Difference between revisions of "Paladin's Base Guide"

Latest revision as of 22:22, 12 August 2024

Paladin’s Base Building Guide Why, Paladin, Why?

The best base building guide previously available to the general SS community is CometChaser’s awesome guide, which is the one I leant to build from. But due to changes which have occurred recently (and earlier than recently) I feel that an updated version should be created, and perhaps I can fill in some things that CometChaser missed. Her guide, however, is awesome (as I said above…), you should probably read that one too incase I missed anything. I’m sure people will let me know if I have…
Also – People keep asking questions about bases on All chat. Refer them to this guide please.

Why build a base?

Bases are a source of great income; you can use them to build items, to mine commodities, to run colonies, to raise team score and to secure areas of space against your enemies.

What skills do I need to build a base?

The main skill associated with base building is Station Management – This determines how many, and what tech base you can build.
The level in Station Management is the maximum base tech you can deploy.
The amount of stations you can drop depends on the tech of the kit you deploy. To work out how many you can deploy, first look at what kit you want to drop.
Your station kit will have a name like “Station Kit VII” (a tech sixteen kit). The number at the end of the station kit name, in this case, seven. That is the amount of ‘station slots’ it takes up.
The total amount of slots you have is equal to your Station Management level multiplied by two.
So, with Station Management sixteen, you have thirty-two station slots. A tech sixteen kit takes seven slots. The most amount of times that seven will go into thirty-two is four, taking up twenty-eight slots. This leaves four slots remaining, with four tech level sixteen bases remaining.

Slots per tech:
Tech 0-1 (Arcadian) = 1 Slot
Tech 3 (Apollo) = 2 Slots
Tech 6 (Ares) = 3 Slots
Tech 9 (Adonis) = 4 slots
Tech 12 (Argonaut) = 5 slots
Tech 14 (Ambrosia/Avalon) = 6 slots
Tech 16 (Andaman) = 7 slots
Tech 18 (Achilles) = 8 slots
Tech 20 (Annihilator) = 9 slots

Note – After one of your account’s characters has gone over half maximum base slots, the next character to deploy bases will have half base slots, the third a third base slots, the fourth one quarter, and the fifth one fifth. This is to stop single people from owning large amounts of galaxies. It is possible, of course, to make multiple accounts per person.

How do you build a base?

Basically, you get a base kit and deploy it in a galaxy. There are limits to where you can build, the galaxy must not be in perilous space or the nexus level of the universe. The galaxy should also not be protected by a player team, and not owned or protected by an AI team.
You can buy base kits of tech level 0-14 in regular AI stations, tech level 16 from Iq’bana and End of the Universe galaxies (found in perilous space), also unattached t16 kits come from regular AI stations (but they require StM to drop), and higher tech base kits are drops in DGs.

There are two types of base kit – Attached Kits and Unattached – and the differences are quite obvious.
Attached kits can be attached to a planet, moon or asteroid, and will be able to mine from the planet or moon, build a colony, and they move around the galaxy with the planet or moon. Bases built on asteroids become stationary kits once the asteroid is mined by a mining weapon, they cannot mine from the asteroid.

Stationary kits are deployed wherever you like, except for on top of a wormhole, sun, planet or other object. (They can, however, be tractored around to wherever you want them to be) (Be careful about placing bases on certain suns, as they can be damaged by it.)

Warning – bases lower than tech 9, with Adonis gear equipped, are unlikely to survive in any galaxy, even the lowest warp levels. Ares bases can survive (with a shield capacitor equipped) but they can be taken down fairly easily if multiple AI attack, or players. Bases are not invincible, even with Adonis or higher gear.

