Is there any downside to flooring your whole area?

[FrankTheMagicPotato]

I kinda want to floor the entire area of my walled in base. I want there to be no more grasses and tress.I have insane amounts of resources, so thats no problem. I was just wondering if there was any downsides to flooring in the whole outside area, and probably a bit of area outside my walls just to take cover away from the enemy, so i dont have to constantly chop down the tress they hide behind.

[FrankTheMagicPotato]

Obviously I'm not going to floor in the areas I farm on.

[Chaoslink]

Cattle and animals can't graze without grass and shrubs, so there's that. As long as you're only flooring your base area its fine. You will need to have a dedicated colonist or two for just cleaning though as you currently don't have to sweep the dirt areas. You will if you floor it. However, it isn't a bad thing.

[FrankTheMagicPotato]

Thank you! That wont be a problem, since i only have dogs, and they all eat kibble, and i already have a cleaner.

[Shanador]

Flooring that much of your base might add a large spike in wealth, which will increase the game's difficulty.

[crgzero]

You should only smooth stone areas, they add more beauty when smoothed and it's free to do so.

[climbingeastofwinter]

You may not have to clean dirt areas, but I strong suspect that walking through a dirt tile will add dirtiness to your pawns which then comes off in floored areas. I believe flooring your base will help keep things tidy - the only real downside is that is eliminates the movement speed penalty of walking across unfloored terrain, which can be a problem if a bunch of raiders make it on to your floored sections. Maybe. Not a reason not to do it though!

[Nyah]

I used to put carpets / cloth floor at every door thinking it may swipe their feets when they come and go. Don't know if it was worth,still had to clean but maybe less.
I just restart to play it. Such a good game :D

[Jigain]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1505423207

As for flooring your area, it pretty much boils down to the things already mentioned - no grazing area for animals, more cleaning required, and an increase in wealth. On the other hand, you have a movement speed increase as well as a very slight increase in beauty (for instance, installing a carpet over dirt will raise the beauty level from 1 to 2, barring filth and item influences). Pawns will also spawn less filth if they do not walk through dirt tiles. It does, however, prevent you from planting decorative flowers (+14 beauty), which is a cheap and reliable way to increase beauty in a particular area, so I recommend to save some dirt and plant flowers near where you expect pawns to congregate.

All in all, yes, there are downsides. It's up to you whether those downsides are acceptable or not.

[Emelio Lizardo]

Smooth the rough stone and you get +2 beauty without any increase in wealth. And you get an increase in movement. Get Rainbeaus's fertile soil and with that you get terraforming to make your internals all stone.

Use marble walls exclusively internally (+1) and better yet smooth existing marble rock (+2) for your rooms. If you have the etching mod you can have your artists increase the beauty of the natural rock, but it's tedious.

Use potted plants to increase beauty cheaply. Choose the penunia as it is +20 and grows in dim light.

The mood buff for an impressive room is worth the wealth penalty. You may as well go for it as it's inevitiable. But scale up your defenses as you do.

There's a mod that turns off infestations, which really wreak your base. There's also infestation bait mod but as your base gets built up it's less effective.

Also use the terraforming to build a deep water dike around your base to funnel raids into your kill box. Have lots, and lots, of mortars. EMP ammo for those pesky mechanoids.

[M.K.]

The flooring will add a good bit of value to your base, without bringing nearly as much utility.

i.e.
Stronger raids, but not stronger ability to resist raids / grow / be productive.


You might want to consider this inbetween alternative
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1120185591

Not as pretty as tiled floors, easy enough to make, and looks good.

[Astasia]

Adding a large amount of flooring to a base will make raids slightly easier. Building wealth counts as half value for determining raid scaling, while resources sitting in a stockpile count at 100% value. So if you already have the resources, turning it into floors will make things very slightly easier, but it's a trivial difference unless we are talking gold.

Originally posted by climbingeastofwinter:

You may not have to clean dirt areas, but I strong suspect that walking through a dirt tile will add dirtiness to your pawns which then comes off in floored areas. I believe flooring your base will help keep things tidy

This is absolutely the case. By covering as much terrain as you can with flooring you reduce the dirt that gets picked up by colonists and animals walking over those tiles and reduce the total amount generated/deposited in your base. Once you get to the point where you can cover nearly everything around you with flooring then you mostly eliminate filth and reduce the amount of cleaning needed to a trivial amount. You'll just have to deal with trash, animal crap, and blood.

You can also expand the flooring a large ways out around your base entrances and remove it from your home zone. This will serve as a catch point for outside dirt/sand which is likely to be dropped in that outer area and later washed away by rain, further helping to keep the interior of your base clean. The Door Mat mod linked above serves a similar purpose in a more condensed form.

[Preechr]

Colony Manager mod also allows you to semi-automate (and with research, actually automate) removing cover in zones you specify, clearing land around wind turbines... stuff like that. Much more tasks you can configure as well. Can't add it to an existing run though.