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.

[Swiggy]

I almost always build into a mountain. If you have the Ideology DLC you can lay fungal gravel (Depending on your ideologeon). Which makes it easier to grow crops underground without needing hydroponics basins. Once you have a cavern dug out big enough for a farm, you can expand further into the mountain, building rec rooms, bedrooms, barracks, visiting quarters, dining areas, prisons, hospital wings, warehouses, ice lockers, Factories, schools, churches (Or chuch if you don't care for outsiders joining you). On the outside of the mountain I usually set up a 2 block thick granite or slate wall around the surrounding mountains/hills so there is a safe outside portion to the mountain base. Outside is usually only used for setting up wind turbines or geothermal vents/ etc.

IF you're lucky, sometimes you can find small outside pockets when tunneling into a mountain. I find these areas to be good for setting up transport pod launch areas and transport craft landing areas (9x9). I've also added a xenogenetics and biogenetics labratory to my recent build. In the xenogenetics labratory I have a containment area with small cells for observing and toying with captured bugs. I usually turn on 3 colonies so I can build another base adjacent to the main one, and have a floating colony for hunting and exploring.

I build with square rooms like most people. Functionality is usually my goal though. If I need some asthetics I make golden statues, marble pathways, and I replant beautiful trees along walk ways outdoors.

[Storm]

I think the key thing is really to plan for hallways and resource placement. This tremendously cuts down hauling, allows you to use priorities and zoning to make sure specific jobs get done by specific people. As the base grows, I always end up ripping up a few rooms to put in good 3x3 hallways, otherwise, pawns will drag corpses through the dining room on the way to the autopsy table and the furnace.


For example from inside out it's a kitchen + freezer zone some pawns or bots just work there, then their freezer is the highest priority storage for them. The next zone set up to be freezer + Field and same thing. In the kitchen you have a shelf for meals at a low priority, but it's still the highest priority the kitchen staff can get to so they cook and load it. Then you have other pawns / bots doing the hauling, for example, picking up meals from the kitchen and moving them to one or more dining rooms.

Cuts contention on the inventory list, which gets bad when you have too much using and or trying to haul the same things. Also potential job lists are shorter for pawns, which helps lag a good bit too.

[Mr. Do Everything]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2667884912

It is always some rendition or makeup on this general plan.

[Canadio]

I just like basing my bases off real life cities, historical or not. My personal favourite was making 1683 Vienna, with the nice star shape.

[Soldner42]

i always tend to dig me entirely in like a Tumor.

All Stat Points into Defense.

Also, i like Modular and Clean Designs that i can expand.


That being said, i also dont like Attacking, or in other Words, i dont Attack others if they dont Attack me.
But the moment they threaten me and Attack me i will crush them.

Im Pro Peace, but im also not Silly, i do Invest a lot into Equipment and Superior Tech.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198015670301/screenshot/2023856976407010661/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198015670301/screenshot/2023856976407010441/

[its so balatrover]

Keep bedrooms at the edges of your colony and out of the way, as your pawns will only have to walk there to go to bed once each day. Make sure you have a few bedrooms inhabited by good combat pawns near your killbox or defensive structures as that'll cut down travel time if you get raided during off-hours.

Power buildings like wind turbines and solar panels should also be placed out of the way (and ideally combined together to make a solar/wind power block, as solar panels do NOT block wind turbines. Wind turbines are also not blocked by most crops, only exception being trees, so you can place them in the middle of your fields as well.)

Put your kitchens and freezers to be next to wherever you grow food so it can be hauled in quickly, and keep hospitals, prisons, and dining rooms/rec rooms near the kitchen as well. Ideally make sure you have a few smaller hospital "triage" rooms spread around your base if it's very large, so critically injured pawns/prisoners can be brought there and stabilized before being sent to the main hospitals and prisons.

Stockpiles should be kept in the center of your base so materials can be sent to and from in about the same amount of time, and put your workshops next to them as well.

Additionally if you have a mountain base you can make an outdoor dining area instead of an indoor dining room and spruce it up with some flowers, sculptures and other foliage, this helps a lot with keeping a pawn's outdoor needs filled.