Other skills

Other skills that will help with base building are:
Drone Deployment
With this, you can deploy drones which have a permanent life-span, and they can be used to defend your galaxy for weeks. There are many types of permanent-drones, and they can be attained by building, capturing, or buying from certain AI stations. Popular drones are the Adonis, Argonaut or Ambrosia drone types, which can be built in your stations using blueprints. They have shield transference weapons, and so can heal your bases, slaves and other drones.
There are also useful drones which can stop AI and players from warping out of your galaxy, preventing attackers from escaping your galaxy. (Nihilite and Warptastic Drones, which are captured in Nihilite, Steppes or Ruby Steppes)
Drone Mastery skills do not improve these drones.
You can apply augmenters to the drones by using the Astral Injection skill. To do this, you can apply an augmenter of lower tech than your Astral Injection skill. Then, take the augmenter to the drone, select the drone, and drop the augmenter. If the drone has augmenter slots (not all of them do), then it will be applied to it.
Note – Applied drone augmenters are lost when the drone is scooped! So you will need to reaug them if you move it.

Station Research
This skill grants you more base slots, allowing you to create more bases.

Station Tweaking
This is like Augmenter Tweaking for your ship, or Slave Tweaking for your slaves – It will add a 2% bonus to your station augmenter stats per level.

What do I need to make a base?

A few important points about bases:
• Bases equip items using workers, most items that you equip take one worker to equip. Workers are ‘tied’ to an item, so will be used up as long as that item is equipped. 200 extensor type items will take 200 workers. You will not be able to remove those workers from the base while those items are equipped.
• Workers eat rations. Without rations, all the items on your base will be unequipped except for your shield (this will likely stop working and your base’s shield level will drop to zero, due to a lack of energy). One worker will eat 0.6 rations per hour. Make sure that rations are always present on the base. Always.
• Base-only energy items (with a couple of exceptions, Adonis and Avalon energies) will use up nuclear waste, in a similar way to ship-energies which use up nuclear waste. The higher tech you make, the more nuclear waste they will use per minute.
• Base gear is far more powerful than ship items of the same tech, you should always try to build and equip base gear of the highest tech possible on your base.
• Bases can only equip gear which is lower than, or else equal to, the tech level of the kit.

Base Survival

Bases are a great investment, and can yield great profits or benefits in the form of items for you and your team, and galaxies of all warp levels are littered with bases of people who have failed to make a base that can survive.

Station Mastery

This is one of the ‘trade skills’ which exist within the game. They are trained through missions in Free Market.
Station Management improves the strength of your stations, raising most stats by 5.5% per level. This can improve the power of your station to far above that of a non-station mastery base.
Of course, it isn’t profitable to have all Station Mastery (StM) bases in a galaxy, and your team, or you, if you are building solo, should try to have a mix of all the different trade skills. The other ones will be mentioned more appropriate sections of this guide.

Improved Base Kits:

Loaded Base Kits

These are only available at low techs from regular AI stations. They come equipped with a couple of extensors, rations, workers, metals, and a basic AI base shield, weapon, radar and energy.

Base kits can be upgraded, to give them higher resistances, and built in bonuses to shielding, range and other stats. The BPs for these drop in DGs and from bosses.
They can be upgraded, in order of power, to:

Fortified Kits
These are built using the regular kit of the desired tech, and titanium sheets, along with some metals and credits. The fortified kit gets a bonus to shield. The resists are dependent upon the tech of the kit.
Laconia Kits
These are built using a fortified kit of the desired tech, laconia sheets, along with more metals and credits. This gains higher resists, and a higher bonus to shields.
Demented Kits
These are built using a laconia kit of the desired tech, dementium, along with even more metals and credits. This gives even higher resists, a bonus to shields, and often a small bonus to range of base weaponry. These can equip five augs.
Adamantized Kits
These are built using a demented kit of the desired tech, adamantium sheets (typically 2-3), and still more metals and credits. This gives the highest level of resists, a larger bonus to shielding, range and some other stats. This is the highest level of base kit you can get, and are very expensive, but if you need a base to survive, this is the best way to do it. These can equip six augs.

Augmenters for Bases

Most base kits can equip four augmenters (with the exception of the urqa base kits, which have six slots, Demented kits which have 5, and ada kits which have 6). One of the most common causes of base destruction is bad augging, or no augging at all. With the right augs, bases can become far more powerful than any other thing in game.

