[Base] Tau Complex

Much like the Degasi Tower, this is another spectacular sink of resources, yet all in a different way.

This is not a Tower

Maybe you came here because you saw my Subnautica guide Degasi Tower, a rather wild and playful base concept. Below Zero is different in many aspects, and so is this short guide. Space is somewhat limited in Sector Zero, hence we strife for a much more compact layout.

There is also a technical reason for a compact architecture: The control room. While its horizontal range seem limitless, the control diagram has a vertical limit. If your base gets taller than about 100 meters, the control room will fail to display more than 30 floors, and it will always start at the bottom.

Outer Layout

The Tau Complex is a large research building. Its symmetric layout shows a functional redundancy of order two, which means all vital systems are installed twice. The complex consists of two containment towers, connected by a grid of walkways that forms a large central court.


The central building block covers a grid size of six times ten compartment units, the equivalent of three times five foundations. The top floor features appendixes in each direction, which serve for all fabrication, docking and control activities, covering a total grid size of 12 by 16 units.


Here is a schematic diagram of the top floor (upper part) and the below tower floors (lower part).

The location I chose for my own base is to the North of the East ventguarden, where thermal energy can be harnessed with ease.

Inner Structure

The containments inside the towers are arranged in a stepwise pattern, which allows for connected sea farming at multiple height levels.


Below is a schematic illustration for one of the two towers.

The placement of ladders is indicated by H symbols, while the containment hatches are indicated with brackets. Speakers for the jukebox are placed in the same pattern as the containments, at those inner walls that are facing the center of a containment.

This way, the sound is distributed evenly, and can be well heard from outside in the court area.

There are three containments per floor and accordingly, the structure is inverted in the other tower, as shown below.
No containments are placed on the top floor, so the below sea life can be observed via glass floors.



The two large rooms on the top floor serve as a saloon area with plenty of room to relax, or as a workshop for crafting, respectively.


Those large rooms on the lower floors with only one containment have plenty of space to play with wall partitions. I used them to build a small room around the hatch at the end of each single containment.

Then I added another room with a door on each side, leaving some space for a small enclosing corridor. This "rest room" area is ideal for the placement of showers, beds or similar misc. structures.

Composition and Planning

The Tau Complex can be planned and built with a variable number of floors. For my survival game, I chose seven floors. Not too tall, not too small. For those who prefer something similar in a different size, here are some screenshots of my planning sheets.

The chart shows a selection of material requirements, along with the structural integrity needs and coverage. The breakdown shows the main building units, and how many units are used per floor. Some elements only occur on the top floor, or are arranged differently on the top two floors. This is summarized as a unit offset, which has to be added to or subtracted from the total units per floor. The corresponding aggregation is shown below.

Now, what does siu and sip tell us? Nothing, without the context of depth. Here is another table screenshot to get the full picture.

I built my Tau Complex at a depth of about 290 to 320 meters, so I'm left with some 40 units of structural integrity, which I could use for temporary structures appended to the complex. If you go significantly deeper, you may consider to plan more reinforcements and less windows per floor.

Construction Work

When constructing a larger base like the Tau Compex, it is advisable to get the outline of the structure first. The foundation consists of three by five units, and should be placed carefully, such that there is enough space in each direction. Some plates of the foundation can be skipped to get the right dimensions with limited materials at the beginning, and to start building a sparse stack of rooms to check the desired height.


If everything fits nicely into the scenery, the sparse tower stacks and foundation shall be completed. Note that once you construct the moon pools forming the ceiling of the court, it is no longer possible to place any foundations below.


As a next step, the outline of the top floor shall be completed. Structures like the seatruck docks and scanners need plenty of surrounding free space.


Once it is ensured that the full layout can be placed in the chosen environment, the construction of the towers and court structure can begin.

Sea Farming

The Tau Complex provides a sophisticated infrastructure for sea farming. Therefore, let’s recap some key facts:

• When placed in large rooms, each alien containment has a breeding capacity of 20 units and a grow bed capacity of 2 times 4x4 slots
  
• Containments that are connected across stacked rooms add and share their breeding capacities
  
• Depending on their alignment in large rooms, connected containments lose all or half of their grow bed capacities on the upper levels
  
• When placed in multi purpose rooms, the containment capacities are 50% lower, and stacked units lose all upper grow beds
  
• Creatures stop reproduction when the breeding capacity is reached, which is counted for all creatures in the connected containments
  
• This depends on the sizes the creatures, e.g. an inventory size of 2x2, 3x3 or 4x4 approximately uses 2, 3 or 4 breeding units, respectively
  
• The wiki mentions creatures die off over time when the population is above the breeding capacity, but I could not confirm this in Below Zero
  
• Thanks to Ignis for confirming there is no such hard limit, and that the large capacity is 18 units, not 20

So how does this look for a Tau Complex with seven floors?


