What is the optimal start base location?

At the beginning of a game, Xenonauts lets you choose the location of your first base.

I started on the most Northern point of North Africa with the consideration that I can cover all of Europe and large parts of Africa and Asia from there.

However, most events seemed to occur in North America and Russia in the beginning. Also, I did not take into account that you can upgrade the reach of your base later.

1. What factors should one consider when setting up your first base?
2. Is there an optimal location to start at, and if so, where is it?

3 Answers

Somewhere that can cover the most continents efficiently, like turkey as that covers russa, asia, europe and africa.

3

• First base: Saudi Arabia (east coast of the Red Sea). After 3 radars are built, it effectively covers 95% of Africa and 95% of Europe, plus a big chunk of Asia. Also 80% of the covered area is land.
• Second: Cuba.
• Third: Somewhere in Indochina to cover Australia as well.

I put my first base in Crete (I called it Firebase Minotaur), it gives pretty good coverage of North Africa, all of Europe/Middle East and the Western half of the Soviet Union.

My second base I set up in Cuba (Firebase Castro) and gives good coverage of the Americas save for the far north and most of Argentina.

I set up a third base in Japan (Sword Airbase) to cover the rest of Asia and the Eastern half of Russia as well as some of the Polynesian islands.