Episode: 4030
Title: HPR4030: Playing Alpha Centauri, Part 4
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4030/hpr4030.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 18:51:15

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,030.
For Friday the 12th of January 2024, today's show is entitled, Playing Alpha Centauri Part
4.
It is part of the series' computer strategy games.
It is hosted by Ahukad, and is about 12 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Part 4 of Tips on Playing Alpha Centauri.
Hello, this is Ahukad, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio in another exciting episode.
In our continuing look at computer strategy games, and I want to continue now with the
game Alpha Centauri, and do a little more exploration here, and what I want to talk about first
is something called base operations status.
Now this is something that you again access through the HQ screen, and it's another important
place to get familiar with.
This screen allows you to see all of your bases in one place and get some useful information.
Now in the center window, all of your bases are listed, and you can look at what each is
producing on the production tab, how happy your citizens are in each base on a citizen's
tab, and how many military units each base has on the garrison tab.
And you can also see the status of other factions, one if you're in a pact with them, or
two if you have built the Secret Project and Path Guild.
That gives you an infiltrator with each of the other factions, and lets you see what they
are doing.
Under the central screen is a window with the icons for each faction, and clicking on
an icon shows you the information for that faction.
Under this window is one with icons for labs, energy budget, remember energy is the money
in this game.
Base operations, this was on by default when you first go here, Secret Project reports,
satellite survey, security nexus, and the Alpha Centauri score.
When you click on one of these, the top screen changes to reflect your selection, but
so too does the one on the left which provides added information.
So you can select the faction and the type of report and see more information when you
do so.
So let's go through the reports and see what you can learn.
Labs.
Okay, this is your research component.
When you select labs, you will see in the top screen the technology tree with the text
you have already discovered shown in a brighter text than the ones you have not yet discovered.
You will also see how frequently you can expect to make new discoveries based on your investment
in labs.
You can add investment by building appropriate buildings and by redirecting some of your
energy budget to research.
And of course, if you have a pact, you can see how your pact brother is, or a partner,
I should say, is doing.
And if you have the empath guild, you can cycle through the factions and see how your research
matches up with the other factions.
Ideally, you would like to be researching faster than they are.
Then on the screen on the left, you can see a list of the texts you have discovered in
the technology tab and how much research each base is doing on the basis tab.
Now, the thing to keep in mind in looking at what you have researched is that it is not
a strictly linear process.
You can't research a tech until you have researched a predecessor.
But you don't research all categories equally.
Some of this is by your choice when you pick which areas to focus on.
If you have aggressive neighbors, you may want to go further in researching the conquer
area.
But it is a good idea to be reasonably balanced since you need to improve productivity,
which is in the build area, if you want to churn out units.
You need an industrial base to support a big army.
You will probably refocus your research several times in a game as the circumstances warrant.
Next, the energy budget.
Now in the top window, you have a summary of your overall energy budget in the left side
of the screen, which will give you your total income and total expenditures.
Energy reserves is your total cash on hand, basically.
The income is how much you bring in on each turn.
Maintenance is how much you spend to maintain your buildings.
Remember, units are maintained with minerals, not energy.
Loans is how much you are bringing in each turn from loans to other factions and finally
your net income, which you would like to be a positive number.
On the right of the top screen is the maintenance budget for a base.
So you can see how much you are spending for each building in that base.
Some buildings have low maintenance, but others can be three or four energy per turn.
It is a good idea to know this before you start building things so that you don't bankrupt
yourself.
You can pick the city to be displayed here in the lower left window.
And in the lower right window, you can see a summary of maintenance by building type
across your whole faction.
If you start running into insufficient energy problems, this is where you can go to start
figuring out the answer.
Base operations.
We already discussed the basic views here for production citizens in Garrison, but there
is more to look at.
In the lower left, the best basis tab lets you see the top base in each of eight categories.
The two I use the most are minerals and Garrison.
Minerals are what you use for production.
So knowing your top base for production can help.
If you want to get a secret project out ahead of the competition, or if you need to crank
out some units, you can also re-home units to this base if the base that built them is
running low on minerals.
You wouldn't want to have units that are going into battle suddenly be disbanded because
you ran short of minerals back home.
And the Garrison option is handy if you have put a bunch of units into a century position
and suddenly need to find them and wake them up.
Then in the Govener's tab, you can set all of your Govener's to conquer, for instance,
if you were at war or set them all to build once the war is over.
But even nicer is the advanced settings selection, which lets you fine-tune what your Govener's
can or cannot do.
For instance, you could allow them to pursue two aims simultaneously, such as both Discover
and Build, you know, in the very early game that might make a lot of sense.
And you can give the Govener's other powers or take some away.
Goveners in this game are pretty helpful in removing the micromanagement, but you may
want to specify more closely their powers.
Next, the secret project reports.
Secret projects are an important part of this game, and you want to stay on top of how
you're doing, how your opponents are doing, which you can do if you have a pact or you
have the M-path guild.
For example, the Hunter Seeker algorithm renders the faction that builds it basically immune
to probatex, which is very powerful.
You would want to be sure you get it and not another faction.
Now, if you start falling behind on a key secret project, all is not lost.
You can build supply crawlers in other bases, send them to the base that's building the
secret project, and have them add the cost of their construction to the investment in the
secret project.
This is very similar, by the way, in Step 2, you could do this with caravans, caravans
and wonders.
You send a caravan to a city that was building a wonder and have it add shields to the wonder
production.
Now, if you can find an alien artifact by investigating a Unity supply pod, it can be
cashed in at the base building the project for an added 50 minerals to the project.
The alien artifacts can also help add to your research, but you have to choose whether
you want to take it as a boost to research or a boost to minerals for a secret project.
Now, in the top screen, you can see which projects have already been built and which ones
are in progress and where they are being built.
Selecting one will let you get a description in the lower left window.
Note that if you lose out to another faction on a secret project, you can always recover
by conquering the base that built it and adding it to your faction.
Now, satellite survey.
Later in the game, when you have researched the right technologies, you can build and
launch satellites that provide nutrients, minerals and energy, which are then provided
to your bases.
Now you need aerospace complexes to build these and to get the full benefit, but the benefits
from a satellite go to all of your bases.
So that can be very powerful.
If you find yourself starting to run low on energy, a bunch of energy satellites can be
very helpful here.
And there is a provision for combat in orbit.
Orbital defense pods can be deployed and they have a chance of killing another faction satellite.
This is the place where you would control all of that.
Next, security nexus.
This gives you a summary of all the units you have produced and the current status.
In the top screen you can see how many of each are currently active, how many are in production
and how many have been lost, either to combat or to mind worm attacks.
In the lower left you can see a summary by unit type, land, naval, air or non-combat.
And in the lower right window you can do things like automate a unit type.
Now this most often is done with formers, which is a way of reducing the micromanagement aspects.
You can just allow the formers to automatically go around and improve tiles and whatever
way they see fit.
Finally, Alpha Centauri score.
You can see your score here as well as scores for the other factions if you have a pact or the
empath guild.
And during the game this can be somewhat helpful in letting you know how well you're doing against
the other factions and at the end it will determine your ranking.
If you want more on scoring and victory conditions you can consult the Alpha Centauri fandom site.
And there's a link to that in the show notes.
So this concludes our look at the HQ menu and some of the major screens you can access.
Mastering these screens will go a long way to give you proficiency in the game and can
ultimately make you an expert player.
So do take the time to study how they work.
Now we're going to cover just a few more topics for Alpha Centauri before we wrap up.
This one and move on to Civ 3.
So this is a hukka for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always encouraging you to support
free software.
Bye bye.
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