Started a new save and figured I should finally try out this mountain base malarky. Attempted once before but never got going. The map I rolled looks nice with a protected pocket.
(http://i.imgur.com/8wJ7H09l.jpg) (https://imgur.com/8wJ7H09)
However, I'm really unsure how to go about the temperature control when placed inside the mountain? For those who play like this, how do you do it? Usually I play with open bases, where it's pretty easy.
Naturally I need a freezer somewhere, and the ability to heat up during winter, and cool down during summer. Do I need a long corridor that airs right into the open or something like that?
This is boosted to Savage so probably a good chance I die horribly early on, but yeah... it has to be tried, although I worry about the +60% threat power or so compared with Rough.
I prefer temperature isolation, meaning there is gigantic cooler block to make inside of the base comfotable 21°C and anything else just work from this temperature. Saves a lot of trouble as even 60x12 mega-fridge needs only 2 coolers to keep it at -10°C. Got some heat wave during summer while on extreme desert biome? Just add coolers to the main cooler block! Well I do just fine with 9 for now.
[attachment deleted due to age]
Quote from: B@R5uk on August 09, 2019, 04:11:02 PM
I prefer temperature isolation, meaning there is gigantic cooler block to make inside of the base comfotable 21°C and anything else just work from this temperature. Saves a lot of trouble as even 60x12 mega-fridge needs only 2 coolers to keep it at -10°C. Got some heat wave during summer while on extreme desert biome? Just add coolers to the main cooler block! Well I do just fine with 9 for now.
Thanks. That looks like a very interesting and easily workable approach. You don't need vents and stuff for the rooms either I suppose?
Looks like you have planned everything meticulously from the beginning. I have to do that too, I think, which has been the reason I've aborted such bases in the past. I like to expand as I go, depending on needs. But to build inside the mountain, I need to plan everything beforehand. But trying something else might be fun, and it will be sweet relief to no have to worry so much about sieges and drop attacks. Sappers can be a much bigger issue, I suppose, but hopefully manageable. Some of my starting guys actually turned out to be Undergrounders, so that will help with outdoors need.
Any other particular advice you have for somebody who haven't tried this approach before?
Quote from: Pangaea on August 09, 2019, 05:30:29 PMYou don't need vents and stuff for the rooms either I suppose?
As long as there is no thin or constructed roof there is no need. One-layer walls have enough heat conductivity to balance everythig out. The only exception is prison as a lot of people produce enough heat to get them "sleep in heat" debuff.
Quote from: Pangaea on August 09, 2019, 05:30:29 PMLooks like you have planned everything meticulously from the beginning.
Well, that is accumulated experience from a number of games (most of them is not even finished, as I just started anew with some new ideas). This is also transitional base layout (second out of three), as population grows there is need and means to dig a bigger base.
Quote from: Pangaea on August 09, 2019, 05:30:29 PMBut to build inside the mountain, I need to plan everything beforehand.
Well, as I have some experience, beforehand I only check two things: if there is enough space under mountain for the last base layout and if there is roof holes in the mountain. The last thing requires to turn off the fog of war in the dev mode, and if there is holes I will just get a new map. Planning everything else is meaningless as most of the time you need gradual approch and every loophole you can find to save some work-hours (especially at the start). Many thing can change. I have my final layout in head but I'm still not sure if I need to modify it somehow.
Quote from: Pangaea on August 09, 2019, 05:30:29 PM...and it will be sweet relief to no have to worry so much about sieges and drop attacks. Sappers can be a much bigger issue, I suppose, but hopefully manageable.
Sieges can burn your ouside plantings and power supplies as it's difficult to run base only on fuel generators and hydroponics costs a lot. Best way to fool suppers is multilayered defence with many doors: while they dig you shoot and repair, while they shoot you hide. Well, I actually didn't refine this tactic yet.
Quote from: Pangaea on August 09, 2019, 05:30:29 PMSome of my starting guys actually turned out to be Undergrounders, so that will help with outdoors need.
