Ok, I have a base. Now what?
Click on the Empire link, you will see your new base. Click on the Construction ( 0 ) link.
It will take you to the Construction page for the selected base. There you can build all kinds of avaiable structures like Solar plants, Gas plants, Metal Refineries, Shipyards, etc. Check Help page on Structures for more details.
First, you want to increase your base construction and production capacity, to achieve that build a few Metal Refineries, it will reduce the time to build all the other structures. Check the help page what you need to unlock Robotic Factories, it is highlighted in red, also check Nanobots Factories and Automated Factories. All those structures improve your base production and construction capacities.
To be able to research, build Research Labs, each one will give the base more research points.
All structures need power, area and population. To give more of those you will need the power structures, habitat zone and multilevel plataforms, etc.
You will need defense as well. Click on the Defense tab next to the Structures tab. Only defenses will prevent your base from getting occupied. But a base without fleet can be pillaged (the base economy pillage). To pillage the base owner economy, the aggressor need to occupy the base.
Build shipyards so you can build ships. Level 1 allows you to build Fighters. Check the Techologies and Ships under Help page to see what techs are required to build each ship, for example Fighters require Laser level 1 and Armour level 1.
Barracks are the first base defense.
They have 2 functions: to protect the base against any attack, and to produce Marines.
Each Barracks level will also give 10% more Marine production (build faster).
Some defense structures have the ability to fire on OR at any ship within the base System.
The defenses that allow these ranged attacks are: Laser, Missile, Pulse and and Drones.
So you probably want to have some of those in each base. Each attack on a nearby astro costs credits.
Deflection Shields add shielding to all ground batteries, from Barracks to Disruptors. Planetary Shields or Starbase Shields will add shielding to all on orbit ships (owner only).
Base your defenses on the Base Economy. Low economy doesn't need big guns.
Unshielded base defenses (barracks to pulse batteries) will help any of your alliance member in orbit, so is is recommended that you build a few laser and missile batteries to both allow you to fire on any ship within the system and to help protect your mates.
Command Centers add extra 5% per level to all ships armour and power in orbit, to yours and your allies.
Also to the speed universes Command Centers, the 5% boost includes all base defenses.
Ground Defenses
If your base has Deflection Shields, they will add shielding to all ground-battery defenses (from barracks to disruptors)
The math behind it is:
total of shields divided by total of area
shields = deflection shielding * 5
area = sum of all battery levels * 5
limited to a maximum increase of 3 shielding per battery.
For a simple example, if a base has 1 barracks, 1 laser battery, 2 ion battery and 1 deflection shields, then:
(1+1+2)*5=20 area
1 deflection=20 shielding (add 5% to each shielding tech level you have)
so each ground defense would get 1 extra shielding.
Base Owner Orbiting Ships
To the orbiting ships the bonus is similar, divide the total number of units you have by the p.shields or s.shields
1000 ft
1 level of p.shields
24*5 / 1000 = 0.12
if you have shielding tech 20, it would give double that shielding to your fighters.
Shielded units will have their shielding increased.
You can increase your bases economy by building the following structures:
Also those structures will give you more economy:
The most impressive structure to economy is the Spaceports. It gives only 1 economy to level 1, but each next level will increase to match its level, like 2 to level 2, 3 to level 3, etc.
So Spaceports level 5 will give you 1+2+3+4+5=15 econ.
Free accounts spaceports are limited to the amount of Bases, Premium accounts aren't, but the increasing economy it gives stop at the number of bases, so if you have 7 bases and each base have Spaceports level 10, after level 7, all the other levels will give just 7, not 8, 9 and 10. Upon you build your 8th base, all bases will get 8 to each next level above 8.
Remember to proper defend your base based on its total economy, as bigger economy will give bigger pillage to the enemy. O-P-Rings are a must if you have economy 100 or higher. Also add some small and middle power batteries plus Deflection Shields, so all batteries will have shielding making your base less profitable.
You can link labs from bases that has research lab level 18 or higher, to a base that has research lab level 20
You need the Subspace Communications technology to achieve that
By linking the labs, your research output at the main lab will sum with all linked ones
Commanders reduce the tech prices by 1% per level
The commanders from each linked lab counts, with this math rule:
sum(linked labs cmdrs.)^0.8 + main lab research cmdr. + research minister
example:
6 linked bases with cmdr. level 5, main base with lvl 10 and minister level 5
sum(30)^0.8 = 15 + 10 + 5 = 30% discount to all techs
There is a cap limit of 80% to avoid free techs