How you guy design for base?

[Rhanos]

I try open area base but I read it got raid pod and something like toxic fallout(wtf is that) so I make new save by this time I'll try mountain base but after see bug spawn it make me headache to design base do you have any tips?I'm just newbie my longest save is like 30-40 days in game.

[Kangaroo Salesman]

I always make a mountain base, bugs are not a problem if you make a dark warm room for them to invade away from your main areas. Good luck.

[XelNigma]

I always go flat open bases. No city wall, no kill box. I build a town with roads. Because of that I can defend my base from any direction. I have corners and door ways ever where.
I also never plan ahead. I just let it grow organically.

A tip I rarly seen posted is have tables spread around your base. They will travel a good distance to find a table, but if you have them just around they will use them.

Fall out isnt much of an issue. you can quickly throw up roofs over the roads if need be.

[Triple G]

Drop pods aren´t that bad, as these raids are usually smaller, and they´re usually all on one spot if it´s inside the base. Usually it will hit some place with a bed - so probably a bedroom.

Toxic fallout is problematic for Your outdoor plants, but for Your pawns You can setup a zone, with only the buildings marked. They will still move from one to the other, but stay mostly indoors, and walk the shortest way through the buildings to get fom a to b instead of going ways outdoors, so there wouldn´t be much toxic buildup, or none. And the pen animals would automatically stay inside the barn. Toxic fallout will kill any wildlife on Your map - and usually also any plants, so it´s wise to either have a good stock on food, and wood, or to have a greenhouse in any biome - or to turn the toxic fallout off so it wouldn´t happen, or to end it via dev mode.

I mainly build villages - but now i want to do a mountain base in the desert. But therefore guilty and no organ harvesting, and no cannibalism, it´s basically called the desert refuge - i accept every quest and help everyone, but go enemy with the empire, as they´re slavers. Ye - again not the mechinator...

Anyways: with a village setup You still want a wall around it at a certain point, as the enemy numbers could become overwhelming (100 manhunter elephants or polar bears or whatever, which You simply don´t beat with a couple of pawns), and they might have doomrockets of doom.

Infestations are rather easy to deal with, and one could even somehow predict where they would spawn. Some would do a bait area for them. If You do tunneler with the fungus - it´s most likely that they will spawn there, occasionally in the prison or some bedroom. You need three melee pawns in front at some door - and behind them Your ranged pawns. For that situation machine pistols are very good if You don´t have the advanced stuff. At that range they deal good damage. Which also means You need any hallways to be at least 2 tiles wide, so they can stand behind each other. 3 if You want two rows with ranged pawns - or to attack also from the other side, as You stand 3 tiles wide. Hmm - somehow i never do screenshot so also never uploaded some, which would make it easier than explaining the stuff...

If anything fails You can turn down the threat scale, or general difficulty to get into it. But out of anything which could attack You - infestations are the easiest thing to deal with, if we don´t count the initial one people raids...

[Mati_Lublin]

Bug intrusions are quite rare (and can be eliminated entirely if you disable bug faction).

Mountain bases are tedious to build (digging into mountain, putting your stuff inside, throwing away stone clutters while simultaneously managing your temporary base takes time), but after 1st year 90% of the work is pretty much done and you should be accomodated into living underground. Tunneler meme from Ideology DLC helps (fungal gravel floor to plant plants under mountain and no outroors need) so the real issue is energy:
a) solar/wind generators placed outside
b) convenient placement of geyser(s) - outside again
c) huge fungal farms and turning that fungus into chemfuel
d) bioferrite generators - Anomaly DLC

Besides that, mountain base is immune to bad events like temperature malfunctions, toxic fallouts, sun blockers etc.

BTW take care of possible fire - in normal base you can destroy the wall and miraculously lower temperature. Mouttain bases are closed complexes that can quickly turn into oven.

