Base
Bases are the cornerstone of your faction in Alpha Centauri. These manufacture your units, collect your energy for your economy and research, provide votes for supreme leader, and provide some defensive assistance. If playing with Do Or Die, taking all of a faction's basses results in game over for that faction. It is through your bases that everything your faction does gets implemented. Conquering a base has important effects.
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Base Screen Overview
Most base management is done through the Base screen. This can be accessed by right clicking on a base and clicking on "Goto Base Screen." At the top are #Governor Settings. Down the left side are the nutrient tanks for #Growth, the commerce that your base is doing, and a box containing the mission year, your faction's energy reserves, and this base's Eco Damage. The right side contains a list of #Base Facilities and #Secret Projects this base has produced. In the center is a screen where you can see this base's #Resource Production, #Support map, or #psych effects. Bellow this map are details of this base's #Budget.
At the bottom left is information on and controlls for this base's Base Production. In the middle bottom is the name of this base, the #Citizens of the base and the list of Units occupying the base square. At the bottom right is a list of units supported by this base. By clicking the arrows next to the base name, one can jump to the base screen of other bases in your faction.
Citizens
At the bottom of the base screen is a list of citizens that live in the base. Each citizen is listed as an icon and has particular effects. There are various ways to lower the number of drones at a base or increase the number or talents.
- Workers: are rendered yellow and are the working class of a base. These citizens can #work a square in the base's grid and contribute no special benefits or penalties.
- Talents: are rendered blue and are the citizens of your base who for one reason or another have an abundance of leisure. These citizens can #work a square in the base's grid. Having more of these citizens than drones prevents a drone riot and having most of the citizens (including specialists) of a base these citizens and having no drones produces a golden age at the base.
- Drones: are rendered red and are downtrodden citizens (for one reason or another). If there are any of these at a base, it prevents a golden age at the base and if there are more of these than talents in a base, the base experiences a drone riot. There are multiple ways for drones to be created:
- Dependent on Difficulty every new citizen after a certain number at a base is initially rendered as a drone.
- Dependent on Difficulty and a faction's Efficiency rating, once a faction controls a certain number of basses, each new base controlled adds a drone randomly at one base.
- As a result of conquering a base, that base will have additional drones for the next 50 years. The number of extra drones is mminimum of either 5 minus 1/10 times the number of years since the conquest or the sum of base size and difficulty level minus 2 all over 4 and rounded up. <math>\min \left ( \left \{ \left ( 5 - 1 \over 10 \right ) * t , \frac {BaseSize + Difficulty - 2} {4} \rihgt \} \right )</math>.
- For pacifism resulting form a low Police rating.
In addition to these citizens, you can create Specialists at your bases. These citizens no not work base squares and thus don't contribute to nutrients, minerals, or pre-budget base energy. This means that they need other citizens to feed them and they won't help the base build things. What they do is that they is they add energy at this base to the different energy allocations at the end of the #budget. When there are not base squares a citizen can work, any new citizen must be a specialist. They do impact the calculation for whether a base is in a golden age. Because of this, a golden age is imposable a base that has more than 40 population even if it has 20 talents and 21 transcendi.
To create a specialist, left click on a citizen and assign it to a particular specialty. To change a citizen's specialty or to turn it into a worker, do the same. Any citizen can be a specialist and turning all citizens into specialists can prevent any of them from being drones but could cause a crash in base production, mass starvation, and stranding units (causing them to disband).
There are several specialists who become more special with advancing technology. Once a specialist replaces a particular specialists the more ordinary specialist is no longer available.
