posted 04-25-99 11:52 AM ET     

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I'm curious as to the best bases that people have built for various factors - energy production, mineral production, science, nutrient production, etc. This is pretty much unlimited, with orbital facilities and supply crawlers.

I also wonder if it's a good idea to have one central science base. I always have one that I try to give all of the science and energy projects - Merchant Exchange, Supercollider, Theory of Everything, Network Backbone. I've just gotten into the habit of having this base spit out supply crawlers each turn to create energy convoy's from unused squares. What I haven't yet tried is diverting a substantial portion of most bases' energy to this one base with supply crawlers - this would increase research dramatically over time, but all those crawlers take time to build, and they would dtract from Psych in their home cities. I may experiment with this next game.

posted 04-25-99 03:17 PM ET         

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You can always build supply crawlers in other cities, move it to the science city, make it their homebase, and then send them out again. Works better after you get mag rails.

Using this strategy, I start building boreholes in random places for the exclusive purpose of supply more energy to the science center [usually the HQ to prevent inefficiency]. With only the Merchant Exchange, Supercollider, and Theory of Everything, I've gotten over 1000 lab points in about year 2350. That single city usually consists of 1/3 - 1/2 of all lab output for the whole empire.