Ocean bases depth

[Mart]

This puzzles me. When playing SMAX I have noticed that Hive established a base somewhere on the ocean, depth like 1900 meters. I remember that in old SMAC I could not establish a base deeper than 1000 meters. Has that change in SMAX and SMAC patches?

[GeoModder]

IIRC, bases can be build in ocean/trenches after a tech is researched. Advanced Ecological Engineering?

[Mart]

That's interesting how it works then, I have Empath Guild, i see hive through. They do not have Adv. Eco Eng. and they have two bases - one over 1500 meters deep, another 1900 meters deep.
Can it be the difficulty level for AI is different, so they can do it? Before AEE, if pollution rises sea levels, will my bases sink?

[Commy]

It might be a bug in the game. There are a lot of them (unless you get the patches) that give strategic advantages to the AI. For example, the AI can move missiles and planet busters an infinite amount of squares. And that's just one. Some guy and a site similiar to this made a list of like 200 hundred of these bugs, and this was one of them. Just remember, even if they build a base their, there's no ocean shelf to build improvements.

[Barinthus]

Originally posted by Commy
It might be a bug in the game. There are a lot of them (unless you get the patches) that give strategic advantages to the AI. For example, the AI can move missiles and planet busters an infinite amount of squares. And that's just one. Some guy and a site similiar to this made a list of like 200 hundred of these bugs, and this was one of them. Just remember, even if they build a base their, there's no ocean shelf to build improvements.

I believe the list Commy was referring to would be this:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7650

[Adalbertus]

I never had problems of building a base deeper than 1000 meters. And to my knowledge, the 1000 meter limit only applies to square improvements, not to bases,

[johndmuller]

There was definitely a limitation in the early version(s?) of SMAC - I don't believe it was possible (at least for a human player) to build a base beyond 1000m and I don't know that there was a tech to allow it either. I remember it particularly because of the chagrin of finding out much later that this limitation had been removed somewhere along the line and I had been unaware of that ability for some time (and had wasted many ECs raising seabase sites or building them in suboptimal locations because of that ignorance).

It is possible that the improvements-in-deep-water ability (perhaps with some appropriate enabling tech required) is reserved for the Pirates (or any nautical faction, I suppose).