Two-three telescopes ouside will solve this issue once and for all.
Quote from: Pangaea on August 09, 2019, 05:30:29 PMAny other particular advice you have for somebody who haven't tried this approach before?
Make sure you have two-three tough melee pawns and some heavy armor for them. Dig three-cells tunels and make choke points at the crossings. That way you can counter bugs: melee pawn block choke point and fends off one or two enemies (no more can attack through choke point) while nine other pawns stay behind and shoot their asses off with shotguns and assault riffles. This approach will make short work of any bug infestation.
Core of final base layout will be something like this I guess. Maybe a little bit more bedrooms. There is fridge up high, kitchen and meals-fridge in the middle, dinner/recriation room under them and bedrooms to the left and right. Workrooms will be somewhere around. This layout saves some travel time for pawns' daily needs.
[attachment deleted due to age]
Thanks :) I've ended up playing until winter without going into the mountain yet, and we're up to 9 pawns without bedrooms, so it may be time to find the pickaxes :P For some reason I always do this, play too long without planning anything.
I won't use dev tools to check, but hopefully the mountain is mostly intact (ideally with some ores of metal).
Quote from: B@R5uk on August 10, 2019, 12:56:31 AM
Core of final base layout will be something like this I guess. Maybe a little bit more bedrooms. There is fridge up high, kitchen and meals-fridge in the middle, dinner/recriation room under them and bedrooms to the left and right. Workrooms will be somewhere around. This layout saves some travel time for pawns' daily needs.
Yikes, that looks colossal! Is that giant rectangle in the back/top of the image the freezer? You could fit all the animals in the known universe in there ;D
Certainly food for thought. Will try to bake some of that into my design, though I probably won't have that much room to play around in, even if the mountain is fully intact. Am thinking hospital and some prison cells in the front for easier reach after combat. I was then thinking of freezer + eating/rec room centrally-ish. Getting the freezer that far back will take a lot of mining.
I'll plot down something and see how it turns out. I need room for about 15 pawns. Think that is Cassandra's upper limit.
Also read
somewhere that vents don't work how I expected. So far, in the open layout bases, I've used a "block" of bedrooms, with vents between all of them, and heaters and coolers in a few of the rooms. But I read that vents can only transfer heat/cold once. Which means my setup largely doesn't work very well. The corridor setup with vents into the room is probably more effective. I just haven't like the look of it, so went with basically a block of 2x4 bedrooms without hallways, and vents everywhere.
Maybe that information I read isn't correct, but in any case I did notice that some of the rooms were oddly cold or warm, so at some point I had to place more heaters and coolers than expected.
(http://i.imgur.com/vUeySD1l.png) (https://imgur.com/vUeySD1)
Errr, this is going to hell in a handbasket. Are Savage sieges preposterously more precise or something?
I kid you not, they keep HEADSHOTTING my guys with artillery. First this one, then another a few shots later. This is the second siege in short succession. The first one burned down everything.
(http://i.imgur.com/EFrqrASl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/EFrqrAS)
Looks like I'm going to have to start over pretty soon :-[
Yeah the mountain temperature work's like mortar magnet ! :-)
Normaly you don't get so early a siege, if you play Random Randy's it is prolly his vault but still untypical.
Unless you got a mountain base, my tactic are to intercept and attack them once their building materials are droped.
You can attack the raider or just only the mortar's. They will attack your base once you destroy the mortars and you can retreat to your base.
Too much walls and too much goods. You should start to eat into rock right from the start. No stone walls, especially no stone floors!!! That is useless weath which is punishable even more so on hardcore difficulty. Mountain base is nice because all the rock walls have zero wealth.
Also, make sure your stuff is under mountain, not thin roof.
Quote from: Canute on August 11, 2019, 02:19:56 AM
Yeah the mountain base work's like mortar magnet!
Never got this feeling during all the time I had ever played under mountain.