With the recent rebalance, there is another change to bases aside from the necessity of chargers. Base augmenters, augmenters built from blueprints that can be equipped solely on bases, have been improved greatly, they are the only thing you should use. The blueprints drop in DGs and off regular AI sometimes. They take a regular aug dependent upon aug tech, some promethium, metals and credits. They are quite large.
Arcadian = Minor Augmenter
Adonis = Basic Augmenter
Argonaut = Standard Augmenter
Ambrosia = Good Augmenter
Andaman = Excellent Augmenter
Achilles = Superior Augmenter
There are no Annihilator Augmenters.

A full set of base gear
As mentioned previously, base gear is greatly more powerful than player gear of the same tech level, and should always be used in preference to regular gear.
There are eleven types of base gear, these are:

Arcadian (t3) not an official type of base gear. The only blueprints available are for Arcadian base augs. This type of base will die easily.
Ares (t6) not an official type of base gear, not all the blueprints are available for this tech. This type of base is likely to die, unless in a large group.
Adonis (t9) this is an official type of base. Blueprints for this are available in most AI bases. This should be the minimum that you make for your stations.
Argonaut (t12) blueprints are available for this in Underworld’s AI station.
Ambrosia (t14) blueprints are available for this in Nihilite’s AI station.
Avalon (t14) weaker than Ambrosia, and rarely used, however, the energy bank for this does not require nuclear waste, and is more efficient with energy than the ambrosia gear. Ambrosia gear should be used in preference. BPs drop in DGs. There are only energy, protector, laser and radar blueprints.
Andaman (t16) blueprints are available for this in Hyper’s AI station.
Achilles (t18) blueprints are dropped from DGs.
Urqa Base Gear (t18) items drop from the Iq’bana queen, and are produced through blueprints and missions.
Annihilator (t20) blueprints drop from Ubers and bosses in the UZ.
Adamuntized (t20) blueprints for this drop very rarely from bosses.

Other than that, there are some pieces of gear that are found only in certain locations:

Shield and Energy Capacitors, the blueprints for these are found in Free Market, except for the Ares type, which are found in any regular AI station. They a large amount of bank to your shield or energy of a base, they are essential!
Adonis / Argonaut Plating, these blueprints are found in Free Market’s AI station, they take titanium sheets and some other commodities to make, and add a large amount to the resists of your station. These have a failure rate.
Base Dampners, these are bought at Free Market’s AI station, in the items section, it is a good idea to fit these to every station. There are four of them, physical, mining, laser and energy, and they will add 55% to the resists of your station. They are quite expensive though, at 40m credits each. They have no failure rate, however.
The heat and surgical types can be built from blueprints found in DGs, but these have a much higher price tag.
Transference Inhibitors / Facilitators, these blueprints are dropped in DGs, and range from Adonis to higher techs. Inhibitors cause the base to take less damage when using a shield transference, and gain less shields when healed. Facilitators do the opposite, causing them to take more damage when healing, but receive more shields when healed.
Hydrophonics, these are effectively miniature space oat gardens, which can be equipped to any base, and will create space oats. These can then be turned into rations using MRE factories, and used to feed your base. These are found in high-DF DGs, and from missions.
Trandsim, Retardis, Tardis Extension BPs, these add much larger amounts of hull to your stations than Extensors X, Y or Z, and are found from DGs. The Transdim BP is also found from Mzungu Ruins.
External Ablative Armour - This is created from a blueprint purchased at a regular AI station. This will give your base 80% resists to all types of damage, with a low failure chance. These are extremely useful, but they do fail. Don't expect all 10 you built today to still be there tomorrow.
Pest Control Items - There are weapons that spawn pests in your station's inventory, such as the blowworm syringe. These pests multiply, and do damage to your electricity or shield based on the amount of the pests present within the station. You can make these weapons ineffective by equipping Mzungu Cleaners, Ace Pest Controls, Exterminators or Ares Pest Controls. The latter are most powerful and quite easy to create, from a BP from any AI base. Having one of these is highly recommended!

