Base Conservation Guide

This guide builds off of the Advanced Structure Guide, which provides basic information on building an efficient empire. This guide offers the reader a list of structures necessary to attain full efficiency of your specialized astros. Naturally, this will interest free players more. However, all players should find this informative.

This guide will approach the problem of efficient base structures from a pessimistic perspective. That is, the least preferred astro type will be used. Because this guide focuses on free play, Planets will be preferred. Advanced structures will also be capped at five. Slot 2 orbit will be assumed to help illustrate the advice given in the Advanced Base Guide. The first section discusses how to efficiently build a Commerce Asteroid. The second section discusses how to build a Research base. The final section discusses how to build a Production base.

General Information

One question you may be asking yourself is why the different types of bases need a certain configuration—and why that configuration is different. There are two general categories of structures—Production and Infrastructure—common to all bases. Production structures include Metal Refineries, Robotic Factories, Nanite Factories and Androids Factories. Infrastructure includes Urban Structures, various power Plants, Command Centers and Spaceports. Technically, Terraforming is not a structure.

If you look at the cost list of each type of Production structure, you’ll note that Metal Refineries-17 costs about the same as Nanite Factories-9 (actually, the cost is within 100 credits).

Value of Structures

Orbital Structures

Orbital Structures give free players a maximum of fifty population, and this is not influenced by Biosphere Modification. The table below shows the number of slots freed by removing Urban Strcutures based on Fertility.

Antimatter Plants

Antimatter Plants generates a maximum of 100 energy, allowing free players to disband 12 Fusion Plants while still providing four extra energy units. The actual slot savings is five.

Commerce Asteroid

The Commerce Asteroid is considered the pessimistic choice. This is because you are limited in the number of structures you can build. You are also limited in the amount of Crystals you can harvest. We will assume Energy-20, which doubles output of your energy Plants.

When considering the value of an Asteroid, you should look at the advanced strucutures. Antimatter Plants combined with Orbital Structures frees 15 slots on a Slot-2 Asteroid. Normally, a fully terraformed Asteroid spends 23 slots for Urban Structures and Plants. So, these advanced structures reclaim eight slots. For an Asteroid, those slots would preferably be spent building ten more Shipyards (and disband two Metal Refineries for the space). This gives 20 more economy.

Tundra Research

Metallic Production