C&C Tiberium Alliances Base Building Guide

C&C Tiberium Alliances Continuous Production Base Building Guide by haverrr

Hello all, I’ve made guides for my alliance, and thought it would be a nice idea to share with you my findings on how to optimise continous production income, the best income there is!
Why?
Continous production doesn’t have the bad consequences package production has:

• it isn’t reliant of package limits (and thus gives you more time before you have to log in)
• it doesn’t pause when you relocate
• and in most scenarios, the continous production is tied to also having higher storage, thus causing you to never have any production overflow.

I’ll segment the post into the three types of income (power, credits, tib/crystals).
First up, starting with:
Power
You will want to have a highly upgraded accumulator connected to as many powerplants as you can.
Most optimal would be 8 powerplants to one accumulator, but 6-7 can do nicely too.

The reason you want so many powerplants joined to this accumulator is because you want as many powerplants as possible to benefit from the accumulators continous power bonus (the one that is reliant of the accumulator’s level).
(Example of a lvl 12 powerplant connected to a lvl 32 accumulator – giving it a nice 13888/h bonus)
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Do look for ruins with lots of 3×3 lots without any crystals/tiberium in the way. If you are lucky with your base layout, you can even join the powerplants up to a few crystals, whilst not losing your connection to your accumulator. Example: http://cncopt.com/s2o. If space allows it, go for a 3×5 setup like this: the middle row of powerplants will get a double continous production bonus from both the accumulators, effectively saving you three build slots! http://cncopt.com/Bat.

I found lvl 12 to be the ideal lvl for powerplants, at that lvl the packages take 6 hours, meaning you don’t have to hastily log in to pick em up, but the gain of the packages isn’t too interesting the long run – you could in theory just as well keep em lvl1. At a certain level you will have to consider upgrading the powerplants beyond lvl 12 though, as the accumulator upgrades will eventually get really steep.

Pros

• Upgrading 9 powerplants is way more expensive than upgrading 1 accumulator. (and the net gained power/h you get per powerplant upgrade is lower – and mostly package production).
• Higher accumulator means higher storage capacity: you will mean never halt production because you never completely fill them. Thus, you will never have a moment when your storage is full and the production is wasted. Additionally, you get a lot more breathing space between logging in.
• You can probably save yourself lot of build slots by using a few optimised highlevel accumulators, instead of spreading around a lot of lowlevel ones accumulators – so build a Defense HQ/DF/Support.

Cons

• Your powerplants are lower leveled, thus have less hp (meaning they can’t soak up much damage in PVP – but you can mitigate this with a proper defense – which you can now properly afford buildslot-wise).
• Eventually, the accumulator upgrades will become very expensive (and their gains very very appealing), and the intervals between each upgrade might lead to a potential loss.. but so far I’ve noticed upgrading a powerplant is more expensive, and less rewarding than a well optimised (higher level) accumulator:.
  vs
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  Credit generation
  You will want to have a highly upgraded powerplant surrounded by as many (max 8 possible) refineries as possible. If you are lucky, you can even join a few of the refinieries up to a few tiberium nodes, whilst not losing your connection to your powerplant. Example: http://cncopt.com/12o. If space allows it, go for a setup like this: the middle row of refineries will get a double bonus from both the powerplants! http://cncopt.com/32o
  Its the same idea as with power generation basically!

  I found lvl 12 to be the ideal lvl for refineries for myself – at that lvl the packages take 6 hours, meaning you don’t have to hastily log in to pick em up for the next 12 hours, but really the contents of the packages aren’t going to be too interesting since in the long run yet again.

  Pros

• Upgrading 8 refineries is way more expensive (more tib needed, 2x more power!) than upgrading 1 powerplant and the gained credit income you get per upgrade is lower (and mostly package production!).
• Because you upgrade your package production instead of continous production (you don’t want a high package production – package production always halts when move your base/or when package limit is reached, this delay can cost you millions of income, especially if you move a lot or go offline longer than X amount of hours).
• You can probably save yourself lot of build slots by using a few optimised highlevel powerplants with connected refineries, instead of spreading around a lot of unconnected/bad refineries – so build a Defense HQ/DF/Support.

Cons

• Your refineries are lower leveled, thus have less hp, meaning they can’t soak up much damage in PVP. Mitigate this with a proper defense.

Here’s an my example of a lvl 30 powerplant (cost: 100M tib, 9M pow) connected to 7 low level refineries. Notice how its gives 90k/h in credits (along with 24k power – a nice added bonus, for even a cash base needs power to keep upgrading), and the next upgrade of 24M tib will give me 108k/h?

I don’t have any lvl 30 refineries, but cncopt tells me a lvl 31 refinery (cost: 95M tib, 23M pow) connected to one tiberium will only yield you 57k/h (or 77k/h if connected to two tib nodes) of which 32k/h is packaged!

Tiberium/Crystal generation
You will want to prioritise having a few highly upgraded silos surrounded by as many harvesters as possible. If you are lucky, you can even join several silos up to the same harvesters for a higher bonus. Three examples here: http://cncopt.com/N3o.
The upper left example would be the most ideal setup, since both silos reach all 4 harvesters, the two examples to the right are semi-ideal, as your second silo can only reach 3 out of 4 harvesters.
My current tiberium farm has a tiberium nodes set up like this: cncopt. Ideally, that one harvester would have also been connected to the silos, but I have yet to find a base that gives me such a nice setup!

Unlike with my earlier suggestions for power/credits, Harvesters are always a worthy upgrade when connected to one silo, as they have quite nice ratios per upgrade. Prioritise on upgrading one silo at the time, afterwards don’t neglect harvesters!

Pros

• Upgrading several silos is more expensive than upgrading 1 silo. It’s also a waste of buildslots to connect 1 silo to 1-2 harvester(s). Try to find the most ideal tiberium layout and don’t make too many silos!
• Because you upgrade your package production instead of continous production prioritise on silos – you don’t want a high package production – package production always halts when move your base, this delay can cost you millions of income, especially if you move a lot. Granted that harvesters do have good ratios!
• Higher silo means higher storage capacity: you will mean never halt production because you never completely fill them. Thus, you will never have a moment when your storage is full and the resources are wasted. Additionally, you get some more breathing space between logging in.
• I have
• The whole idea works the same for crystals. You could even mix and match, e.g. if one silo could reach 2 crystals and 2 tiberium, the effect of the silo still works!

Cons

• Slowly builds up, you’ll still have to pump in some tib to get your income up, but it’s well worth it in the end.

The effect works also on three harvesters, it will give you a bit less production, so choose your bases carefully and look for the right setup of crystals/tiberium before founding your base!!!

Special thanks go to rEjXtInY for thinking and discussing along side with me, and to the alliance The Espada (world 27) for helping me enjoy my first world in CnC:TA.