[MadArtillery]

Tend be pretty varied don't worry about bugs or drop pod raids much, neither are a threat. Bugs you can semi control spawn location, a nice dark spacious room will encourage they spawn there as they dislike light. Avoid any dark spots elsewhere. Make sure every room has space on either side of the door so you can hold it with 3 melee and even hundreds of bugs should be easy.

Drop pods are too weak to care about, just meat to the grinder who conviently like to bring guns and stuff while dropping into melee as free kills, usually in populated areas. Generally considered them free raids. Similar door design is always a good standby in any base to prevent over runs.

[Rhanos]

Should I go full mountainbase or have some open are like home and farm,ranch.

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by Rhanos:

Should I go full mountainbase or have some open are like home and farm,ranch.

Up to you. Just remember some time outside is important to most colonists

[Humble]

I think river (not creek or large river) with Large or small Hill is more balanced for your building need, flat is very limited in resource and more open of attack yet it's easier to design where you want set up base, mountian base is painful to build due limited space, but had ton of resource and easier to defend, so I guess there is up and down side effect, so I think Large hill with river (help defend due enemies slow down if you not build bridge and gave you water power, but I think it's might not need, maybe go large or small hill without river maybe, it's up to you. all map type had up and downside.

[Triple G]

Originally posted by Rhanos:

Should I go full mountainbase or have some open are like home and farm,ranch.

If You have ideology You want the tunneler meme. This makes it so, that You can grow food inside of the mountain, without the need of sunlamps. Else You either need a good setup, to have it self sustainable with rice which is also used to get chemfuel, as You need power for the hydroponics and the sunlamps. You´d need one such setup anyways, to grow healroot, hops, psychograss, hemp, cotton, the dye plants - if You do this all inside the mountain. And probably one to feed the animals, if You want to have some leather to craft armchairs, or shirts and pants - or to train the people in crafting, as this is the cheapest option, while it also feeds Your people. Mixed meals need less resources than the carnivore or vegetarian ones (except for simple meals), while going vegetarian is easier than going carnivore, as it´s more persistent. So You don´t really need animals...

Like it´s all about the food in the end. If You can´t ensure Your food, any base wouldn´t work. And You always want a surplus - as a solar flare might kill all Your plants. But rice in hydroponics grows super fast. It´s also very work intensive for that reason.

Usually You build a mountain base, so the enemy can´t use mortars and drop pods on You - but also because You only have one direction from which the enemy can come from. If You build half of Your base outside - it can still be targeted by drop pods and mortars, and You probably have two occasions which they can come from. Actually when You dig into the mountain, You will occasionally also notice thin roof, or a hole in the mountain. So it´s not totally "safe" from it anyways. I for myself, in my actual run do it that way that i have most of it inside, while i get the tunneler meme later, and one small part outside, as i want devilstrand in the desert, and also didn´t built any devilstrand for many runs - and i probably put some solar panels in there - as playing in the desert without solar power seems a bit off - but i already planned an area for like 10 chemfuel reactors, and i have 6 geo-thermals on the map, which is super nice - so the solar panels will be for 2 sunlamps and hydroponics. Geothermals will always be outside of the mountain, but one would wall them in and lay a cable, and hope for the best that nobody attacks them, while 2 of these can be placed in the outside area i want to use anyways.

TL;DR:
It depends on the map, and Your idea how to build it. Like it´s not that a flat map without mountain is unplayable. If anything a mountain map makes sure that one direction is blocked off from enemy attacks as there´s the mountain, which gives a huge advantage, because You can´t really get surrounded, even if You build everything outside. This shortens the ways, and You can focus on few entry points, while the way for the enemy towards them is also longer if You build mainly inside the mountain, and then You only have one attack direction. On a flat or hill map You play mostly in the center of it, and the ways for enemies might not be very long from any direction, which can be problematic, when the people want to eat something, before going anywhere.

Also the river thing above for extra power is good. Sad: they always look oldschool, and there are only wooden bridges.