Quote from: Canute on August 11, 2019, 02:19:56 AM
Yeah the mountain temperature work's like mortar magnet ! :-)
Normaly you don't get so early a siege, if you play Random Randy's it is prolly his vault but still untypical.
Unless you got a mountain base, my tactic are to intercept and attack them once their building materials are droped.
You can attack the raider or just only the mortar's. They will attack your base once you destroy the mortars and you can retreat to your base.
Usually I attacked sieges directly too, and actually tried that on the first one, despite it being winter and the siege being very far away due to the mountain curves. But they hit directly at the base, and the one pawn I had back there to take care of any fires got a mental breakdown right away, so didn't do jack. Just about everything burned, although I managed to salvage some food and bits and pieces in between getting burns from the extremely hot rooms. I tried to remove some roof, but it didn't appear to do anything.
We're still healing up and several were badly injured, and then another siege occurs even further away. Impossible to take on that. They headshot three of my guys, the only useful animal (the pig), and the iguana started attacking everybody because his master exploded. 5 of the 9 pawns died, most others wounded. They finally attack. We sort of beat them, but everybody are downed (but without getting kidnapped, lucky timing perhaps). Man in Black appears. He patches up most of the wounds, but then goes catatonic because he was depressive. All 6 pawns are now downed. Wealth reduced by about 75%. At this point I simply give up. All the good pawns are dead, 2 others on the brink of death, and there is simply no coming back.
Quote from: B@R5uk on August 11, 2019, 03:46:27 AM
Too much walls and too much goods. You should start to eat into rock right from the start. No stone walls, especially no stone floors!!! That is useless weath which is punishable even more so on hardcore difficulty. Mountain base is nice because all the rock walls have zero wealth.
Also, make sure your stuff is under mountain, not thin roof.
Quote from: Canute on August 11, 2019, 02:19:56 AM
Yeah the mountain base work's like mortar magnet!
Never got this feeling during all the time I had ever played under mountain.
When you say that, do you refer to the screenshot with the 8 bedrooms? That is from a different save, it was just an example.
But we got totally slayed, so I started over. Not as nice a start and worse pawns, but with time I started to like it more. Spent a lot of time to plot down plans, but then a gigantic hole in the mountain opened up. Nice to be able to farm there, I suppose, although drop attacks can obviously be dangerous. Have dug a decent chunk into the mountain by now, but I need to redo a lot of plans. No colony destroying year 1 sieges as of yet, thankfully, so here's hoping. Feels a bit messy and we're always behind on priorities, but we survived a 3-person malaria, summer heatwave. Very sadly my perhaps best pawn got Alzheimer at 40, so that's a big kick in the teeth.
But I'll continue and see how this one pans out. Advice welcome :)
(http://i.imgur.com/i1ECPNcl.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/i1ECPNcl.jpg)
Edit: Hahaha, I fired up the old save to see how our existence would end, while wolfing down a pizza. Thought the next raid would do it, but it never came, maybe because we lost too many guys so it was postponed.
One guy succumbed to an infection. Another guy beat it by an absolute shade (infection was listed at 100%). He later died to malnutrition. Same with the other 4 people.
One did come to and dragged himself towards a simple meal. Then instantly went berserk and decided it was better to punch a muffalo. One bite later and he's out cold. Died to malnutrition.
Man in Black never came back from the catatonic state, which surprised me (3 days and counting). It was the last one to die, but he too died to starvation.
And just for kicks and giggles, Cassandra, the evil she-devil, threw a plague at the self-tamed megasloth, which is how he died. And just before the curtains went down, Cassandra threw a zzzzt even in the battery room, which set that thing on fire. Didn't feel like going out with a bang, though, as everybody silently died.
Surprised the injured muffalo didn't get up and eat. He was injured, but not badly, but he just stayed in 'bed' and got more and more malnourished. Enjoy free reign of the colony for half a day, buddy.
RIP.
