Tell me what's wrong with my base (big pics)

[jpinard]

Because my first colony ever starved to death during winter and I lost all my pets I kinda am afraid of running out of food.  Having extra to sell is nice as well.  But I might be overdoing it?  I play in a Temperate zone, 30 day growing period with very cold winters (almost always a cold snap), and hot summers (nearly always a heat wave).  I might be doing things upside down and backwards but I wouldn't know.

Tell me what dumb things I've done and if you had my base what would you change!?

[PiggyBacon]

I like to keep my food tatics a secret but holy god the amount of unused space.....You should shrink some of those rooms down less ground to cover/maintain.

[jpinard]

I like to keep my food tatics a secret but holy god the amount of unused space.....You should shrink some of those rooms down less ground to cover/maintain.

I've only ever made it through year 3 so in the production room I didn't know how much space I'd need.  I also don't really have a grasp on how much space people want/desire.  Here was my thinking:

* Hallways needed to be 2 spaces wide for ease of traversdal?  Is this not the case?
* Production room.  People spend a lot fo time there.  That's why I have flowers on the side for beauty.  How much can I shrink that room?  By half or more?   Not sure how many more tables I need to add once the colony matures more.
* Are my dining room and leisure room too big?  Kitchen too?

Yea it's nearly impossible for my to defend my base.  I want to keep everyone happy, which is why everything was so big.

[hoffmale]

Some random points:

• You only need sterile floor tiles in hospital and kitchen. No need to use them in the freezer (unless you really don't care about the resources).
• I don't know which difficulty you play on, but compared to your abundance of food, your amount of medicine (esp. penoxycycline) seems rather low
• Also, how do you defend against raids? Some walls around your generators/solar panels would already help quite a lot. Do you have any strategies for drop pod raids or sieges?
• While wooden floors are fine, I'd recommend you'd gradually replace wooden walls with stone walls (as those cannot burn)
• Once in a while, cleaning could help (especially in the kitchen, but also rooms with mood buffs)
• Since nearly all your batteries are close to fully charged, maybe uninstall some so you can reinstall them in case a "Zzzrrt!" event happens at an unfortune moment?
• If I were really crazy about colonist performance, I would've placed the stonecutter's table, tailoring bench, sculptor's table and electric smelter closer to the bedrooms/dining room/recreation room and rearranged some of the stockpiles... But I guess your setup works, too

@PiggyBacon: While I don't disagree that some of that space could be used better, you'd lose some mood buffs for spacious interior, and he (?) doesn't seem to be that low on resources that he couldn't afford some artistic freedom when designing his base

EDIT:
Since OP asked some more specific questions:

• Hallways do work when only 1 space wide, but 2 or 3 spaces prevents slowdown due to colonist collisions and helps defending if something made it in there.
• I guess your production room is mostly fine when considering for future expansion. As mentioned before, you could've grown a bit more vertically instead of horizontally, but that is kind of moot now that it's done (but still might be a consideration for future bases!)
• Not really. Their size counts towards their impressiveness, so it doesn't hurt to go big. Then again, you could tear down the wall in between and get 2x the buff for an even more impressive dining/recreation room (might be considered an exploit by some, though)

[PotatoeTater]

I spread out my food supply. I have a main cook freezer for meals and my cooking food, and then 2 or 3 larger ones for my harvest food. During the grow seasons I suspend cooking unless needed and set the stockpiles closer to the fields as primary for raw food. Then during the winter I'll kick it down so the pawns that priorities growing will move all the food to the cook fridge. Keeps things cycling and protects from fire and other incidents. I build inside mountains so if an infestation knocks out one food store, I still have a backup or two. I also keep meat separate from veg outside of the cook fridge which is general. That way there isn't that big of an area for blood to be spread during butchering.

[SilentP]

That's a really impressive base. Very spacious.  Here's what I see:

1) Wood walls burn quickly. Replace them with stone. I like granite for external walls.
2) Wood floors burn quickly. Replace them with stone. I like marble because it contrasts well with items.
3) Sterile tile only in the hospital.
4) Separate your meals from your raw foods. This cuts down on food poisoning.
5) Medicine doesn't need to be refrigerated.
6) Put switches between your battery rooms and the main power grid. Turn one switch off once all of the batteries are charged.  If you have ZZRRT! you can just flick a switch and you're good to go.
7) I personally don't use generators.  Wind / Solar at the start then Geothermal afterwards.
Your production room isn't laid out well.  With two toolboxes I can link eight workbenches.
9) Put a stone wall all the way around your geothermal power station.  Keeps pirates from blowing it up.
10) I'd suggest limiting bedrooms to 7x7 (9x9 including walls).  Still spacious enough for the buff.
11) Try condensing your base and making it more square.  This will make it more defensible.
12) Need turrets, sandbags and walls for defense.

