Your pumps don't require rare resources for level 2, so that means more sludge, more gas, more power. Geothermal is less powerful, but requires less setup, and provides mud/water for your cultivators, which can then of course be used to plant whatever you need, whether its more biomatter for generators, or rare resources. Depending on what's being planted and the area available, I've found that each cultivator can support 3-4 harvesters.

[anguelwyvern]

cultivator rush it that thing is an absolute gold mine !
for a layout here is an example in my game

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2637733001

and here what only 1 harvester get (i have arround 8~10 harvester all arround so multiply this by number of harvester) also keep in mind that on opposite corner value are inverted

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2637733243

and here a defence layout
usually i go for something like minigun > plasma > rocket> railgun> flame, rince and repeat

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2637733338

[Bobucles]

Many monsters deal AoE damage, so air gaps help reduce incoming damage. Less damage helps the repair towers do their thing.

Flamethrowers and Artillery are your key low tier defenses. Fire kills the zerglings, arty kills the bigger things. Basic turrets struggle against the smallest of raids and are only good for cleaning up scraps. Railguns are excellent for zapping hydralisks, they'll cut through the front targets to hit the rear ones.

[dga8705]

I've started switching my main base to a series of rings, my headquarters and important stuff in the center, then rings of walls with towers. Build power generation between each walls, along with resource gathering. I do a repair tower on the edge of the range each repair tower. It's probably overkill, but it helps with the attacks and things like earthquakes and meteor strikes. As I expand out, I reduce turrets from the inner walls.

For outposts, I just go with resource gathering, 8-10 wind turbines, and a wall around them with turrets. Repair towers about the same distance apart, on the edge of the repair range. Rotate turrets along the walls between machine gun, flame, artillery, and railguns. Throw in mine layer towers on a few areas as needed.

I think the only one I did really differently is the tanzanite(sp?) mission with the pipe line, which I started from the harvesting area, figured out the route I wanted to run the pipeline, reinforced the flooring, then expanded with walls, then pipe along the route until I covered it completely.

Enough artillery towers and rail guns will take out any of the bigger mobs.

[ragen311]

Thanks for the replies. This is the stuff I was looking for

[ragen311]

I know this kinda branches off from original question, but is there a good resource for what towers and weapons are worth the resources and upkeep? I noticed nobody here mentioned minelaying towers and drone towers

[ragen311]

If I don't have to worry about minelaying towers then I could lay down flooring in front of walls to be able to move faster during attacks

[anguelwyvern]

tbh minelaying tower arent that great (i play in extreme and during raid i get so many mobs that they litterally line up, and form a huge red blob on the map) once a mien is set its pretty much gone for this raid tower may place down few during but most likely usefullness will be over

despite i tryed doing some testing, and i found that this "setup" work best

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2637800737

just in front of the mine tower, is a shockwave tower, i still need to do some adjustement, for repair to reach n stuff, but basicly the idea is

mob pack at shockwave (shocktower stun aoe in mass)
will turret behind bombard, and mien are just to prevent some mob from reaching the wall

so far went smoothly, even give plenty of room for the mech to just dakakaka with a minigun :D

(also you dont see it in my screen but just behind the artillery, there is 2 heavy artillery turret just 5m behind)

[[Peppe]]

One pattern for repair towers is in a line tower 1 - 6 spaces - tower 2.
That covers 12 tiles away from the tower -- and each tower covers 3 tiles to the side from their base (hence the 6 tile gap).

So if you use that spacing you can have no gaps in a line out 12 spaces -- that is nice to line up with walls while be safely tucked behind all of them.

You can also combine parallel lines of these to cover 24 tiles between two lines.
Example:

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---12---xx---24---xx---12---
---12---xx---24---xx---12---
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---12---xx---24---xx---12---
---12---xx---24---xx---12---
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If that is too many repair towers you can take 1 off the reach of the towers and space the repair towers 10 squares between them.

Take another off and you can space them 14.

6 spaces between reaches 12 tiles to the side of the repair towers.
10 spaces between reaches 11.
14 Spaces between reaches 10.

Shape changes there to 2:1 instead of 4:1.
16 spaces between reaches 9 tiles to the side.
18 spaces between 8 tiles
20 spaces : 7 tile

22 spaces : 5 tile reach
24 spaces : 3 tile reach

[Stryderunknown]

Originally posted by anguelwyvern:

tbh minelaying tower arent that great (i play in extreme and during raid i get so many mobs that they litterally line up, and form a huge red blob on the map) once a mien is set its pretty much gone for this raid tower may place down few during but most likely usefullness will be over

despite i tryed doing some testing, and i found that this "setup" work best ...

I do something similar, however I stick some artillery in with the minelayer up front, the idea is that they hae increased range than if it's built back inside the base wall. Most enemies that reach the minelayers walls tend to be taken out by the defenses behind the base wall.

Getting a repair station inside the base wall but within distance of the minelayers bunker means it can be repaired between waves without you having to do it manually. (I wouldn't rely upon repair drones for tanking damage)

Currently looking at a different defensive build using the larger Artillery (Huge range) which requires having pipework. The main problem there is getting enough mats to feed them.

[anguelwyvern]

Originally posted by Stryderunknown:

Currently looking at a different defensive build using the larger Artillery (Huge range) which requires having pipework. The main problem there is getting enough mats to feed them.

dont trouble yourself too much, in my base dispersed in grp of 2 (2 in each corner you could say) and its more than enough i ve never seen a mob reach my walls !
if you add mods in tower with fire rate and damage (damage not really needed but its to help with huge walking rocks) then they will fire way more than normally, and beleive me, more than enough :D

but if still you want more (moar always better i know xD) my way to deal with the piping, is i just made a huge plasma (purple pipe) go all arroudn my base to power up the shields, and then where theres heavy, place down 1 LV3 supercharged factory
a heavy art LV3 need 25 supercharged plasma, lv 3 produce 75 super plasma, by taking advantage of the normal plasma pipe you can feed tower anywehre ^^
with this you could power up 3 heavy art anywhere easily

here thats what i mean

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2637833301

[Ziyadah]

If you're talking about the campaign, base layout is sorta irrelevant.

Use an Cobalt outpost map as a giant cultivator farm. Drop water pumps into a bunch of water sources, get at least 2400 water being made from the mud, then run pipes and set up cultivators on both sides of the pipe with three harvesters per cultivator. Leave enough space between each water pipe row for them to be able to plant stuff. Cultivators need a LOT less room than you'd think to maximize output.

24 cultivators split between the major resources generates enough resource income to never care about anything again. If you really want to make things easy, move all storage/ammo/armory/research buildings to this map as well. As soon as it's set up and running, leave the map and never go back. Welcome to infinite resources that never get attacked because they're on an inactive map.

Now you have enough resources coming in to build all the L3 Fusion plants you desire for power. Downsize your main map base, double thick walls, and line them one space back with repeating laser/railgun/missile/plasma towers. Place some repair and arty towers. Win even on Brutal without even paying attention.

[Sharlatan]

for perfect coverage you put repair towers on an 11 by 11 grid (central to each repair tower. (there will be overlap, but because the grid is square but the coverage is circular,thats inevitable.

I prefer a 9 by 9 grid as that lets me construct a 5by5 grid of size 2 buildings around each tower, with a one tile gap between grids for readability. and each repair tower just covers the next one over,