If you have any special buildings from the Ideology DLC like neural superchargers, vampire deathrest rooms, biosculpter pods etc. where pawns only have to visit once each day (or even less often), keep them at the edges of your colony just like the bedrooms; if they occupy space that sees a lot of foot traffic they'll be a hindrance to travel time as that space could've been a workshop, hospital, more storage etc. that sees much more use.

That's the sweaty way I optimize my bases, if you're going for aesthetics feel free to disregard but having a more efficient layout will help your pawns be much more productive throughout the day. Lastly ANYWHERE YOUR PAWNS GO FREQUENTLY, LIGHT IT UP. Pawns in the dark suffer a mood penalty and movespeed debuff that is equivalent to having a pegleg. Standing lamps will not catch fire or short-circuit in rain, so you can safely light up your outdoor areas with them (if power drain is an issue, research advanced lighting to cut the power consumption of each lamp to only 15W).

[Windy Chimes]

To give you guys a rough idea of what I'm faced with, this is what I currently have, and it's from me trying to be somewhat organic and spontaneous.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Windy_Chimes/screenshot/2039619682069106208/
In my defense, it started out as a pretty village like thing, but eventually urban planning kicked in.

Publicado originalmente por 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

Thanks for the mod suggestion! I'll give it a whirl in my next playthrough.

Publicado originalmente por Veylox:

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

I'm having a difficult time visualizing this, but it sounds cool!

Publicado originalmente por 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. Grows like a tumor.

Do you happen to have any screenshots? I'm envious and interested in what this looks like.

Publicado originalmente por 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...

Amen to that, but sometimes I wish I could do things a little better yanno?

Publicado originalmente por Phereon:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2667884912
It is always some rendition or makeup on this general plan.

Publicado originalmente por Soldner42:

i always tend to dig me entirely in like a Tumor.
All Stat Points into Defense.
Also, i like Modular and Clean Designs that i can expand.

Danke schön! Your base was a real pleasure to behold!

Publicado originalmente por AmesNFire:

No squares challenge.

This sentence hurts me.

[Steelfleece]

Publicado originalmente por Windy Chimes:

To give you guys a rough idea of what I'm faced with, this is what I currently have, and it's from me trying to be somewhat organic and spontaneous.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Windy_Chimes/screenshot/2039619682069106208/
In my defense, it started out as a pretty village like thing, but eventually urban planning kicked in.

You could easily go with something along those lines but change up the materials a little. Even just the floor. Go with 3- or 4-wide passages/roads. Make the middle one thing, say concrete flanked by paved tiles to give the look of a main throughway and side spaces for shelves/tables/whatever happens to go there on a nice day. I tend to combine carpets and sterile tiles for interior hallways, and some other rooms and various kinds of stone floors for roads or 'outer' hallways. Just varying up that way can make a huge difference even with a cube.

[AmesNFire]

Publicado originalmente por Windy Chimes:

Publicado originalmente por AmesNFire:

No squares challenge.

This sentence hurts me.

The bases always look better and it's a fun challenge of sorts.
Each building will have a bit of personality so to speak.

[Steelfleece]

Publicado originalmente por AmesNFire:

Publicado originalmente por Windy Chimes:

This sentence hurts me.

The bases always look better and it's a fun challenge of sorts.
Each building will have a bit of personality so to speak.

Reminds me of blind dates.
"Is my new apartment symmetrical?" "It...Has a great personality?"

[Minty Fresh]

Publicado originalmente por AmesNFire:

No squares challenge.

Challenge refused.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3014233517

[Security Cam #7]

I just add things as needed without much planning going into it beyond "is this a short enough path to minimize traveling time between workbenches" and "is this a good idea to put highly explosive stuff along with everything else I have in this stockpile"

My bases aren't the prettiest (to me, colonists don't care about the shape, only if it has a sculpture or two lol), but they work and that's what matters.

[PARSA TV]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQi4i6zJ16o&t=9s

[Hoki]

bad pacing, no structure.

"this is... this is.... this is...."

and for that you necro a thread?

[ARaa90]

Find a photo, copy it as much as possible. I manage 13x13 boxes and variations of odd number so doorways fall in middle. Some compact bases you can find are amazing. Wall off slow growing crops. I let raiders burn the rice.

Mods help tremendously. Rugs and art and windows and flowers go far. Fake stairs.