[cmitc1]

That's a really impressive base. Very spacious.  Here's what I see:

5) Medicine doesn't need to be refrigerated.

herbal medicine lasts forever when refrigerated.

....

It seems to be bigger than necessary, and a massive fire hazard.

[jpinard]

Some random points:

• You only need sterile floor tiles in hospital and kitchen. No need to use them in the freezer (unless you really don't care about the resources).
• I don't know which difficulty you play on, but compared to your abundance of food, your amount of medicine (esp. penoxycycline) seems rather low
• Also, how do you defend against raids? Some walls around your generators/solar panels would already help quite a lot. Do you have any strategies for drop pod raids or sieges?
• While wooden floors are fine, I'd recommend you'd gradually replace wooden walls with stone walls (as those cannot burn)
• Once in a while, cleaning could help (especially in the kitchen, but also rooms with mood buffs)
• Since nearly all your batteries are close to fully charged, maybe uninstall some so you can reinstall them in case a "Zzzrrt!" event happens at an unfortune moment?
• If I were really crazy about colonist performance, I would've placed the stonecutter's table, tailoring bench, sculptor's table and electric smelter closer to the bedrooms/dining room/recreation room and rearranged some of the stockpiles... But I guess your setup works, too

You nailed some points. 

• Playing on "Some challenge" with "Phoebe".  I begrudgingly had to back down to her from Cassandra as I just could not keep up with the pace of disasters.
• I have no tactics or ideas for defending against raids.  They've been a nightmare.  In the lower left was my attempt to have a place to run when the next raid hits to defend and shoot.  But it's probably too far away?
• I had never considered separate stockpiles for stuff.  But it has been very frustrating as it takes my colonists forever to grab what they need to bring it back to make stuff. In fact I have a mod that allows from more items to be stacks.  I chose to double stack numbers instead of going 10x like most of the stacking mods.  It just felt like the right balance.
• I have had a terrible time procuring enough medicine. In fact I just got these meds before I took this screenshot (Summer Year 2)
• In all my other games I've had like 10 people by this point.  I'm worried I will not fill things out very well but maybe I don't have to be as concerned playing with Phoebe.  I'd like to switch back to Cassandra though.
• The freezer is actually pavement.  So I did save my sterile tiles for kitchen and hospital.  Is my kitchen way bigger than needed?  Do I need to have separate hospital rooms or can I cram even more beds in there?
• I'm way behind in research because I've been so worried about getting a surplus of food.  Like I mentioned, I really hate watching my people die of starvation and even more-so my pets.  Which leads me to a question of, how are people surviving with like 1/10 the amount of farmed space that I'm using?

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to help me.  I really appreciate it

[jpinard]

That's a really impressive base. Very spacious.  Here's what I see:
7) I personally don't use generators.  Wind / Solar at the start then Geothermal afterwards.
Your production room isn't laid out well.  With two toolboxes I can link eight workbenches.

Whoa, even more great stuff.  I will use every point you posted as well!  I have a weird situation.  For this base, I put a wind generator right to the north of my base, and there was zero wind.  I actually had to deconstruct it after a year to put solar panels there as it was taking up valuable space.  Is there a trick to placing wind?  There weren't any tress within 15 spaces at the time.  Was my base blocking all the wind?  A way to see wind direction?

The definition of toolboxes was confusing to me. I thought it was saying only 1 toolbox will work with 2 workbenches.  When you mouse over it, is it confused wording to you all as well?

Wow this is so exciting!  Can't wait to put these changes into practice. 

[PetWolverine]

That's a really impressive base. Very spacious.  Here's what I see:

2) Wood floors burn quickly. Replace them with stone. I like marble because it contrasts well with items.

Floors don't burn, even wood ones. I think Tynan said somewhere that he intends to change this, so you could consider it an exploit, but for now you can build a firebreak with wood floors and it's just as effective as stone.

[SpaceDorf]

The Description of the Toolbox says.

One Workbench can only connect with two toolboxes. Any more won't give a buff.
When placing the toolbox or Workbench the connections are shown by white lines.

I don't know exactly how many workbenches a toolbox can provide for, may be more a matter of range than of numbers.

You don't have to freeze your crops, rice and corn can be stored several seasons ..

And somebody really should clean this place, I recently learned myself that research efficiency is affected by dirt.

To calculate how much food I need, I use this formula
20 x mouths = food usage per day.

10 food equals a simple or fine meal.
Every Member of your colony eats about 2 meals per day.
Thus 20 Units of food.
Mouths is everybody who needs to be fed, colonists, animals, prisoners.

In your case this would be 5 Colonists and about 10 animals ?

That makes a need of 300 units of food per day.

30 days growing season, means 30 days winter + 10 days until the first crops(rice) can be harvested
So you need food for about 40 days.
300 food per day for 40 days equals a need of 12000 Units of Food.

