Editing Colonization for Beginners (section)

==Naval Bases==
Your ships cannot operate away from a base forever. Even with in-flight refueling, their need for [[Maintenance]] constantly increases, until the breakdowns become too numerous to continue the mission. And if your homeworld is 100 billion kilometers from the theater of operations, your fleet might be in need for an overhaul before it even arrives there. So let's build a colony and equip it as a naval base.

Ideally, the base is a populated colony, because you need people to operate facilities like factories and mines. That way you don't have to haul all facilities and supplies to the base; instead, you can build them right there. Having a source of Sorium on the planet or at least in the neighborhood makes life easier as well.

Keep in mind that civilian ships in VB6 only travel a maximum of four systems when delivering installations or colonists. Also, don't choose a location in the system that is too far from the Jump Points you intend to use, like the outer worlds in some binary systems that can be many billion km from the JPs.

Installations recommended for a naval base:
* Fuel Refineries - use Sorium to produce fuel
* Ordnance Factories - produce missiles, drones, mines etc.
* Maintenance Facilities - maintain your ships
* Factories - build all other facilities as well as Maintenance Supplies and fighters
* Mines - to produce the required minerals
* Infrastructure - allows colonists to live there
* Deep Space Tracking Stations - provide early warning
* [[Planetary Defence Centre]]s(VB6 only) and [[Ground Units]] - what? This is a wargame? And I thought it was an astronomy simulator...

Note that repairing damaged ships requires a shipyard. So build at least one as soon as you can afford to.

Stocks of missiles, fuel and Maintenance Supplies will have to be shipped in at first, before the base becomes self-sufficient. To build up fuel stocks, design and build a ship with lots of fuel tanks (a million liters isn't too much), mark it as a tanker (upper right in the design window) and send it on an auto-route ("Cycle Orders") from your homeworld to the base with orders to refuel at home and unload the fuel at the base. Just watch your stocks at home; you don't want to completely drain your homeworld.

Finally, remember that installations and populations emit thermal (TH) and electromagnetic (EM) radiation. If you don't want the base to be noticed by untrustworthy tentacled beings from Aldebaran, just build an unmanned depot and switch off your Active Sensors and shields. Still, an enemy survey ship might accidentally find you. Also, constant civilian shipping to the base might attract attention.

[[Category:Tutorial]]