I'd combine the mining "brick impact ground" sound with "metal on metal hit 03" to give it that "pick axe in a mine" sound simlilar to, but with more oomph than the current "dink" noise.

Tractor beams: drone 03 (maybe a bit pitched and speeded up)

Thanks - edited the first post.

Gosh $3 a song for a few seconds.

Fire-pulse:
http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/soundfx/war_sounds/warsounds_Fireball3_wav.shtml
maybe mix the above with swarm gun 01?

Good ambiance for unattatched base control menus: space station 04

For laying a space base, I think that some gargled radio chatter with Quindar tones (NASA beeps) mixed in might work. I'm still browsing around looking for some good chatter, but the tone can be saved to a computer from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quindar_tones

I was thinking that if the workers in a base were on strike, this could play over the regular ambiance of the station menu: "crowd angry 02"

For attached bases, the normal base could have the same ambiances, but a base with a colony could also have this to make it feel more like an inhabited place. "outdoor market, small town 01 (:30)"

Dialog Box Close/Minimize: "gadget interface 03" (reverse sound for box open)

"drone 20" kinda fits the sound I'd expect from an "electron cloud" but I'm betting it would get old fast...

Big Spaceship Engines HAVE to be this: "spaceship deep core bass 30"
I turned up the volume on the big speakers here at work and it rumbled the whole editing bay! Big Bass = Big, Epic, Cinematic Win

Physical Weapons: "firecracker 03" it might be neat to add random variations to this noise, but I'm not sure how to get it to randomize pitch in game....

Wait, aren't we forgetting Energy Weapons? : " laser gun, short blast 08b"

Weapon Charged: "plasma gun powerup 01"

I'm thinking that "swarm gun 08" might be better for Surgical than Laser...

Camera Change: "servo switch 02"

Instead of the current "ploop" noise when you launch a missile: "artillery launcher a 03" followed by "space torpedos deployed" (as the missile flys away) from this pay site:
http://www.pond5.com/sound-effects/scifi/1/*.html

Open Ship/Crystal/Crate: "metal door, heavy open 01"

I can't find any sounds that really fit with slave commands. Heck, I think I'll fiddle around in GarageBand a bit and see what I come up with.

Idea: what if slaves actually have vocal answers to commands?
For example:
[X] Attack my Target = "Attacking target!"
[X] Dock and Deactivate = "Docking procedures initiated!"
(Alert for low shields) = "Shields down to ten per cent!" (on-screen icon that points to slave might could flash to indicate that it's the one replying)
(Alert for stasising/destruction) = "Shields offline, ship disabled!"

/shrugs
Might be especially neat if I can garble the audio to sound like the wireless from Battlestar Galactica or the radio chatter during the Battle of Yavin.

That would be really cool.

I'm glad you think so.
I'll make this my side project at my internship tomorrow. I would have had some rough samples today, but I was using Final Cut Pro and didn't discover until right before I left that the station has Soundtrack Pro. Even if the voiceovers don't get used, it'll give me a good reason to practice with Soundtrack.

Also, Soundtrack has royalty-free sound effects, so I might mess around with those too.

I personally think slave acknowledgements should be beeps or chirps, since they are supposed to be basically robot-controlled and not piloted by people.

I figured out how to modulate my voice to sound robotic, so it's not much effort to make some replies. I'll just have to re-record to get a flatter, more robotic tone. I'll whip a couple of samples up and email them to Jeff to see what he thinks.

Personally, I always like to think of my slaves having pilots/crews, despite the controlbots, but meh.

There's also the issue that responses to RTS commands have to be really short and unobtrusive, otherwise they will bug the hell out of you after 5 minutes. Think how often you can right-click to give things orders.

In real RTSs, units acknowledge orders with speech, though usually short. I think we should try it.