Difference between revisions of "Base Facilities (EU)"
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Revision as of 02:53, 5 January 2009
There are several types of base facilities that you can place in your installations. Some of these are available from the beginning of the game, others are gained through research. With the exception of the Access Lift, and the facilities you start the game with, all require an amount of time to be built and will charge you a monthly maintenance fee on top of the initial construction costs.
You can remove old unwanted facilities that you no longer use if they are empty, but if you do you should note their is a known bug that means that it is very expensive to keep around empty squares that used to be occupied.
All base facilities must be linked, either directly or via other base facilities, to the Access Lift. While you cannot dismantle a base facility that is in use or is linking other facilities to the Access Lift, it can be destroyed in the process of a Base Defense mission. If a base facility is destroyed in this way, any other base facilities that were relying on that facility as a link to the Access Lift will also be destroyed. Any pieces of equipment, craft, or personal will, however, remain in the base (despite the lack of room).
Initial vs. Researched Facilities
Initial Base Facilities:
- Access Lift
- Living Quarters
- Laboratory
- Workshop
- General Stores
- Alien Containment
- Hangar
- Small Radar System
- Large Radar System
- Missile Defences
Researchable Base Facilities:
- Psionic Laboratory
- Hyper-wave Decoder
- Laser Defences
- Plasma Defences
- Fusion Ball Defences
- Mind Shield
- Grav Shield
Quick Cost Reference
Structure | Construction Cost | Maintenance Cost * | Construction Time | Stackable? |
---|---|---|---|---|
Access Lift ** | $300,000 | $4,000 | 1 day | No |
Living Quarters | $400,000 | $10,000 | 16 days | Yes |
Laboratory | $750,000 | $30,000 | 26 days | Yes |
Workshop | $800,000 | $35,000 | 32 days | Yes |
General Stores | $150,000 | $5,000 | 10 days | Yes |
Alien Containment | $400,000 | $15,000 | 18 days | Yes |
Hangar | $200,000 | $25,000 | 25 days | Yes |
Small Radar | $500,000 | $10,000 | 12 days | No |
Large Radar | $800,000 | $15,000 | 25 days | No |
Missile Defenses | $200,000 | $5,000 | 16 days | Yes |
Psionic Laboratory | $750,000 | $16,000 | 24 days | Yes |
Hyper-Wave Decoder | $1,400,000 | $35,000 | 26 days | No |
Laser Defenses | $400,000 | $10,000 | 24 days | Yes |
Plasma Defenses | $600,000 | $12,000 | 34 days | Yes |
Fusion Defenses | $800,000 | $14,000 | 34 days | Yes |
Mind Shield | $1,300,000 | $5,000 | 33 days | No |
Grav Shield | $1,200,000 | $15,000 | 38 days | No |
* These are the maintenance costs listed in the game, but in fact these are all incorrect. They depend solely on placement in the base. See the Maintenance Cost Bug, below.
** GEOSCAPE.EXE says the Access Lift takes 1 day to build and costs $300k, but in fact it is constructed instantaneously, and its cost varies depending the region of Earth where you choose to place it.
Caveat re: Single Use Facilities
Normally, the more base facilities you have, the more you are able to do with them. This is not so for certain facilities, even though it isn't obvious in the game. For these, only the first facility provides any benefit to the base. They are: The Small Radar, Large Radar, Hyper-Wave Decoder, Grav Shield, Mind Shield and the Alien Containment.
The above facilities work with other facilities, but any duplicates won't provide any additional benefits (while still costing maintenance). This is especially important for the Grav Shield and for Radar. The Grav Shield will only repel attackers once per base, no matter how many you have (so one is all you need). Likewise, a second Large Radar doesn't provide any additional large-radar functionality, but a single Large Radar and a Small Radar will stack and combine their scanning abilities.
While the base information screen does list how many radars you have, that's all it effectively does - It does not represent your base's actual scanning ability. Further, once you have a Hyper-Wave Decoder, you do not need any Small or Large Radars, and can dismantle any you have. The Decoder has a wider range and always detects alien craft immediately, unlike either Radar. (But watch out for Paying For Dirt when you dismantle radar.)
