Talk:Base Facilities (EU)

I am not certain about this, because it's been a while... I believe Alien Containment also falls in the group of structures that are useless beyond one per base. You can have as many live aliens as you like, as long as you don't have more than ten different types in each base. (Type: Each alien species+their job description.)

You can have more than 10+ live sectoid soldiers in one base, and it would only take up one space in the containment-area.But if you then capture (as examples) a gillman soldier, or sectoid engineer, either of these would take up an extra spot in the containment.

Building more containment in the same base does not increase the ten-type limit. Can anyone else check?

---

Something else to check, I may look into it further at some point but I really want to finish the month I am playing at some point soon, is that maintenance is messed up, you pay vastly different maintenance on some of the facilities compared to what it says you should, and you dont even pay the same amount for second copies of the same type (and the third and so on seem to vary sometimes). To save me repeating it here, i started mentioning on Talk:UFO_Interception (which is getting somewhat offtopic...)

--Sfnhltb 17:09, 28 February 2007 (PST)

One early thing I think I have established is that it is not what number of facility that varies the cost for the same type of facility, but where it is located. A Hangar in the bottom right/left corners costs 10k, in the top middle it costs 4k.

Lift in starter position (3,3, in x,y format - this is like in initial base) = 30k. Top left corner (1,1) 4k, top right (6,1) 4k, bottom right (6,6) 15k, bottom left (1,6) 15k, (4,4) 35k.

To try to detect a pattern I filled a base with 35 Large Radars (very useful!) + 1 lift, and the cost came to 624k, which is 30k for the lift (in the position I put it), and the pattern was like this:

	C1	C2	C3	C4	C5	C6
R1	4	4	4	4	4	4
R2	10	10	10	10	10	10
R3	30	30	Lift	30	30	30
R4	35	35	35	35	35	35
R5	10	10	10	10	10	10
R6	15	15	15	15	15	15

Which leads to the obvious conclusion - the programmers messed up, and when the routine that works out maintance checks through all the facilities you have on a site, instead of passing in the code that says what type of facility it is, (00 being lift (in BASE.DAT) for 4k, 05 being actually the large radar for 15k, for example), it passes in the row number of the facility (0 based array/variable clearly). So anything built on the top row costs 4k maintaince (pretends its a lift), second row 10k (like the living quarters), etc exactly as show above - regardless of the type of facility. Hangars are slightly different in that you pay for one of the top left or top right corners (probably the top left) and the rest dont get paid for.

Convenience supplement from BASE.DAT. Also notice that the in-game UFOpedia also lists them in this order; the BASE.DAT order:

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

I might switch my base to have the hangars at the bottom, so the lift goes on 35 square, and the rest of the base on the top 3 rows, consider a full base 3 hangars, then a lift (in whatever place left to right you prefer), then 18 various stuff.

If you do it hangars on the bottom they cost 3*10, the lift 35, and the rest is 30*6 + 10*6 + 4*6, for a total of 329, i.e. the below base is 329k per month (replace all the Psi with whatever you like, its irrelevant)

Do it hangars on top for 3*4+ 1*30+ 6*35+10*6+15*6 which is a total of 412, so the follow is 83k more expensive, despite having precisely the same elements:

--Sfnhltb 18:50, 28 February 2007 (PST)

Added the details of this bug in several key places, not going to bother go through every type of facility to add a note that the stat on maintenance cost on all of them is irrelevant to the game.

--Sfnhltb 19:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

Removed these comments from main page as it is answered already:

• What happens to equipment, vehicles and staff when facilities are destroyed - Help
  • From what I think I've read else where in here, none of the equipment, staff etc are lost due to the loss of facilities... found it - here: Base Facilities -Phoenix 03 April 2006 12:15 (BST)

--Sfnhltb 19:37, 28 February 2007 (PST)

Very interesting discovery, Sf. Thankfully it's not a very impactful bug, as facility maintenance is cheap anyway -- maybe that's why it went undiscovered so long.--Ethereal Cereal 21:44, 28 February 2007 (PST)

Well, at a certain point in the game it might be useful to known - if you are building 5-6 listening post/interceptor bases using the following pattern:

The bases maintenance would be 20k each, or 100-120k/month for all of them. If you happened to build them all with this pattern:

This variant would be 175k each, or 875-1050k/month for the lot.

Towards 1 million a month at the expansion stage of the game could have a fair impact on your progress, it wont cripple you, but it will slow you down some.

Of course thats pretty much as extreme as it can get on the unevenness - because you are filling either all the cheapest squares, or all the most expensive, and it would be rare for anyone to happen to build like that.

