first mountain base, how do I conduit?

[Null]

What's the proper method of powering all of my stuff? I was planning on building a solar farm that is heavily barricaded and behind my defenses, but how do I get the power through the mountain? Am I stuck to using the entrance and dropping it throughout all of my pawns pathways/hallways?

[MortVent]

Depends on if you use mods like subsurface conduits.

But otherwise yeah you're going to be building conduits down hallways... I know my first vanilla one I built utility corridors with conduits, traps, etc just to hide cables and stuff.

[DaTank]

Originally posted by Null:

What's the proper method of powering all of my stuff? I was planning on building a solar farm that is heavily barricaded and behind my defenses, but how do I get the power through the mountain? Am I stuck to using the entrance and dropping it throughout all of my pawns pathways/hallways?

If you smooth walls you can build conduit in the walls.

[failsafe]

smooth walls do the trick - u can place conduits there just like in walls. Sometimes, though, easier way is just to demolish everything and build walls. Smoothing takes a lot of time, depending on pawns you have it may be good solution or not.

[failsafe]

By the way: I totally love doing bases in mountains. This is my newest one:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2868635363

While base is more than basic - so far - I like finding maps with nice "sacks".

[Astasia]

Having external power largely defeats the point of mountain bases, as enemies will pod into your power area or bombard it with mortars. It's fairly easy to have two paths out of the mountains from your base, one leading to your power area that is fully walled of and the other being the path raiders will take because it's open, but this mostly functions like a normal "surface" base in terms of vulnerability.

The usual method of powering a mountain base is converting crops/raiders into chemfuel and having an underground chemfuel generation system. Powering a sunlamp growing maxed out hydroponic trays of rice around it produces much more rice than is needed to keep the system running by turning it into chemfuel, it's basically an infinite positive energy loop.

The other option is hunting for unstable power cells and vanometric power cells to power your base passively.

[Security Cam #7]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Having external power largely defeats the point of mountain bases, as enemies will pod into your power area or bombard it with mortars..

I don't know why but this isn't my experience at all. When I built external geothermal generators and surrounded them with granite walls the raiders completely ignored those and went straight for my base (no killbox)

[Big Stick Energy]

Capture raiders, beat them into submission, and use their tears to smooth out your walls. Then you'll be able to have cables go through your walls and spread through your base.

Execute them when you're done.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by ᲼⁧⁧Smelly Fish:

Originally posted by Astasia:

Having external power largely defeats the point of mountain bases, as enemies will pod into your power area or bombard it with mortars..

I don't know why but this isn't my experience at all. When I built external geothermal generators and surrounded them with granite walls the raiders completely ignored those and went straight for my base (no killbox)

Raiders generally wont dig through walls to get to stuff if they have any other option. Having external power is fairly safe from normal raids, and geothermals tightly surrounded by walls are also safe from drop pod raids and aren't usually a target for sieges. Having a large open area with solar panels and wind turbines though gives drop pod raiders a place to land, and it becomes more vulnerable to sieges. It's definitely a valid option to have external power, I've done it in several playthroughs, it's just something you have to defend occasionally and you can't just laugh at and ignore sieges like with a fully undermountain base.

[Security Cam #7]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by ᲼⁧⁧Smelly Fish:

I don't know why but this isn't my experience at all. When I built external geothermal generators and surrounded them with granite walls the raiders completely ignored those and went straight for my base (no killbox)

Raiders generally wont dig through walls to get to stuff if they have any other option. Having external power is fairly safe from normal raids, and geothermals tightly surrounded by walls are also safe from drop pod raids and aren't usually a target for sieges. Having a large open area with solar panels and wind turbines though gives drop pod raiders a place to land, and it becomes more vulnerable to sieges. It's definitely a valid option to have external power, I've done it in several playthroughs, it's just something you have to defend occasionally and you can't just laugh at and ignore sieges like with a fully undermountain base.

Ah, I see now. Thanks for explaining.
I always enclosed my power sources, solar or not just so raiders don't walk to it and set them on fire, so that's why they never really focused on it (even during sieges, I usually have a small front portion of my base not under the mountain so they just focus their mortars there)

[The Yeen Queen]

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[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by Night Foxx:

Originally posted by DaTank:

If you smooth walls you can build conduit in the walls.

Yeah, but it seems in the time that it takes to smooth the walls, you could mine them out and build steel or stone walls. :p Smoothing is SLOOOOOOW!

Smoothed stone walls have higher hp and beauty than artificial walls of the same stone, and material-wise they're free. Great for leveling construction.

[failsafe]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Originally posted by Night Foxx:

Yeah, but it seems in the time that it takes to smooth the walls, you could mine them out and build steel or stone walls. :p Smoothing is SLOOOOOOW!

Smoothed stone walls have higher hp and beauty than artificial walls of the same stone, and material-wise they're free. Great for leveling construction.

On the other hand, when building under mountain, you have more than plenty of material and keeping in mind that every single square has to be mined or smoothed it is still better to mine and build rather than smooth. At least smoothing everything is out of question, since this would lock the developement of the colony.

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by failsafe:

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Smoothed stone walls have higher hp and beauty than artificial walls of the same stone, and material-wise they're free. Great for leveling construction.

On the other hand, when building under mountain, you have more than plenty of material and keeping in mind that every single square has to be mined or smoothed it is still better to mine and build rather than smooth. At least smoothing everything is out of question, since this would lock the developement of the colony.

How does smoothing everything "lock the development of the colony," and how is building walls better at all?

[failsafe]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Originally posted by failsafe:

On the other hand, when building under mountain, you have more than plenty of material and keeping in mind that every single square has to be mined or smoothed it is still better to mine and build rather than smooth. At least smoothing everything is out of question, since this would lock the developement of the colony.

How does smoothing everything "lock the development of the colony," and how is building walls better at all?

Time is first thing, though - without going into the details I would say that this is very dependent on the pawns we have. It might not be an issue in some cases. Sometimes mining rock and converting to slabs is waste of time, but in other cases mining rock under future walls allows to place conduits even without walls and this allows to spread functionality of the base little bit ahead of time.

Second thing - quality. Granite rock is not as good as marble in terms of quality. And slate or sandstone is not that strong as granite. So, you may need to move granite from one place to another and marble or slate opposite direction.

I never said that smoothing is wrong. I do it whenever possible. Just stated that sometimes instead of sticking to smoothing it is better to mine.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

Those who want modded solutions should consider Faster Smoothing's 300% increased smoothing speed (adjustable) in lieu of creating some cyborg with insane manipulation and skill. I use it myself to get the benefits of a beautiful mountain base that's achievable within a shorter timeframe.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1807439023