NMS novice with base-building questions

[SilverBanshee]

Greetings,

I've come to No Man's SKy late in the game, purchasing it during the most recent spring sale. It's a lot of fun so far, but I'm having some issues with the base-building part of the game and wondered if I could get some help.

My first issue is that I appeared to have built my main base for the main quest (a leap in the dark?) in a spot that is apparently just too far from the two electromagnetic hotspots I've been able to find (both about 1100u). So my first question is can I move that base closer to one of the hotspots and if so what happens to all the staff I've hired for the various workstations (overseer, etc.) do they move as well or just disappear? I've built a few solar collectors and batteries, but apparently not enough as I keep running out of power. If this is a base I'm going to have to use a lot throughout this save, I'd like to try and get more reliable power for it.


Second, is there a secret trick to electric wiring? Running wire from hotspots and mining units seems both tedious and difficult. I'm coming at this from Satisfactory, where power poles are a thing, so what I currently understand about this in NMS make this whole process very frustrating. Are there poles I haven't found/unlocked in the Anomaly? (I didn't see any) Perhaps some experienced builders can give me some tips that don't involve me clipping cable through landscapes and promptly losing them. It doesn't help that I'm colorblind so it's very easy to lose the cable in the ground clutter. I realize that cable ends snap to each other, but I keep losing the ends. I'm also hoping the solution doesn't involve littering my landscape with random wall parts to provide a splice/connection. This seems like an obvious issue given the random nature of hotspots and the distances between things likely involved, so I'm probably missing something - Just not sure what.

Finally (for the moment, at least) is there some trick to snapping base parts together? In particular, I keep trying to place foundation pads under unsupported rooms and sometimes it works and sometimes not. The confusing part is that the foundation will happily build below (but not touching) the room I want but won't raise up a couple of meters to snap to the bottom of the room. This isn't huge issue but it does bug me a bit that I can't make everything look at least partially realistic.

I've likely missed some basic stuff, and A lot of the info I've seen on line is years old so I'm hoping there's more current updates/information I've just missed. Any help greatly appreciated.

[s.turner3030]

Yes you can delete the base and move it closer to where you want it to, there should be an option on the base computer to delete the base.

Wiring is a pain, it would be a bit easier if you could only connect it to the appropriate connections on various things, but nope you can connect wiring to dirt, floor panels and god knows what else. those are just a couple of things I have connected to then gone back to the extractor and wondered why the thing is not running, even though the wiring looks as though it is working.

Wiring will run quite a distance without needing a extender, not too sure what distance it is off hand, but I think it is somewhere around 150 au or so, and if you want to run cables longer than that I usually use the standard lamp that you get early on, place it down, then run the cable from the base to the lamp, then from the lamp to where you want to go, as the base range is 300 au I think from the base computer, there are various power connectors and such but those are unlocked with nanites from the nexus.

For the foundations, as far as I can tell from the few times I have used them, the game seems to expect you to place them first then snap the building onto them, not place the building and then put the foundations under it. Depending on what I am building with I will not bother with foundations, and just place the floor panels, place the wall panel, then snap another wall panel to them with this one going from the floor panel into the ground to hide the gap under the floors,

[Mavin]

Base building tricks; YT@Beeblebum

[fureimu]

I prefer to place foundations AFTER I build the rooms. Then they snap as you expect them to.
You wont be able to connect rooms if you place the foundations randomly BEFORE the rooms.
Its not Subnautica, they have decorative function so place them last.

You can press V, look a bit up and place a room in the air. Then press V again and start building corridors and other room like you want.
And then add foundations.
Yeah, it sounds kinda stupid but its the most convinient way to snap everything together.

As for the wiring, you can pick up your base computer, place it somewhere else and in such way stretch your base. I dont recommend to do that however as it may cause glitches and you may lose the ability to edit already-placed base parts that are far away from the computer.
If you need to power up the mining spot, forget about EM generators and just use solar panels and batteries. Its much simpler.

[nyctalus]

Sadly it is not possible to move a base but you can disassemble your base parts without losing the resources. You wont lose your staff too. They will reappear as soon you use their newly built terminal, also on your freighter.
But you should not invest too much time into your very first base anyway, because you will only use it for the first quests.
The use of electromagnetic hotspots is also quite limited to dark environments - like deep sea bases. On the surface 12-16 solar collectors and batteries should do the job. If you want a bigger base then build some more.