When You Loose Your HQ

[Sprayber]

What exactly happens to a faction when they loose their headquarters? I guess that they would suffer from extreme inefficently, until they build another one. But does it cripple them in any sinificant way? In other words are the capitals worth taking out first?

Does anyone make a habit of changing their HQs very often? I only do it if my settlement pattern is to irregular. I have this weird thing about wanting to keep it the same throughout unless it becomes really neccessary.

[Lord Maxwell]

The advantages (!) of loosing your HQ are as follows: When the game calculates energy loss for a base it considers it to be 12 (I think, might be 16, but not very much anyway) tiles from the HQ, no matter where it is, as long as you don't have an HQ. For those of us who build 100+ cities on huge maps this can be a _big_ advantage.

[Blake]

I also understand that the cost to mind control is highly dependent on distance to HQ, capture there HQ and it makes it a lot cheaper to mind control the remaining bases and units.

[uptons]

About the *thing* of keeping your HQ in the same spot...

I do that too, and even for a tangible reason. The HQ suffers no inefficiency whatsoever, and so opens up a route to building a Really Mega Ultra Superbase, in terms of research.
First, build a Network Node in it. Then build the Merchant Exchange in it. Then build Biology Lab, Research Hospital and some Supply Crawlers that go and harvest energy. Then build the Supercollider (when you've come this far, there is no turning back, you should make the next steps #1 priority). Build all other research facilities you can invent, raise the terrain to boost energy, place Solar panels + Echelon Mirrors everywhere, send crawlers out to harvest Thermal Boreholes (you won't be getting much minerals from your sea of solar collectors), if you have some sea tiles, build the sea energy boosting facility etc. Then make sure to grab the Theory of Everything. Build some more research facilities + Aerospace Complex and start a campaign in your other towns to send up a flock of energy satellites. Make sure to have your SE choices optimized for Econ and Research, but not so much Effic. You should have other bases build garrisons for your HQ, you'll want every turn of production spent wisely. Don't hesitate to rush buy items. When you come across Digital Sentience, build the Network Backbone pronto and you will be at your peak research power. If the University is faring well, you could easily be generating a whopping 800+ research points per turn. If you really want to do it all the way, consider building sea colony pods, sending them off into the Great Marine rift, build bases there and give them to Zakharov(with his free Net Nodes), who will think of those pathetic outposts as monumental gifts and love you for it (since the bases are built in at least 2000m deep waters they won't be of much use)!

[Sprayber]

uptons: I'm glad I'm not the only one. Thanks for the tips. I'll try them out.