Changed the plans due to the rather big hole in the middle of the mountain and started digging. Suddenly I hear the sound of roof getting erected, and sure enough. More holes, and other sections with thin rock roof. Is this actually rather common? In that case I understand why people check the cheese mode for stuff like this. Kinda throws everything off kilter when what looks like a giant mountain is more like passages of rock.
(http://i.imgur.com/69dPUkkl.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/69dPUkk.jpg)
Since I've "only" played one year, it's a little tempting to start over and check for this, like you said, so I can genuinely try out this mountain base approach :-\
Funny thing, or possible exploit, I came across during winter. A river separates our base, and I never put a bridge + wall there. Figured it would be a great spot to assault raiders as they come wading up the river. True enough, it has been. They're slow.
Made some kibble and it was lying by the butcher table outside. Suddenly I see every rat, hare and muffalo running up the river for a bite. Free meat ;D
yes, it is quite common. The game rarely lets "huge" square areas of mountain exist. Often, if you see a gigantic bulge in the mountain line, thinking "that'd be a great place to locate my base since there's so much area without having to make my base long and thin!" - you end up with at least a few large open expanses that were hidden in the mountain.
In my opinion, it is often more consistent to make a long base down the length of one of the "mountain blocked" sides of the map, digging into the mountain until about 2-3 blocks buffer towards the "no build zone" and expanding along the edges.
Quote from: Pangaea on August 11, 2019, 08:28:25 PMMade some kibble and it was lying by the butcher table outside. Suddenly I see every rat, hare and muffalo running up the river for a bite. Free meat
I should try this out. Unfortunately, my biome is hot and there is always some grass around to chew. Not sue if free food will attract animals when there is other things to eat.
Yep, free food (veggies,meat,corpse,kibble) will attrackt animals if they don't have any food at their area! :-)
Quote from: Limdood on August 12, 2019, 09:34:08 AM
yes, it is quite common. The game rarely lets "huge" square areas of mountain exist. Often, if you see a gigantic bulge in the mountain line, thinking "that'd be a great place to locate my base since there's so much area without having to make my base long and thin!" - you end up with at least a few large open expanses that were hidden in the mountain.
In my opinion, it is often more consistent to make a long base down the length of one of the "mountain blocked" sides of the map, digging into the mountain until about 2-3 blocks buffer towards the "no build zone" and expanding along the edges.
Cheers. Ended up restarting -- third time's the charm? Briefly checked the map and it appeared good, apart from a huge opening north of our current living quarters, which I roughly marked off.
(http://i.imgur.com/G9IYx5Ul.jpg) (https://imgur.com/G9IYx5U)
Plans aren't carved in stone yet, heh, but we're getting there. A section of thin roof didn't unfortunately appear where the Lab is intended, but we'll just have to live with that. Recently recruited a few people, not very good, but 1-2 of them can mine -- which I desperately needed. Now the first ship has landed, which is always a dreadful worry. Especially on Savage, which I'm not comfortable with in truth.
As for the temperature: from what I have seen so far the approach works pretty well, with heating up the whole base, more or less, as one area. Hope to survive long enough here to actually mine out more and move fully into the mountain. Then I'll see how things play out, and whether I need to rebuild the outside all the time if I'm unable to take on sieges and the like. It was brutal beyond belief in the save that opened this thread.
It feels pretty strange to *not* craft more stuff, there is so much stuff laying about now, but I'm trying to restrict building up wealth. Such a sad way to manage things, but it is what it is. If the game gets more patches, I hope Tynan does something about that.
Yeah as far as heating, i tend to have an "intake room" - really a large hall with pillars and sandbags so my pawns can make their stand at the obvious entrance....everything else is connected to that large room, or connected to the rooms connected to it, etc.
