Starting Location

[Slotty]

just plain Easy..

 

Where do you place your first base and why?

 

Myself I place mine in the middle of the Atlantic...

 

which often Results in a peacefull first month.. with a -$300,000 at the end.. but after that it all goes up..

 

started again yesterday.. first mission.. a Terror site.. and all Gauss Rifle... 6 KIA... bleh... bad start..

[Kratos]

Middle of Atlantic/Pacific. My reasons for this is large open space (assuming alien bases are in the ocean). It's just the matter of being able to attack more spawned USOs. However, I don't recall ever getting past USO 1. Maybe I will try to beat the game sometime in the near future.

 

- Kratos

[deant]

well i started my first base just south of the arabian coilition. here there is a lot of ocean south and alot of funding organizations and by march had both them and america payin over 1million each

[uriaheep]

The American continent usually pays out the most and that's what you need to protect (or one of the other big payers) so your first base needs to be close enough to protect them. Don't bother too much with terror sites to begin with, just try to keep the big payers happy.

[Kratos]

Indeed big payers you should protect the most. Lose them and you are down in the dumps. Unless you can get the other countries' funding higher. But as you imply, not as effective in the long run.

[NKF]

These days I just plonk the base down anywhere where there's a good amount of land to cover. I don't particularly care about the big payers - but that said, I usually like to build my first base in Europe as it has a large cluster of paying countries packed together. While they don't pay as much as the US individually, the net effect of doing well in the small area means that there'll be more cash bonuses at the end of the month - and this builds up! Plus, if you lose any country, there'll still be plenty of paying countries nearby. If you're in the middle of the the US, if you lose it for any reason, you'll end up covering a large for nothing (on the bright side, further infiltration in the US will no longer have the same effect).

 

That doesn't mean I don't protect the US, mind you. My second assault base pops up there at the earliest opportunity.

 

The only disadvantage of building my starting base in Europe would be the farms. The endless farms. At least in America the terrain choice is more diverse. I like to fight in the farms, but I do like some variety.

 

I really should pay attention sometimes....

 

I sink my first aqua base down in the middle of the Atlantic or in the sea of Japan (ala the tutorial) or even in the Indian Sea. I sometimes even begin by placing at the mouth into the mediterranean sea - the whatsit, um, straits of Gibraltar?

 

None of this has anything to do with wanting to cover any paying areas. I don't know why I have this attitude towards the first base in in TFTD compared to my base placement attitude in UFO. I'm funny that way.

 

- NKF

[Pherdnut]

Middle of the North Atlantic so that I can get coverage of Eastern US, Western Coastline of Europe, and a bit of Central America and the Mediterranean. Seems to work. The Pacific is so huge I'm never sure how to distribute my bases there. One base in the middle of the Pacific simply won't extend to any of the coasts. Numbers wise, it might be best to put your first base near Asia/Australia since there are more individual paying entities there than anywhere else AFAIK.

[Shades of Green]

I usually start out in the middle of the Mediterranean - it then covers a large number of countries, not the best-paying ones (when you consider each one's contribution) but numerous nonetheless.

[Pete]

At the end of the day it does all depend where the game places the first Alien base, since it's random, but it's rare that it places it too near your own base.

 

The problem with hte larger funding areas is that they're easier to get annoyed since mroe USO's will fly over their territory (since it's bigger territory anyway).

 

It's always a difficult choice but middle of the Atlantic is my usual starting point.

[Bomb Bloke]

With no knowledge of geography, I just plonk my first base in the middle of the biggest body of water I can see.

 

I suppose that would be somewhere in the pacific ocean...?

[rupertuz]

I used to place my first base like the others in the middle of the North Atlantic as well, but for two games in a row now I've placed them and the following bases far closer to shore. I've done so because when watching my base in the Indian Ocean I noticed that sonar range is far further than the 750km's it says in the description (probably not km at all but nm) and spread from the tip of southern India almost all the way down to the tip of Africa.

 

Thus I either build my first base in the Adriatic or the Mexican Gulf, slightly south of the Mississippi. My American base can reach north-east up to Canada, cover Mexico and practically the entire US. My European base reaches as far north as Iceland and south as far as the Persian Gulf. Weird thing was that some subs would disappear south of Marseille (no alien base present), so for a moment I wondered if Italy was perhaps blocking the sonar but since I can spot subs in the North Sea as well that doesn't really make sense.

 

I usually build my second base in February, followed by two bases in the following month. US/Europe come first (the latter more a matter of principle since they don't really pay that well, weird), the next is at the southern tip of India, slightly west of Sri Lanka -covering the well paying Asian Coalition- and the fourth is slightly south of Neo-Japan. The rest are placed near Alaska, covering the pole, Tasmania, one in the middle of the South Atlantic -to cover the Brazilian Union and African Cartell- and my last base somewhere mid Pacific around Hawaii.

 

Maintenance costs for small bases aren't really that high so I expand rather quickly and thus many only consist of a small garrison and function as a listening post. America, Europe, Neo-Japan are my main battle stations with all the necessary equipment and boarding parties, Alaska is my manufacturing base, Indian Ocean functions as an interception base with a single fighter and South Atlantic, Tasmania, Pacific are listening post with no sub pens but might eventually get upgraded to interception status.