The two towers of the complex each have a breeding capacity of 9x20 units across six floors. That’s up to 324 small fish or 80 glow whales - only for breeding. It is recommended to keep one tower strictly below its breeding capacity, so it can be used to hatch eggs and breed smaller fish.

This tower can additionally hold non productive creatures, e.g. trivalves and one sample of each species, which will occupy only a fraction of the overall capacity.


The second tower can then be used to accumulate creatures above its breeding capacity. This means a dense, but constant population for that tower, which can be controlled by releasing creatures into the court, or by transferring some from the other tower.


Keep in mind that certain creatures will stick around the complex when released in the court. Others, such as glow whales, will leave at once. You could block their path with vehicles or additional structures like flood lights. But don’t – they really need space to grow significantly larger.

Sea farming is not only about fauna, but also about flora. The court area is ideal for exterior grow beds, which are best mounted on the central foundation. This can be done in a nice arrangement of rotational symmetry, such that plants can grow and symmetric patterns as well. Note that creep vines cannot grow to their full size in containments, unless two or more units are aligned vertically, which is not the case in the Tau Complex.

The grow beds in the three containments on the lowest floor each hold 2x4x4 slots for a subtotal of 96 slots. And for the five middle floors, two of three containments each hold 4x4 slots, for a subtotal of 160 slots. Additionally, the court area is ideal for exterior grow beds. E.g. if the central reinforcement is covered by 8 grow beds with 6x4 slots, or a total of 192. The grand total for this configuration is 448 grow bed slots. Plenty of room to grow all sorts of sea flora for sure.

One more aspect of sea farming is bio energy, which is readily available from your home grown flora. If you can harness thermal or solar energy, though, bioreactors only serve as a backup, e.g. in case a power transmitter gets (temporarily) deconnected.

[just your average silly guy]

wow

[NARRATORABI]

im going to build this base as an scout and use the blueprints to make it better i would sugesst making it custom like everything off exept for starting no agressive animals

[Gamerkidd729]

your build looks as pristine as the mona lisa while mine looks like a drunken 4 year old drawing a tetris board with a toothpick

[DrBonifarz]

Glad to see you enjoyed the guide, thanks for your response. And yes, I had fun planning, building and documenting this base. And when you have a plan what you are doing, it is not as time consuming as you may think. A good part is spent gathering materials like quartz and titanium. But there is plenty of that in proximity, so it is not too bad for some prawn hopping. I just wish the exosuit had similar hyperspeed as in Subnautica, and a button or mod to swtich quickly between double drill and double grapple would have been epic XD

[giguy2002]

Stunning! I've looked at the pictures a dozen times already and find myself going back to look again and again before I even finish my post!

The multiple levels,details,items...etc. All the gathering, building and of course rebuilding that goes with moving things around must have been hugely time consuming.

I'm more of a minimalist myself building only what I need to play and complete the game. I'd say you had a quite a lot of fun with this. Thanks for the statistical analysis related to building at depth and all the great views!

[Jumbo_32]

Hello DrBonifarz screenshots yes I can post some, after ideas unfortunately I think we are at the maximum of possibilities to do in the game, in the hope that for the next one they will be able to add furniture, and a possibility of disign for the interior, (my whales don't light up in the light trot aquarium)(translated via google)

[DrBonifarz]

Good to see you had fun with the layout, Jumbo. Thank you.
My early tests in creative mode also had 10+ floors, but I did not have the patience to gather more materials in survival or HC mode. You mentioned you keep refining your base - do you have some ideas to share or maybe some screenshots?

[Jumbo_32]

magnifique construction , GG à toi la mienne est deux fois plus grande et je l améliore tous les jours

[Mental Pain]

bruh u gotta be deep as shit to build that... damn

[△ ATLAS △]

nice reference. 10/10 base.