If i open up new entrances and exits to the base, they are kept usually double or triple doored, while the main entrance is double-doored but held open. Then i go nuts with heating or air on that main intake room with heaters or AC, while ignoring other rooms (i use freezers, from a mod, rather than have a giant freezing temp room with all my food on the floor...but even when i have a frozen butcher room, i just vent it to a different room and then use vents to dilute the overly hot room) Generally the intake room gets within about 5-8 degrees (Fahrenheit) of the target temp, and the rest of the interior rooms slowly bleed to match....when a heat wave or cold snap pushes the temp even further away from the target, the interior rooms still stay quite livable (occasionally "uncomfortable" during a weather event, but never dangerous)
Cheers. Have noticed that there is a great deal of "bleed" if there is even a smidgeon of "thin roof" somewhere. The interior is pretty big now, and I only use two heaters. Even during a cold snap, this was fine, it stayed at 20-21C. But the will-be-freezer room has one wall tile with thin roof, and it sunk to ~0C basically instantly. Presumably the same will happen during summer, meaning a lot more heat will have to be dealt with (from AC) into the main room/hallway system. Hope the plan will still work, but it might not.
(http://i.imgur.com/yYVTBujl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/yYVTBuj)
I have huge problems with the Savage difficulty, though >:( :'( A horde of scythers tore us apart, and a horde of raiders did much the same. One more person died, and we're missing quite a few body parts. We get overwhelmed in combat, and can't properly recover in between, both in terms of bodily health and base infrastructure. If we can't survive the battles, this mountain base plan won't come to fruition either.
Seems like the only solution, at least on Cassandra, is some type of killbox :sad:
(http://i.imgur.com/NAWGO3rl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/NAWGO3r)
Both mini-turrets, that we acquired from a quest, got blown up, which feels like a big loss since we can't make new ones. Recently I built some walls among the sandbags to try to withstand more firepower, but I don't think it was a good idea to be honest. Cover is better, true, but it so easily prevents pawns from firing due to the changing angles during combat. The simple solution with a row of sandbags is easier in that regard, although cover isn't as solid.
Am currently trying to improve matters up the river by building walls on bridges, as the traps is nowhere near enough. Hopefully a more hall-way approach can make it easier for us. Although sappers and frag grenaders breaking through the wall in the north-east or south has been a problem too.
Quote from: Pangaea on August 15, 2019, 12:51:55 AMHave noticed that there is a great deal of "bleed" if there is even a smidgeon of "thin roof" somewhere...
No. This bleed is due to bordering with undiscovered cells. Every undiscovered cell woks as if it's "outside" cell, even if it sure is mountain. So your freezer tecnically has half the perimeter of one-layer walls bodering with outside. Hence drop in temperature.
Look at one of my sreenshots above, namely "Mountain base - size 2.jpg". There is freezer in the top right corner and it has bowel-like tunel circling it around. The purpose of this bowel is to make top wall of freezer two-layers wide, while there is stable temperature on other side of wall. This is what I call temperature isolation: corridors and tunels with stable temperature circle around all the rooms in the base.
Sometimes it is hand to have some pocket outdoor cove's at the mountain.
You can use it as safe outdoor area to push heat outside like from coolers.
Or you can dig at the map border then the connected cave become outdoor.
This is handy too sometimes caravans (special with the use of trading spot) can use it to exit the map.
Quote from: B@R5uk on August 15, 2019, 01:53:13 AM
Quote from: Pangaea on August 15, 2019, 12:51:55 AMHave noticed that there is a great deal of "bleed" if there is even a smidgeon of "thin roof" somewhere...
No. This bleed is due to bordering with undiscovered cells. Every undiscovered cell woks as if it's "outside" cell, even if it sure is mountain. So your freezer tecnically has half the perimeter of one-layer walls bodering with outside. Hence drop in temperature.
Look at one of my sreenshots above, namely "Mountain base - size 2.jpg". There is freezer in the top right corner and it has bowel-like tunel circling it around. The purpose of this bowel is to make top wall of freezer two-layers wide, while there is stable temperature on other side of wall. This is what I call temperature isolation: corridors and tunels with stable temperature circle around all the rooms in the base.
