Wait, are we talking about the same base camp?  Or is yours higher up the beach, closer to the jungle?<br/><br/>...<br/><br/>The jungle-beach combo is a strategist's worst nightmare.  The jungle is dense, hard to travel through, provides ample cover for hometeam enemies, is environmentally hostile, and is vastly unexplored.  The beach, however, is wide open, with one end completely exposed to the cover of the jungle and the other exposed to naval/air attacks.  There's no cover for defenders, the ground is soft and gives way easily, and defenders would be fighting with their backs against the wall in nearly every situation.<br/><br/>I figured that the long, wide sterilized scar left behind by the CACC in the jungle offers the best of both worlds.  It provides easy, nearby access to the privacy and resources of the jungle, the cover and invaluable resources of the CACC itself, as well as ample room for people to spread out with plenty of shade.  Of course, it would be difficult to defend, and local fauna could be a problem, but it<em>is</em>central.<br/><br/>The Colonel saw it as a "lesser of two evils" sort of thing.  His objective is to scout out and find a better location for the survivors to, er, survive at.<br/><br/>As for NPC = PCs....  Sounds good to me.  ^^