Alien Bases - Destroy or Conquer?

[Skanderbeg]

In former games, I mostly gassed the Alien bases until they were totally destroyed, except a few bases I need as a "stepstone".
I destroyed them, because You conquer Alien bases as population-1-bases which seemed not very valuable to me.

But now, I have changed my strategy, to use the sometimes valuable infrastructure of the Alien bases. The often have basic infrastructure enhancements to valuable to destroy, so I gas the Alien Basis until population is down to 2 or 3, then I destroy the defenders without gassing, and then I take the base.
Playing a faction without pop-boom ability, it is easy to bring the former Alien base back to a fashionable size, and in most cases the bigger bases (before You gas them down from size 14, hehe) have a childrens chreche build for the use of the conquerer.

What do You do with Alien bases?

"Steelborn, Starborn"

[Fitz]

Gas 'em, unless they contain a SP.

[Xarathas]

Depends.. usually gas them unless they got SP.. the times that I manage to take them over without gassing them all to death, I usually just keep the base around, sell all the junk and obliterate/Pod... if it's in a good tile for base building then I'll keep it.

[Locus]

I used to gas'em and only kept them if they were strategically placed or had an SP. Now, I am trying to play more in character (I always play as the PK's) and won't use gas pods. As the humanitarian, I try to salvage every base. It makes the game more challenging. I mean, sure the Aliens get the Battle Ogres in the beginning, but why wouldn't they use gas pods on you in retaliation? Also, they're aliens, why wouldn't they use gas on the "pathetic" humans? I usually play on the 4th difficulty level (can't remember the name right now) and the Aliens have never used gas but do try to use PB's.

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Brother Locus of the Peacekeepers

[Alinestra Covelia]

Ah... I've never met an Alien base on the receiving end of a Planet Buster, which I didn't like!