And there are probably many items I have missed…

What is a ‘full set’ of base gear?

With the recent (at the time of writing) rebalance, all of the base gear was included in the rebalance, and so there are some new things to do with bases.

The smallest recommended set of gear to put on a base is:

Laser
Energybank
Protector (shield)
Radar (It is not required that you have a ‘base’ type radar, regular AI ones work, but ‘base’ radars are much stronger.)

This will keep your base alive and able to fight, but it won’t be powerful or very able to defend a galaxy.
The rebalance nerfed the regeneration rates of base shields greatly, so it is now advisable to equip a charger on all bases. This will add a large amount to base shield regen. Base chargers usually take two of the type of shield, and a ship-type charger.
e.g. Andaman Charger takes two Andaman protectors, one argonium charger, metals, promethium and credits.

Base Weaponry:
Pulsegun (short range, high damage, high rate of fire) each tech of pulse does a different damage type, so it can be advisable to equip multiple types so that you can take advantage of different levels of resists in your targets.
Adonis = Energy, Argo = Energy, Ambro = Heat, Andaman = Surgical, Achilles = Mining, There is no Anni Pulse [Thanks Acidflame!]
Magcannon (long range, good damage, medium rate of fire)
Superlaser (slightly longer range than regular lasers, lower damage than regular laser, but gives whatever it hits a –transference vulnerability, which causes all healing done on the target to have a lower effect) blueprints for this are found in Lyceum, and requires the infinite knowledge skill.)
Shield Transference (this is a powerful healing weapon with high-range, useful to keeping drones, stations and other objects in the galaxy alive.)

It is recommended that you equip all your bases with all these weapons.

Note - Bases can only equip a max of 6 weapons.

So, where to build?

The places you can build are listed above, but different galaxies have different resources. Obviously you want to get as good a galaxy as you wish.
To find out what types of commodities are on the planets or moons in your galaxy, you must find a planetscanner. Planetscanners are on sale in regular AI stations, however, these are only power 1.
Different types of commodities take different powers to scan, and the same is true of ruins, which I’ll probably type about later.

Commodities are arranged in tiers, there are three tiers.
Tier 0 commodities are:
Metals, Space Oats, Nuclear Waste, Silicon, Boabobs,.
Tier1 commodities are:
Jelly Beans, Copper, Tin, Vis, Petroleum, Silver, Titanium.
Tier 2 (come in smidgens, a little or bits) commodities are:
Alien Bacteria, Gold, Quantumum, Diamond, Ablution Crystals, Laconia, Enriched Nuclear Waste, Plasma Crystals, Psion Icicles.
Tier 3 (only come in smidgins) commodities are:
Bacta, Rubicite, Energon, Adamantium, Platinum, Fermium, Dark Matter, Frozen Blob.

Scanner power ranges from 1-20, with the highest power scanners usable only by people with certain skills. A power 20 scanner will reveal all commodities present on a planet or moon, power 1 will reveal only tier 0 commodities.
Extractors for higher tier commodities can be very expensive, but the tier 0 extractors are all available in most AI stations for a small cost.

Note – For tier 0 commodities, there are regular and advanced extractors. Since you can only equip a certain amount of extractors, dependent upon the abundance of the commodity you have on the planet or moon, but you can equip equal amounts of regular and advanced extractors, giving you greater speed of extraction, and improving overall profit.

Planets / Moons have different commodities in different amounts. This determines the amount of extractors you can equip.

Extraction Expert

This skill allows you to use more powerful planetscanners, so that you can see the most advanced and profitable resources. And it adds 6% extraction speed, and 6% base hull per level. This is extremely useful, especially when it comes to higher tier commodities.

So, what can you do with these commodities that you extract?

Well, there are several things…

Use factory-type items to change them into other commodities.

There are items, such as MRE Factories and Microfabs, which will turn the commodities that you extract into other types. These are useful for selling, or using to build other items.

Use them to build blueprint items

In every station, there is a construction bay, you can equip blueprints to your base, and make items by double-clicking on the blueprint name in the alphabetized list. This takes commodities, and occasionally other items, and usually some credits.