The only reason to build multiples from the above single-use list would be for strategic base defence reasons, as each module provides a different lower corridor layout.
Displayed Base Maintenance Cost Bug
X-COM has an interesting bug: When tallying maintenance costs, the code erroneously passes on the row number of the base that the facility is found in, instead of the record number for the facility. The following table shows the first six base facilities from BASE.DAT (compare, e.g., their order in the in-game UFOpaedia). Alongside are the monthly maintenance costs for having a facility on a particular base row:
C1 | C2 | C3 | C4 | C5 | C6 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
R1 | 4k | 4k | 4k | 4k | 4k | 4k |
R2 | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k |
R3 | 30k | 30k | 30k | 30k | 30k | 30k |
R4 | 35k | 35k | 35k | 35k | 35k | 35k |
R5 | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k |
R6 | 15k | 15k | 15k | 15k | 15k | 15k |
Record Facility Maintenance 00 Access Lift 4k 01 Living Quarters 10k 02 Laboratory 30k 03 Workshop 35k 04 Small Radar System 10k 05 Large Radar System 15k
Due to the bug, the monthly maintenance cost displayed on the base info screen for base facilities depends only on their placement (and the in-game UFOpaedia maintenance numbers are effectively meaningless). However, the Geo finance Graph does get the total correct.
The in-game mechanics (the actual monthly cost) are correct as well. Next lines are only hypothetical (see discussion):
Hangars are only charged once, for their upper right (upper left?) square. So a Hangar along the "bottom" of your base would cost $10k/month.
If you are looking to save money, clearly it's cheapest to have a strategy that puts a defensive buffer along the third or fourth row, like so:
This layout costs $329k/month: The hangars on the bottom are 3*10, the lift is 35, and the rest is 6 * (30+10+4). Replace all the Psi with whatever you like, it's irrelevant. Also, the Lift could be anywhere on its row. The average cost for a facility on the top 3 rows is $14,667/month (44/3). |
A design with hangars along the top costs $402k/month, $73k more expensive than one with hangars along the bottom, despite having precisely the same facilities. Here, the average for the bottom 3 rows is $20k/month (60/3). |
So a design with hangars along the bottom is the most cost effective for a "full" base. Small outpost bases have more options available. If you have hangars along the bottom and a single connector facility on rows 3 and 4, the average cost for facilities on the top 2 rows is only $7k/month! (14/2) This is cheaper than the listed (erroneous) maintenance costs for everything except these three facilities, at $5k/month each: General Stores, Mind Shield, and Missile Defences.
Note: This bug has the dubious honor of being a fairly straightforward, important one which went unnoticed for a dozen years until Sfnhltb caught it in February 2007. For more info, see this page's Discussion.
Paying For Dirt Bug
If you take down a facility and leave bare dirt, you will continue to pay maintenance on it. But not at the old rate; filling the hole back with dirt means it needs special attention at all times by specialists. In fact for every square of dirt you have that used to be a facility you will pay $80k/month. Thats $320k per hangar you take down.
There are only two known ways to stop paying this premium: 1) completely dismantle the base, or 2) build over all the spaces that you have vacated. In fact as soon as you start building the new facility you stop paying the premium, as well as not having to pay the cost of the new facility until it is complete.
Note: If you start a facility and change your mind before it is complete, after the time it would have completed you will start paying this $80k premium!
Base Construction Quick Notes
- Destruction of base facilities through combat and the domino collapse effect - To Do
- Base Disjoint Bug - in progress
For More Information
A number of topics involving bases are discussed elsewhere. See:
- Xcom_and_Alien_Bases#XCom_Base for images of all base facilities.
- Base_Layout_Strategy discusses base defense tactics. X-Com_Base_Terrain addes a few more thoughts.
- Base_Defense describes base defense at a more strategic level.
- The UFO_Base_Kit, for designing your own base layouts!