Bases

Raising one

Drag from one of your planets onto an empty cell. That raises a neutral base holding 100,000 super-probes. Raising costs nothing and sends nothing, and the base is not yours: it belongs to nobody until somebody takes it.

Taking it is an ordinary attack. Send more than its garrison and the remainder becomes your garrison, which at the flat conversion means about 10,000,000 probes. Anyone can do this, including a player who did not raise it, so a base raised within reach of an enemy is a base you may be handing them.

You can only have one unclaimed base at a time. Take the one you raised, or lose it to somebody else, before raising another.

An owned base can also be handed to a clanmate, the same way a planet, sun or black hole can.

While it stands, nothing else is ever placed on its cell: not a planet or sun the galaxy generates, and not a meteorite.

Upkeep and energy

A base burns its level in super-probes every minute and pays the same number in energy: one super-probe in, one energy out. A level-1 base eats 1 and pays 1; a level-10 base eats 10 and pays 10.

No tech applies to a base itself. No upgrade changes what it burns, what it pays, what a level costs, or how it fights.

Tech radius

An owned base grants tech the same way a sun does: a planet or launch inside its radius gets every upgrade its owner or a clan ally has bought, exactly as it would inside a friendly sun's. A neutral base grants nothing. The radius is the base's own level in grid units, so it grows as you upgrade: 1 at level 1, up to 10 at level 10, a bit further than a sun's 8.

A base's radius can overlap a sun's or another base's freely. Standing in more than one never stacks the bonus; it is exactly the same as standing in just one.

Upgrading

A level costs 100 × level² super-probes, taken from the base's own garrison: 100 for the first, 8,100 for the last, 28,500 for the whole climb. That is small next to the 100,000 it costs to take one in the first place, which is why building a base to level 10 is the cheapest energy there is: the hard part is already paid for. It is also what buys the widest tech radius.

All in, a finished base costs about 12,850,000 probes.

Running out

A base drains whether or not anyone owns it. When its super-probes reach zero it despawns and the cell is free again, and every resupply in flight to it is lost with it. An unclaimed base runs down too, so a site nobody takes eventually clears itself.

Feeding one

Send probes at it from a planet, the same way you reinforce anything else; they convert at 100 probes per super-probe on arrival. A base carries no automation of its own, but it is a valid relay target: point a planet's relay at it and that planet keeps it supplied.

A base cannot launch anything. Its garrison only ever leaves through upkeep or through losing a fight.