Ecodamage is a non-issue, simply build tree farms (after a pop), which you'll want to anyway. Or use pops to drive the ED down and reap the pearls (boreholes are immune to pops).
This thread wouldn't be complete without my take on base placement. It's a special form of infantry spacing and like others maximises borehole placement. However the terraforming requirements are much lower and the map is visually more pleasing, interestingly enough it is designed to be used without crawlers - except for the initial industry bootstraping.
It's also designed to be used without clean reactors, or atleast your bases produce so much minerals you wont need clean reactors (still clean non-combat units, ofcourse)
Look at the attached image to see the base placement, firstly note that the boreholes are drilled at maximum density, secondly the bases are placed 'clockwise' around the base radius of existing bases, in such a way that a base is never placed inside the base radius of another base. The pattern is very cyborgy
Each base works 10 tiles, 2 1/2 of these are boreholes, and 7 1/2 are forest. Ofcourse one cant have half tiles, so heres how it works:
The base works the 8 tiles immediately adjacant, and one extra tile.
This means there are two types of base, one works 3 boreholes, the other 2 boreholes and an extra forest.
With tiles producing 3 food:
(Tree Farm + Hybrid forest OR orbitals, rec tanks)
ForestBases grow to size 12. Produce 28 minerals, 22 energy plus three specialists.
BoreholeBases grow to size 10 and have 1 specialist and a spare food. Produce 32(!) minerals and 27 energy.
Adding +2 econ increases the energy by 10
Adding hybrid forests increases the energy by 7 (8 for forest).
For maxed out tile income of:
ForestBase: 24/28/39 (F/M/E)
BoreholeBase: 21/32/43
Note how massive the raw mineral intake is, you don't need clean and can build anything you like. In particular you can churn out excellent military units very very quickly and cheaply. Shell upgrading doesn't hold a candle to this sort of raw production, until rather late in the game.
How this strategy is designed to be used:
Works best for a free marketeer, start of with Forest'n'Forget (but don't forget!), go FM, build treefarms, pop-boom, build hybrids or orbitals and boreholes. The boreholes arent built until you have some extra food. You have a highly optimised number of tiles to work making facilities very effecient, in particular genejacks rule.
Variations:
Condense and crawl a few tiles to increase population. Especially as Hive with it's slow economy and lack of pop-boom (and hive can afford the formers).
Use kelp/tidal at coastal bases to accelerate growth.
If the game continues, and you get lots of orbitals, and hab domes, and are unhappy with the low food production, pave over the forest with condensors+enrichers.
However.
I don't actually use the rigid base placement. Instead I'll place a base on sites which satisfy the following critera:
A) Between two boreholes (or even between 4 boreholes) - the boreholes dont need to be drilled yet, I plan them in advance.
B) Where it is adjacant to, but not inside another bases radius.
This means my maths is all a little out, but does provide figures very close to the real average resource output.
I am fairly confident saying this placement strategy gives the best Returns to Micromanagment ratio. It also requires around half the facilities as the denser packing, and gives much more minerals. Energy is much lower (due to less intensive terraforming and crawlering = less specialists), but consider that every mineral is really worth 1-2 energy. You also get to reap the benefits of +2 economy.
There is no significant weakness either, base placement is flexible, early terraforming is cheap, later terraforming uses spare former power, and often the borehole drive comes around clean reactors. Every base is within walking distance of 4 others. Bases are well suited to churn out units 'ready for action' (no shell upgrading nonsense). You are also impervious to crawler-raping-chopper runs.