Use slaves to haul them to another station, or an AI station to sell them.

By building a trading bay, which takes some metals and a few credits, and equipping it, allows your station to sell commodities and all other types of items. Using this item, you can make a shop, buy items from colonies, or just allow your base to trade with your slaves.
Slaves are very important with bases. It is infinitely advisable that you use them. It will make your life much easier.

Merchant Fleet Master

This is another trade skill, which is themed around making trade slaves stronger. Per level, you will get a 2% bonus to most slave stats, such as agility and speed, aswell as a 10% bonus to capacity and shields. Slaves of this type are an excellent way to improve your commodity hauling ability. But it is a trade skill best reserved for alt accounts, since your bases will not have any bonuses, just the slaves.

Colonies

Colonies are built by players, and they grow over time.
The unit of time for a colony is a year, this is also referred to as a ‘tick’, a year is gained by a colony once every two hours, and this is the time that they purchase or sell commodities and ruin items to the station which exists on the planet they do.

Colonies are built from blueprints.
These blueprints take rations, metals and peasants. They exist in various shapes and sizes. The amount of peasants involved in the colony blueprint is the amount that the colony will start with. It is possible to run the blueprint multiple times, which will result in a higher starting population. Blueprints can be purchased from AI bases, and some of the more advanced ones are bought from Earth Central, or extracted from Paxian Ruins (Though these require the colonial administrator skill to use).

Colonies can only be built on planets. When you scan a planet, you will see a description of the conditions on it. For example, “Normal Gravity, Temperate, Terran”. From this you can work out the suitability of the planet. There is a helpful table that the team Pantalones has made, detailing the suitability of every possible planet.

Suitability ranges from 18% to 100%, and this can be improved through various means.

One of these means is:

Colonial Administrator

The last trade skill to be mentioned in this guide. This skill allows you to improve the planet’s suitability that you have built a base on from a Colonial Administrator character.
This grants a 5% bonus to planet suitability per level.
It is common practice to put a low tech ‘booster base’ on a planet with a colony, and a non-CA base. This will not grant the full CA bonus, but part of it.

The other way of improving planet suitability is Terraforming.
This was introduced to the game recently, and allows you to improve planetary suitability by a certain percentage. These projects can be quite expensive, but can yield great profit by allowing you to make more colonies in a galaxy full of low-suitability planets.

Yes, but…how do colonies work?

Over time, the colony will grow from the starting population of a few thousand, into billions of inhabitants. To allow this to happen, you must make sure that the base is permanently stocked with rations. And that the station is set to sell these rations to the colony at a price which is lower than the colony price listed in the colony tab on your station. The colony will feed itself.
You can also ‘pump’ the colony with peasants which you could buy from an AI base. This will make the colony grow faster. The colony will buy less and less peasants as it grows, so it is best to do this early on.

To make money from a colony, you must sell commodities to it. It will buy most of the commodities that you can purchase from an AI base.
Note – The colony will not buy commodities which are present on the planet on which it exists for a very high price. They mine them themselves.

It is advised to let your colony grow to a few million, or even a billion, population, before selling other commodities to it. Selling commodities to it slows the growth of it.
Suitability is directly proportional to the growth rate. 125% suitability is the highest possible.

A colony with a population of one billion can potentially make several million credits per day, and more if done right! If it is supplied with enough commodities, at the right prices.

Colonies will buy commodities for prices and quantities based on various things.
The first is the difference between your price, and the colony price. Bigger difference equals higher quantity sold, but less profit for you per commod.
Population effects it greatly, a higher population will buy more commodities.

A common mistake / problem with colony builders is that they forget to lower prices slowly, so as to achieve the best quantity / price for their commodities.
I recommend that you lower prices down to the price you wish to sell it at, which should be relatively low, if you have quite a high volume of commodities, and lower the price slowly over around 3-4 ticks.
The colony will buy massive amounts during this time, and if you do it slowly enough, they will keep a relatively high amount of purchases per tick for the rest of the uni.