Interesting. Had no idea it worked like that. Seems an odd implementation, so well done for figuring that out. Would have been better to have the freezer more centrally in the base then, so I could have put corridors around the whole thing to prevent this bleeding. After having installed more AC and turned them on, it hasn't been as big an issue, though. Thankfully. During a heatwave with the outside at around 55C, the freezer still kept -6 (while the initial outside one became 10C). The inside of the base got warmer, to 25-26C, but that is quite fine. Overall it is surprisingly efficient. 2 coolers on the freezer, 3 from the base to the outside, and 2-3 heaters in the main base. Much less than I'm used to from "normal" bases.
In the next base, I'll try to put the freezer in a more fitting spot, so there won't be this odd bleeding. All this mining business is much slower than I expected. 2 years in, and we're far from done.
Thankfully the extended trap maze is working better than before. 9 scythers attacked, and only 3 made it through. Briefly after, with only 5 people left at base (incapacitated prisoner quest), 14 buggers attacked. 5-6 of them died in the maze, despite most traps being gone due to the scythers, and we managed to deal with the rest with some repositioning. Actually killed all as they had to bash through 3 granite doors to get out on the south side. Without the traps, the base would be burning down right about now.
(one dead on traps further away)
(http://i.imgur.com/if9vaejl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/if9vaej)
(http://i.imgur.com/9g9C8Ujl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/9g9C8Uj)
It feels a bit cheesy, but without it we'd be dead pretty darn quickly, so it probably isn't terribly cheesy to be honest.
This is the map edge, and there is steel beyond it. How does that work exactly? I don't think we're able to place anything beyond it, be it a chair, a wall, or whatever. So what happens if I mine in there? Is it actually possible to mine all the way to the map edge? Would that enable enemies to flow in?
(https://i.imgur.com/Zd2yeRS.png)
The ledger is only for placing. Stockpile/Growing can reach a bit further.
But you can mine anything.
You can create a map exit (and entry) at this way.
OK, so the issue with resources in a mountain beyond the reach of construction placement is that you can mine that out, but whatever happens beyond that - be it a gigantic opening that opens up that entire side of the map, a small thin-roof section, or just a new mountain area that might spawn infestations that you can't "fill in" - you're stuck with it. Sure you can place walls at the limit of your item placement, but if you accidentally open up a new map edge that enemies can spawn in, those walls won't last long...same with a bug infestation, and a new thin roof section means more temp bleed, if that's a thing you have trouble with.
Going back to this instead of starting a new topic. But first, I don't think it's possible to put stockpiles or grow zones beyond the "10 tiles from the map edge" either. We can't even smooth the walls beyond that cutoff line. Mining works though, so technically it's possible to mine a way to the map edge, or open up a cavern that you can't fill back in.
I'm on a new mountain base map, using the Adaptive Cassie storyteller (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=49506.0). It's so frustrating to spend two years to dig into the mountain, and then learn that there are holes or (large) patches of thin roof -- meaning mechs and other baddies can dump right on top of you. Kinda the point about mountain bases is to prevent that.
(https://i.imgur.com/MkM5Sw2.png)
Don't want to start over here so just have to cross my fingers that it's not too bad, and I was lucky with the outlines of the freezer (a few tiles aside). The planned next room north of the kitchen-butcher is obviously a bad spot too, though.
Although I really dislike it aesthetically, for now I've filled out with wooden walls. However, if I were to go down that route, is it actually possible to fix this with dev mode for instance? Make the mountain thicker somehow, turning the thin roof to overhead mountain?
Finally! Step three base layout complete! Colonists have moved from narrow Khrushchyovka flats to make home of new spacious apartments. There is not much furniture yet and research/medical room's still in process, but everything's on track. And look at that giant freezer!!! It takes days for it to cool down! The same goes for it to heat up. That means corpses and meat are save in it even during flares.