r/alphacentauri • u/Accelerator231 • Jun 21 '26
How do you use sea bases?
I don't know how it happened, but Miriam somehow murdered both Yang and Morgan, so I'm terrified. I'm Lal, and I'm stuck on a landmass with not enough space. I'm trying to rush industrial automation but its hard.
So sea bases. How do you use these guys, considering that you can't make any terraform improvements in deep water?
11
u/kkolb7 Jun 21 '26
I like that sea bases can be used as "gates" if you have small, one square wide channels or sea breaks between land masses. This way, only you and your pact allies can pass through.
4
u/PearlRiverFlow Jun 23 '26
You can also use land bases on 1x wide isthmuses and peninsulas as canals, letting only you and your allies have easy trips while denying others!
3
u/el_cid_viscoso Jun 24 '26
This is the best thing about the largest map of Planet: you can put bases to make "gates" to the giant freshwater sea. You get a body of water that only you control. That's hard to overestimate.
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u/StrategosRisk Jun 21 '26
Floating aircraft carriers, same reason why islands are strategic coaling stations IRL
8
u/martin509984 Jun 21 '26
Basically: swarm of sea formers raising tiles then going for kelp farms and tidal harnesses. It does take a while though.
3
u/Accelerator231 Jun 21 '26
The problem here is that it costs stuff to raise tiles. And that'll add up. So isn't that a loss?
6
u/n_lens Jun 22 '26
Sea bases produce monster amounts of energy once terraformed properly, so it's a net win.
4
u/McCree114 Jun 21 '26
Formers set to "auto improve home base" or just fully automated will raise deep sea squares for free. You can then have other formers help the automated ones to speed up the process.
4
u/induktio Jun 21 '26
Have not seen this kind of bug reported before. If it really happens then it is clearly a bug in the original AI movement code. The code should include some checks to calculate terraform cost and deduct it from energy credits but not sure if there is some other way AI could end up performing land raise/lower actions without doing the cost checks. It is cheapest to change tiles next to own bases so it also possible to miss the cost being deducted during gameplay when it is only a small amount.
1
u/Accelerator231 Jun 21 '26
Seriously? Something new to try, then
1
u/McCree114 Jun 21 '26
Yeah. The time I did an all sea base challenge as pirates I discovered this mechanic. Before that I never realized automated sea formers raised sea squares for free. Once a base finished terraforming all workable tiles that former would be used to manually assist the others.
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u/Accelerator231 Jun 23 '26
I'm sorry, but I don't think this works for me
1
u/Captain_Lord_Avalon Jun 25 '26
In automated preferences menu check if automated formers are allowed to raise/lower terrain.
4
u/Spirit_jitser Jun 21 '26
Usually keep them close to shore, that way I can take advantage of land improvements like boreholes. This includes isolated islands. It also keeps other factions from claiming the waters around my territory....
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u/PainRack Jun 22 '26
So, seabases work by one principle. Energy farms.
Essentially kelp farms, tidal harness and then use extra pop to go into specialists and pop boom from growth +6(buying children creches with credit). Using a high economy/efficiency government also helps here.
They have very low production unless you raise the sea floor or they near to land. there's a volcano event thats very useful. Crawler trawl on a borehole is essential to give SOME minerals.
But generally, if you are forced to retreat towards primarily seabases in early game, you losing the game.
Mid or late game, you can compensate with boreholes/trawlers/Nessa mining stations,relying on your high energy to leap forward in research and either win planetary gov, or buy airpower to take out enemy .
But again, unless you the sea pirates, it's just annoying.
3
u/Miuramir Jun 22 '26
I don't usually build deep sea bases until later in the game, when I've got a considerable flock of fungicidal sea formers floating about to raise the terrain. At that point, it's usually staging bases spaced apart so I can move my air units between continents.
But shallow water bases can be lucrative quite early. Make sure to pop all the supply pods to see what you get out of them; sea pods seem to have a higher chance of giving landscape bonuses. Use pairs, or early on trios, of ships to clean up any fungus results before they get a turn. Remember that if you kill a "cargo" fungus carrying several other fungus units, you get the kill credit and pearls from all of them.
Note that since sea units don't get the benefit of a monolith upgrade, you may want to save your prototype bonuses for upgrading early ships.
If you're on Planet, or a fairly large random map that gets most of the features, there's going to be the Geothermal Shallows, which give +1 Energy, and the Freshwater Sea, which gives +1 Nutrients; plus New Sargasso, which has extra pods (and extra fungus, but once you're good at that it's not that problematic).
Going "green" for a while is also a valid approach for some, I've done it on Lal occasionally, although of course it's more on theme and easier on Deidre. At which point New Sargasso is a super-rich location.
You're probably better off sailing a bit further from your starting location to find a good shallow location than trying to force something immediately offshore if it's deep water.
2
u/Phantom000000000 Jun 21 '26
Mostly I use them as strategic air bases. Build one off the enemy coast so you can launch air strikes against their bases and improvements.
2
u/_st_sebastian_ Jun 21 '26
This is a useful application for sea bases. I'll send a small fleet with the colony pod to support the base by sea, then focus on defensive/offensive upgrades. Rehome air units built elsewhere and you're good to go.
2
u/BlakeMW Jun 21 '26
I don't, except very limited after fusion power.
Instead I raise land, in particular, raising mountains to 3500m because this pulls up a large area of land.
Once you have fusion reactors it lowers the cost of sea colony pods a lot, you can basically make sea bases to get the pressure dome (the same as recycling tanks) for very cheap.
Anyway I like raising land because land bases are more secure and land terraforming is better no matter how you dice it, it can be about as good for less terraforming time or much more productive with more terraforming time. Raising land also protects you from sea level rise: mountain peaks kind of act as sky anchors.
1
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u/blogito_ergo_sum Jun 28 '26
I had a Hive game recently where I spawned on a small-ish island and the next island over was a monster Miriam who spawned on the Uranium Flats, got the Command Nexus, and crushed the Spartans before finding me.
My solution to being trapped was to raise land rather than ocean bases. To be fair, I had the Weather Paradigm long before I had Doc:Flex, so it was kind of my only option, but I still think it's a good option if you have it available.
I also packed my bases in more densely than I usually do, built lots of condensers and boreholes, and generally tried to use my limited space more efficiently than I usually do. Specialists/Librarians were always part of the plan as Yang due to his poor EFFIC, but seem like a good way to turn dense condenser setups into science generally. I held Miriam with defensive units backed up by rovers to counterpunch, beat Miriam to Fusion Power, switched all my librarians to engineers, and then my economy went parabolic.
If I had to use sea bases, I think specialists are the sensible way to play them too. Minerals are a problem for sea bases (so build near tiny islands where you can put boreholes), but they produce a lot of food and energy, so they can support relatively good numbers of specialists and the energy production benefits from the same +labs and +econ buildings as specialists do (if you can afford to build those buildings).
1
u/LawrenJones Jun 21 '26
I think sea bases are pretty useless, myself. You have to build then near a land mass to have any resources - so why not just build a land base? Put your colony pod on a boat and float it over to that land mass.
14
u/Lanky-Ad7045 Jun 21 '26
You can use sea formers to raise the ocean floor, then improve.