--Sfnhltb 23:54, 28 February 2007 (PST)

---

Amazing to think nobody noticed this for going on 12 years. Good work! - MikeTheRed 19:28, 1 March 2007 (PST)

Heh, submitting bug reports for a game that hasn't been updated in 12 years. We're total loonies. ;-)--Ethereal Cereal 21:55, 1 March 2007 (PST)

Hiya Eth, ltnt. I hope all's been well with ya? I see both of you saw how little impact this had, before I did. Still it's cool to know there are secrets right there, if only we saw them. Ok, tiny ones. And we're nerds, laugh. - MikeTheRed 22:01, 1 March 2007 (PST)

Yep, I've been well. I stopped editing the paedia for a while because it contained nearly all the info I wanted (if in a somewhat jumbled fashion). Plus of course I stopped playing the game too. Lately I've been thinking about starting a new game and limiting myself to one psi-amp per squad, and not exploiting manufacturing for cash. Both detract from the real fun: killing aliens the hard way.

The economics of the game became evident to me very early on. Maintenance costs are a pittance, bug or no (except for salaries, oy!); UFO recovery is a bloody mint; and after a few months, you have so many UFOs to loot, you'll have more cash than things to spend it on.--Ethereal Cereal 22:21, 1 March 2007 (PST)

To think all this time I carefully debated building facilities based on maintenance early in the game (especially HWDs and labs). I suppose this also explains the 'completed' dirt modules problem. The code just cares if a facility is completed and what row it's on, not the type. Now I'm going to assume that the Monthly Costs screen shows what 'should' be the costs. Just seems funny they could get that right, but not the actual amount of money to deduct from the player.

Somewhat related, are craft rental costs correctly subtracted?

--Pi Masta 14:28, 2 March 2007 (PST)

Ok, bit of egg on face here, it seems I messed up. The problem is I thought I had run into a bug. I was wrong, I had simultaneously ran into two bugs and combined them together and created a phantom third bug that does not exist.

Thats right, all that I explained above is not a bug. Well it is - but it only effects the listed base maintenance costs on the Monthly costs page. So wait, was this all about that one screen being wrong? No, you see I did actually roll over a month to check, and the numbers all matched up. I didnt bother trying another case of rolling over the month because everything else checked out i.e. when I removed each facility and went to monthly costs it matched up, and so when the monthly costs and my other costs matched up in the first case, and I had already done loads of checking to see that the scoring of the rows all matched up, I wrote it all up here. By pure chance the differential between my eight bases costs according to UFOpedia and the way the base maintenance is calculated in Monthly costs was 320k.

Lets also note that in that saved game I had remodelled the starter base by moving over the two hangars to the top row. I had rebuilt over 3 of these squares, and in the month leading up to when I did the test I had started an extra Psi Lab also over one of them, although it would not complete until a week into the following month.

That coincidentally left 4 squares of ex-Hangar space. 4 * 80k happens to also be 320k. Doh!

Well I think I have fixed up most of the pages affected anyway, and instead of 1 known bug, now we have two...I think some people have mentioned the dirt payments issue, but no one had quantized it or nailed it down - and I certainly didnt see it suggested it does this for any square you remove a facility from, just ones that were in production and cancelled.

Note that moving the Hangars over costs you 640k a month until you recover all 8 squares of it with new facilities. Thats a pretty hefty price to pay early in the game. I think hex editting FF over all the build times under the dirt would probably fix the issue for a given instance, but havent checked it out yet. Will do so next.

--Sfnhltb 18:47, 2 March 2007 (PST)

Now it's an impactful bug. ;-) Man, 640k/mo (720k if you dismantle the initial quarters too) is quite harsh early on. I don't see much of any way around it if you want to "harden" the initial base. Although you can delay paying it until March, given you're almost into February by the time you build the new hangars.--Ethereal Cereal 21:26, 2 March 2007 (PST)

I hate to say 'I told ya so', but... well I did in Talk:UFO Interception ;-)

"No what's happening is that there are completed 'empty' modules. When you dismantle a facility it doesn't set the days to build to 255 like it should, and instead just puts the dirt tile there. Apparently these completed dirt modules take monthly maintenance (but isn't shown in the monthly costs IIRC)...."

Oh well, we all make mistakes, good thing is you're willing to admit them. You're right that no one nailed down the price though. Maybe we should remove all of this from the talk page as it's no longer relevant? (I'd do it myself, but I don't want to seem like I'm angry or malicious)

Keep up the great hacking :D --Pi Masta 10:31, 3 March 2007 (PST)

Yep, great hacking. All's well that ends well. It's a display bug - that nobody cares about - except for squares that previously held something. Looks like you've made pointers so everybody should know about it. Like Pi says, thanks for the great hacking! And all this talk can be DEL'd - MikeTheRed 18:57, 9 March 2007 (PST)

---

Nice table Arrow, thanks. -MikeTheRed 21:08, 21 June 2007 (PDT)

Thanks for the compliment, it's not a problem. I meant to say this last time, it's nice to meet you too. Arrow Quivershaft 21:10, 21 June 2007 (PDT)

---

If you use the following layout, the base maintenance costs should be 239k/month (6*4+3*10+1*35+6*10+6*15).