- Doctor, +2 Psych
- Technician, +3 Economy
- Librarian, +3 Labs, requires Planetary Networks
- Empath, +2 Economy, +2 Psych, requires Centauri Meditation—replaces Doctors
- Engineer, +3 Economy, +2 Labs, requires Fusion Power—replaces Technicians
- Thinker, +1 Psych, +3 Labs, requires Mind/Machine Interface—replaces Librarians
- Transcend, +2 Economy, +2 Psych, +4 Labs, requires Secrets of Alpha Centauri—replaces Empaths and Thinkers
Psych
Psych is a measure of how devoted a base is to making its citizens happy. A base that invests in psych should have few to no drones and several to many talents. Through different processes a base's energy, nutrient, or mineral output can be invested in psych. Energy can be spent on psych by a faction's factionwide budget, nutrients can be spent to support psych generating specialists, and minerals can create #Base Facilities, #Secret Projects, and Police units.
By clicking on the "psych" tab on the base screen one can view the psych effects on the citizens of the base. These effects are calculated in a specific order and is given bellow.
- First the base calculated its base citizenry. The non specialists start as workers and are changed into drones and talents per the above descriptions. The total population in a base (including specialists) are included in this calculation and faction effects come last.
- Second the base changes workers into talents based on this base's #psych spending. The final spending from the #budget and the input from specialists is included here. 2 energy spent on psych changes a worker into a talent. If there are no more wokers than 2 energy spent on psych changes a drone into a worker (with 4 changing a drone into a talent).
- Third the base includes the effects of #Base Facilities. These mostly change drones into workers but they can also change citizens into talents or drones depending on the facility.
- Fourth the base includes the effects of Police. Ordinarily one or more combat units (up to the maximum allowed for your faction) acts as police with each police unit turning one drone into a worker. A high police rating can see a police unit turning another drone into a worker, and Non-Lethal Methods can turn another drone into a worker.
- Fifth the base includes the effects of #Secret Projects. These effects are the same factionwide and not limited to a particular base.
- Sixth the base includes the effects of pacifism from low Police ratings and having combat units outside your faction's territory.
The result after these calculations are the base's population composition. Specialists are not effected.
Drone Riots
If a base has more Drones than Talents then it will be in a state of a Drone Riot. While a base is experiencing a drone riot, the workers still work base squares but all #Minerals after supporting units are lost and #Energy not going towards psych is also lost. This means that the base ceases to produce anything and does not contribute towards your energy reserves or towards psych. The base is maintaining things as they are but not progressing.
If a drone riot continues, the riot can destroy #Base Facilities. This can destroy facilities that will make the riot worse (e.g. the rec. commons) by increasing the difference between drones and talents meaning greater chances of destroyed facilities or defection and making it more difficult to restore order. A base that is rioting for long enough can defect to a rival faction. The faction that is chosen is likely to be the Drones or one whose leader has a poor impression of you. This defection can happen after one turn. Drone riots do not destroy secret projects.
There are a few ways to handle a riot. One can increase the policing in a base. One can increase psych spending either factionwide or by turning citizens into specialists. One can commit an atrocity such as destroying a base. One can change production to a facility that shows negative time to complete on the Base Production grid that can help quell the riot (eg. the rec. commons) or to a colony pod to reduce population. One can build or gain control of a [[Secret Project
Long term base facilities should be built, police should be added, or factionwide effects should be changed to make a drone riot harder to happen at this base.
The The Telepathic Matrix prevents drone riots at all basses belonging to the controlling faction no matter the difference between the number of drones and talents at a base and ends any riots that are currently ongoing.
Golden Age
If a base has no drones, at-least half of its population are talents, and has a base population of at-least 3, it is in a golden age. Golden ages are determined base by base and while unlikely, it is possible for a faction to have 1/3 of its bases in a golden age and 1/3 in drone riots. While a base is in a golden age, that particular base is considered to have the social effects of +2 growth and +1 economy over what your faction would otherwise provide for that base.
Resource Production
Base Budget
Description
Nutrients
Description
Minerals
Description
Energy
Description
Growth
Description
Support
Description
Base Production
Description
Eco Damage
Description
Governor Settings
List
Combat Effects
Description
Base Facilities
Table
Secret Projects
Table