You have about 14000 in crops and hay, and about 500 in meals, kibble and pemmican.
So you should be good for the winter, if you don't have more animals or make a lot of prisoners.

[eadras]

Plenty of good suggestions here, so I'll just add one thing:  a greenhouse.  You can fill it with hydroponics, or just use fertile or even regular soil.  When you have food surplus, you grow cash crops in it.  When the storyteller throws you a curveball such as blight followed by volcanic winter, you can switch it back to food crops.  It's worth the resources and the power.  Just make sure to have firefoam poppers over any exposed power lines, to reduce the fire hazard.

[Shurp]

I don't see a perimeter wall surrounding your base.  This is one of the easiest things you can do to make raids more manageable.  Put it about 25 squares from your main structure.  Leave some holes for raiders to come through, with bunkers nearby for your colonists to plug them from when they come through.

Sappers will make their own holes but the remaining wall will ensure no pirates with sniper rifles pick off your guys with survival rifles/assault rifles or your turrets if you make any.  Also the wall will break up the attack as some pirates come through the holes while others are trying to make a new hole.  (Anything you do to split up the attackers while your forces remain concentrated makes victory more likely)

[Stormfox]

Let's start with a few comments on your stuff:

- As others said, your base is a bit inefficient right now, but that is not a real problem. Since this is an early wooden construction, you will likely want to migrate to a new, better pre-planned one later anyways. In the beginning, building as you go is allright, although you could do with a bit different room sizes.

- You are massively overproducing crops for just 5 people imho, but that is not a critical problem - as you said, you can always sell some, but it will slow down your advancement because your people will be planting or harvesting a lot of their time with so many fields. I would advise to not plant devilstrand at all that early, and when you do, ideally do it in an indoor greenhouse or at least in a huge field because you will at most get 1 harvest per growth period otherwise.


Now some examples of how a base could look later in the game.



The first shot is a totale of my current base, just to put everything in perspective. Not a single building you see on that screenshot was there at the stage your colony is at. Instead, we had a wooden living house with hospital, a small wooden prison, and a wooden everything-else-house roughly where my norther living rooms and the hospital are now. That large block of walls in there is to remind me not to remove walls there, btw, because the overhead mountain does not like that ;-)



The second shot shows a closeup of my growing area that was all I used when I had just built and moved into those "real" buildings. Back then I had about 10 guys (I believe we are at 15 right now). The things I so skillfully marked in paint are what I had at your stage - two wind and two or three solar plants and some crops in the wind canals (I tend to make them 5x10 so they fit perfectly into the "front" end of a turbine canal). I Plant two types of foodcrops, one cotton and one healroot as soon as I have a grower good enough for that, and that size is usually more then enough even on relatively harsh climates.



The third screenshot shows how my living quartes look when I plan my "real" house. My first rooms are about half the size, wooden, and feature a normal bed, a plant pot and if I have enough a wooden statue, that's it. The little lamps you see there are modded and do not take such ridiculous amounts of energy as the official ones, so you can affort to actually use them to pretty up your base instead of just where they are crucial. These rooms are 5x4, have enough expensive stuff to be impressive and are just big enough to not feel cramped after everything is built in. As you can see, a few vents allow me to heat/cool a bunch of rooms with few devices.



The last and important one is my crafting room. The entire room is a huge stockpile zone for only items, weapons and apparel. Everything else gets stored in the storeroom to the north or the freezer (or special storage furniture that comes from a mod). I messed up and forgot to leave space for the huge component assembly bench, so I stubbornly placed it smack in the middle. Everything else was roughly pre-planned like that, with the 4 columns in the middle being necessary to keep the roof up (technically, one in the middle would have been enough, but I needed something to put the wall lights on anyways and it looks nicer and is less prone to accidentally killing your only roof support).

As you can see from the overall layout, no one has to move really far even though my base is huge and tries to look halfway "nice" (with the storage shelf rows in the warehouse and all that being purposefully inefficient). The common room lies right in the middle of all other relevant parts of the base so getting to and from dinner is relatively quick and easy for everyone, no matter their job. The freezer likely should have been built to the right (where my hospital is) instead of on the top of the main building, because harvesters would have had a shorter way there, then, but it's allright like that.


I hope this shed some light on how you could do things. Having a general idea of what rooms you actually need and how big they need to be is very helpful to prevent having to build addons all the time that tend to reduce connectivity and often look silly. Oh, and use the planning tool, it is very useful.

[Catastrophy]

Too large, too long distances to march, too much farmland. For the number of people living there. This adds up when jobs queue up (harvest + hauling). Huge waste of steel for all those toolboxes. They connect to ALL workplaces in their range. Massively huge workshack. All the flowers create additional jobs for replanting - it is likely too much for the few people to handle.
And wood. Once you get some happy raiders with molotovs this place might be in big trouble.