Base Spacing

[smacksim]

Originally posted by Net Warrior
I usually play the Peacekeepers and go vertical and cross the bdrone limit much later on. I've heard of the tight spacing-borehole-condensor scheme before but have never tried it. Since the Gaians seem perfect for it, I'm ready to give it a try.

As CT nicely lists, the Gaians reasons for tight-spacing are not really as strong as other factions. The thing is, tight spacing is pretty much the best strategy, win-wise, for all factions. It's too bad it's so heavily stronger than alternate strategies, but there ya go. I'd add another reason Gains do thrive with this strategy: Fungus. We can eat it. 99% of potential base sites are viable for us, even with the PTS! A base == another former, which can quickly turn a fungus-base into something more useful. speaking of which, we need to consider clearing some base sites in/near the ruins fairly soon.

Some possible weaknesses of tight spacing:

• Unable to claim all territory available b/c other factions encroach too early.
• Vulnerable to quick assaults in the early game. A rover can take 3 undefended bases in one turn, if they are really close
• Vulnerable in the mid-game while crawler heavy, but without satellites. Dead crawlers == dead bases.
• Inability to deal properly with b-drones, if not used to this, or have no plan
• mid-game mineral shortage annoyance till mining stations
• vulnerability to ODP crippling empire
• Ugly
• Getting Stuck, like Skanky Burns example, at 5 population for too long...

[Chaos Theory]

The easiest way I find to deal with most of the problems of ICS is to leave some holes, which could accept bases but don't have them. These holes tend to be mediocre base sites, or difficult to found bases in, such as a fungus or rocky base site, a pothole lake, or maybe just a lack of moisture. This increases the workable tile count of all adjacent bases, and can be filled in later once they don't need to work so many tiles.

In particular, in one game as the Uni, I basically used Sikander spacing up until orbitals, then filled in all the unused base sites, exploding up the power charts.

As far as bdrones go, we should pause at the bdrone limit, and make sure all bases can cope with gaining a drone. Then, expand without bound. Police and rec commons take care of 3 drones, and if we aren't yet running Demo, we can build first-turn police at new bases. Should we get the PTS, we can rush rec commons. PTS with Demo, we can first rush the rec commons to 10 minerals, at modest expense (~20 ECs) and then the following turn rush it to completion, for about 40 ECs more.