As long as you keep your living quarters and general stores in the lower part of the base, there should be no base defence issues.

AFAIK the alien's only mission during a base assault is to eliminate all your troops, therefore the only facilities that need to have a chokepoint to the base access points are living quarters and general stores (if all the other facilities are away from the fighting, so much the better, it avoids accidental facility destruction). I've never seen the aliens intentionally attempt to vandalise any of my facilities during an assault, so there's no reason to deny them to the alien assault other than roleplay.

--Lobosolitario 02:32, 10 July 2008 (PDT)

The immediate problem I see is that, depending on your luck, you could have only a handful of soldiers spawn in the facilities to the north of the Hangars. (All base facilities have X-COM spawn points. It's simply that Living Quarters and General Stores have more spawn points). These soldiers may well be killed by the aliens without much trouble. Conversely, the aliens that spawn in the Access Lift may be able to flow down into the lower facilities before you have a chance to stem the tide, which makes for a dangerous game of hide and seek. The reason for the method that's been shown above is it allows a long hallway with many fallback points to attack the aliens as they advance if you're unable to stop them immediately, and given the fact that the facilities are hardened against destruction, you can use Blaster Bombs to make base defense missions...brief. ;P Arrow Quivershaft 18:22, 10 July 2008 (PDT)

Moving the Access Lift to one side of the base would give you the whole 6x2 area of the lower base to fall back through if you can't hold the aliens at the facility adjacent to the Access Lift, with the front line being a maximum of two facilities wide. That would be about as good a deal as you could get defence-wise while prioritising maintenance costs over pure defence. The 329k/month facility looks harder to defend if the facility adjacent to the lift is breached, as the aliens have more options to spread out and attack your forces on multiple fronts.

As for the spawn points, that's a more troubling issue. I generally have a maximum of 20 soldiers defending large bases such as the one in question, and don't remember them ever spawning in certain facilities, such as radars and base defences. Do you know if some facilities have a higher spawn priority than others, or are spawns randomly allocated between all available spawn points?

Either way, you could move the lift to the top row, meaning one facility less to worry about, and reserve the other five spaces for low-spawn facilities such as the small radar or base defences, like so:

That would minimise the chances of soldiers being spawned in enemy territory, and keep maintenance costs low. In the case that soldiers do spawn in the five isolated facilities, they would have to bunker in on the upper floor, and hope for the best.

On the other hand, the base would take longer to expand with this layout, possibly negating the benefits of the lower maintenance costs. At the end of the day, every player just has to find a balance between cost and effectiveness that suits their income and their playstyle. --Lobosolitario 04:36, 11 July 2008 (PDT)

The Living Quarters and Laboratory are basically the two facilities with reserved all-X-COM spawn points (and high-priority at that). The Workshop has a few high-priority X-COM spawn points on the upper floor and a few shared spawn points on the lower floor. The General Stores (in an unmodified game) has all high-priority spawn points on the upper floor and more on the lower floor in the rooms... except for the point by the steps which is a shared spawn point with a high-priority (this was a bug by the map programmers: it should have been reserved for X-COM). The GS also has a few shared spawn points in the corridor. The Large Radar and Missile Defense modules have some low-priority X-COM reserved spawn points in the upper floor, but at ground level they have some shared spawn points. That's it, all the other facilities have shared spawn points with low priority.

Since the Access Lift and Hangars have only high-priority alien spawn points (and quite a few of them at that: AL=8, H=15), you only need one access lift and 2 hangars to guarantee the aliens will only show up in those locations instead of the other shared spawn point facilities.

Obviously, that psi-lab in the choke point can't be placed there due to the base disjoint bug so it would need to be moved one block in so that your troops can make it to the other part of the base. Also, instead of placing facilities with shared spawn points in the upper part of your base setup, consider placing the high priority X-COM modules there. That way, the battle wouldn't take so long to complete since your soldiers are amongst the action at the get-go. If you don't like having the the open areas of the hangars facing your facilities, just build a facility on each hangar at the upper right and leave the other areas blank. Since the hangar has a door in that location, it makes it easier to enter the hangar system to clean it out.--Zombie 08:10, 11 July 2008 (PDT)

Zombie has done a good job with this, so i have little to do other than to post my personal base layout(which also allows rapid expansion)

I often use General Stores to bridge the starting gap and get a quicker build started in the main area, then dismantle them later. Obviously, this incurs the Paying For Dirt bug, but that shouldn't be a difficult issue for any serious player. Arrow Quivershaft 09:49, 11 July 2008 (PDT)

Arrow, I used to construct all my bases in a similar manner to yours with the three hangars at the very bottom of the base. For some reason though, I started constructing the hangars across the top of the base so I stuck with it. Anyway, one time I placed a raft of Psi-Labs across the top with the hangars below that which looks something like this:

Nothing really different from the surface, but try running a mission on this setup sometime. It's pure hell. The reason? The Hangars and the Psi-Labs are the only two facilities in the game which do not have lighting tiles. Therefore, that area of the base is bathed in perpetual darkness. And that row of dirt obviously doesn't have lighting either so it just makes matters worse. Needless to say, that was the last time I used that setup (and basically any setup where the hangars are situated along the edge of the base). Dark hangars are hard to clean, so I started placing high-spawn X-COM facilities across the top and a few below the access lift choke point. This way, your hangars get some relief with the residual lighting from the upper modules while maintaining a choke point to the rest of your base (the lower part may be more difficult to defend with the myriad of possible combinations of facilities). Just some rather useless trivia if darkness doesn't bother you, but it's good to keep in mind for defending. --Zombie 21:20, 11 July 2008 (PDT)

I didn't know that about Hangars. Although I rarely play Base Defense, and in the rare event the aliens DO manage to attack me, I tend to have a healthy supply of Hovertank/Launchers which can be used to...ahem...'clean up' the hangars without much difficulty. And if I don't have any available? Well...who said *I* had to go root the aliens out? Aside from Psi-capable aliens, I've never had any significant difficulty with waiting for THEM to come to ME. ;) Arrow Quivershaft 21:31, 11 July 2008 (PDT)

True, true. If you have some fusion hovertanks at the base (or soldiers with Blaster Launchers) you can just nuke the heck out of the hangar complex and clean most of it out on the first round. Same thing with psionics, though that gives you a little more of an edge as once you gain control of an alien unit, it casts light and lifts the fog of war (and let's you use their weapons). I suppose the reason why I used that setup was because of how I wanted to play: active. A passive approach to base defense works just as well of course, it just takes a little longer. Of course, if I really didn't want to to play a base defense mission, I'd construct the base so that only my units could show up (if you bring enough guys along, they spawn before the aliens filling up X-COM spawn points first, then the shared, and finally any alien spawn points). If the aliens can't spawn, it's an auto-win mission. Then defendability isn't an issue. ;) --Zombie 21:56, 11 July 2008 (PDT)

Yeah, the concept of the aliens not being able to spawn at all amuses me to no end, and I've done it a time or two just for kicks. Unfortunately, my bases tend to expand in size past my ability to fill all spawn points(Due to file constraints, both X-COM and Alien sides are limited to having 40 units spawned at the beginning of a level. Ironically enough, this limit only ever comes into play in base defense missions.) So once the base gets to a certain size, it's no longer possible to prevent aliens from spawning. At that point, I tend to toss some tanks in(Tanks aren't affected by the 80-item limit which has, on occasion, prevented me from having BLs available. Plus, they get free ammo, have strong armor, and are entirely expendable). But since by the end of my games, I tend to maintain a fleet of Avengers in an anti-air capacity, the aliens can never actually find my bases, getting shot down well before they get a chance. :) Arrow Quivershaft 22:03, 11 July 2008 (PDT)

I am sure that most of this discussion and the info on the page about "maintenance bug" is totally false. All these data tables and base layouts are misleading!

I did test Sfnhltb's bug and it is actually NOT a bug - as he tries to explain in the middle of this page himself (please read it, he says he found the "Dirt payment" bug on the way). Or, better, this is a minor, not important, display bug. Because (as Sfnhltb says) the REAL economy is rightly put, e.g. you pay monthly for what you have built (tested twice!). It is only one screen (BASE info budget) that has wrong numbers, but the way game behaves is absolutely O.K.

I am sorry for anybody who put some work here, but it should be definitely corrected on the "article" page. I can even submit my test savegame with explanation if anybody wishes to see. -kyrub-

He he! Jeez. I never tested it myself. Thanks for updating the article! Not sure I would change the actual title of the entry though, unless you want to edit everything that points to it. Thanks again -MikeTheRed 15:24, 29 August 2008 (PDT)

I would actually delete 80% of the article (including those nice pictures), because it makes a lot of ado out of almost nothing. But I am newcomer and don't feel the right to break down anything, so I just decided to diplomatically change the title and insert the "hypotetically" word in there.--Kyrub 14:31, 30 August 2008 (PDT)

I was doing some tests (Collectors edition) regarding the "Paying for dirt" bug and I come to this conclusion: The first dirt slot costs 54k/month, all above one cost 80k/month. E.g. having 5 "expensive dirt" slots will cost 54k + 4*80k = 374k/month, not 400k/month. Can anybody else confirm these results too? --RATMex B 10:02, 28 September 2008 (PDT)

TODO

• More detail needed. Describe how much damage needs to be done in order for a base module to be considered destroyed.

• All this information should be more accessible under main table's base heading.