How do you do base design?

[Windy Chimes]

I see so many beautiful bases around but no matter how hard I try, I always end up making a base with 7x7 compartments that are completely modular.

Rooms can be moved at will and size can be changed by merging splitting rooms. It's so much more convenient, but I always feel sad that I am only capable of making a giant, self sustaining borg cube.

[Astasia]

It's all about planning. Before you start building, create something interesting using planning tools. If at first what you plan out looks like a box, start tweaking it and moving things around. Mods like this have copy-paste functions for plans, so you can quickly rearrange and nudge things until they look better:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2877392159

I usually have a concept for the overall base at game start, and I will usually sit there and plan it all out before playing. Sometimes this involves creating and recreating a building many times before I settle on the style that works best with my idea, and then usually creating the other buildings in that style is easier. Still, it can take me over an hour of planning to get things where I'm happy.

[Veylox]

I don't plan anything, I just build outwards keeping the same design overall ;

- Huge 10x20, 10x30 or 10x40 rec-room (that's also a dining room, early barracks, church, production and research area, teaching area for children, etc. You can easily cram 80% of your stuff in there with only upsides, which is why you make it big, it's all-purpose and will easily reach extreme impressiveness)

- storeroom adjacent to it

- early kitchen in the rec room (not the butchering table though), moved later on to an adjacent room with sterile tiles that combines kitchen, research and hospital.

- bedrooms when needed if pawns start going on breaks often, adjacent to the rec room (one of the two long sides, I make a row of bedrooms, about 3x5 each, and a second row behind it later on)

That's about it, on the two shorter exits of the main room are usually my plantations on one side, and the power generating stuff / genetic and mech buildings on the other side (not even in a room, just left outside). Ideally the killbox is close-by too. Everything is compact, easy to reach, and usually fits in a single building rather than separated stuff. Sometimes I rebuild the church or royal rooms further out later on if there isn't space left adjacent to the rec room, but apart from that everything is centered around it. No corridors, no travel-time

[MadArtillery]

I tend to have a very organic build style, where though things locations are planned how things arrive at those points can be quite irregular. Find it more ascetically pleasing, especially how wonky the shape of my bases can get in other games like oxygen not included. Grows like a tumor.

[Rainnd]

Mostly theme and visual appeal over optimization and convenience. My current one will be fortified Ranger HQ surrounded by town with almost zero deffenses. And even the fortress will have at least two entrances and no killbox.

[Raymond]

planning tool and quite a big of knowledge about the game. You need to know what you can get away with when it come to colony layout without sacrificing too much efficiency

[pmutzu]

this game is absolutely made to be modded. id advise some deco mods. get the carpets mod, and start playing around with dev mode to really dig in to base building. by using set terrain . and god mode you can literally just transform your environment whatever way you want. you want a lake with a island . dev mode it . i often begin a map. and then immediately dev mode myself some interesting landforms. lakes. seperate mountains. maybe a arc of deep water or something that makes the map totally different. play around a bit with transforming the land then build organically from there. sometimes i make a wildly curving mountain and then a few areas of open land inside the mountain for safe enclosed farming and fishing.

[Wantoomany]

Chaos and anarchy are the design tools I rely on the most. If the layout is efficient, if the pawns are happy and well, and if the end result looks like something that was planned or intended, then I have somehow failed.

[Morvana]

Originally posted by Windy Chimes:

I see so many beautiful bases around but no matter how hard I try, I always end up making a base with 7x7 compartments that are completely modular.

I had the same problem, and found some solutions:

-Build small structures, it rapidly gives a "village" feeling to your colony.
-Ban anything rectangular. I love to do runs with "round" houses to represent huts for tribals, but simply doing "L" shaped houses change the feeling of your colony a lot.
-Don't align things.
-Let a bit more space than necessary between things, it's more natural and let place for decorations.

[Ninefinger]

I usually plan my base in rooms of odd numbers so doors work out in the middle and when you plan your base try planning with 3 wide hallways first, you can make them all have nice grid like intersections or have them offset.

Then I plan my bedroom block, my bedrooms are always 3x5 and I accept the max mood of +4 easily obtainable with a good wood sculpture and with room for double bed. I put 3 bedrooms together with vents for heating and cooling the middle one. i stack my 3 bedroom complex back to back with 3 others and make sure the doors have access to a 3 wide hallway.

Then I plan my hospital and my crafting room and my throne/rec room similarly with different sizes as long as they are odd number in size and have access to a three wide hallway I am happy,

I then make my three wide hallway go to a T intersection that allows me to toggle raiders to come through either my left or right kill box and I can toggle them indefinitely till they give up with a zoneable animal or a single pawn if it really comes down to it for max safety.

[Steelfleece]

There's nothing wrong with beautiful symmetry. A perfectly square base set up for pure efficiency has a cold beauty unmatched by the crappy tropical forest of panthers and disease and panthers and bamboos and more panthers that was flattened to make space for it.

[di eshor ribly]

Originally posted by Steelfleece:

There's nothing wrong with beautiful symmetry. A perfectly square base set up for pure efficiency has a cold beauty unmatched by the crappy tropical forest of panthers and disease and panthers and bamboos and more panthers that was flattened to make space for it.

My OCD and I agree with this 100%. Also like Pmutzu, I'm a map terraformer. However I end up building a fortress with a deep water moat on ... about 1/3 of the map. I blame my military training... I *have* to have a defensible base.

On the smallest map I can have twenty four 13x25 buildings, eight 7x25 buildings, and six 7x13 buildings, with a 5xmap-wide barrier wall with auto-turret embrasure bubbles facing out into the wilderness. I can post a screenshot if needed.

Each of the 13x25 buildings get cut into modules for whatever I need, with the back and side huts being devoted to infrastructural duties like mech charging stations, battery storage, generator bays, chemfuel tanks, mortar banks, etc.

[AmesNFire]

No squares challenge.

[Sossololpipi]

my building style is having irregular shapes (usually L-shaped, but other shapes are game too) "climbing" one another to get large, accessible rooms while keeping a unique look

[Elementium]

depend of the biome and a theme i want to represent

Before I was soly doing big rectangles,

Now I go for circles, next i think i'm going for star shaped base

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

No squares challenge.

I don't think I could manage. My desire for perfect 90° angles is too strong.