'Outside' colony vs 'Mountain' colony

[Spectre]

Hi i just wanted to ask your guy's opinions on building a base outside or in the side of a mountain. I understand the mountain strategy is very popular due to it's innate defence and the popular use of kill rooms/boxes. Has anyone had much look building outside?

[Bobthefarmer1]

Building outside works well when you have a geyser for power, and if you plan things out very well, other than that, the mountain is better, atleast until they add raiders that mine through mountains!

[Xerberus86]

mining into the mountain is more time-consuming than constructing walls but is is more resource-friendly because you don't actually waste resoures to create rooms.

building outside can be faster in creating the room but gives you less coverage and protection a mountain-home would give you.

[Spectre]

How would one go about defending a base that's built outside? Especially later in the game? I suppose a hybrid base would work well and will definitely be my next project. I'm just incredibly concerned about keeping the outside secure.

[Matthiasagreen]

For my play style, the only real advantages to a mountain base compared to an outdoor base is the mortar protection and protection from drop-in attacks. Even the drop in attacks can be tricky for most mountain bases. Although these are two big advantages, everything else can be duplicted in an outdoor base with a large wall. One downfall I see with mountain baes is you have limited options for good starting places, and it is usually really far from most of the map, making trips around the map fairly dangerous.

[RemingtonRyder]

The advantage of a base built outside is that the terrain is quite open, meaning good fields of fire for your colonists.  It's certainly possible to use some tricks (like placing a cutting table across a wall gap) to shoot out from your base.

[BetaSpectre]

Building outside works well when you have a geyser for power, and if you plan things out very well, other than that, the mountain is better, atleast until they add raiders that mine through mountains!

Drop Pods can go through Mountains.

[TheGrover]

Building outside works well when you have a geyser for power, and if you plan things out very well, other than that, the mountain is better, atleast until they add raiders that mine through mountains!

Drop Pods can go through Mountains.

I thought that drop pods could only land "outside"...

Anyway, the major disadvantage of a base totally roofed is the cabin fever, which will drive colonists insane in the long term. There needs to be some open areas that are regularly used but still segragated from most cononists/valuables by kill boxes/assorted defence mechanisms to deal with drop-ins.

And there will always be some open areas if you plan to use mortars or solar panels, the trick is managing these

[BetaSpectre]

There's a glitched event where each square or so will have a dropped raider, This includes spaces underneath mountains.

So drop pods can go through mountains, its just incredibly rare. Like once per 2-3 years.

[EscapeZeppelin]

And there will always be some open areas if you plan to use mortars or solar panels, the trick is managing these

I've found that using the no roof tools works well for that, so that only the actual equipment is exposed not any empty space where they could land.

[Goo Poni]

Building outside works well when you have a geyser for power, and if you plan things out very well, other than that, the mountain is better, atleast until they add raiders that mine through mountains!

Drop Pods can go through Mountains.

I thought that drop pods could only land "outside"...

Anyway, the major disadvantage of a base totally roofed is the cabin fever, which will drive colonists insane in the long term. There needs to be some open areas that are regularly used but still segragated from most cononists/valuables by kill boxes/assorted defence mechanisms to deal with drop-ins.

And there will always be some open areas if you plan to use mortars or solar panels, the trick is managing these

Mortars pass through mountains, otherwise I would use an open space I uncovered during digging as my beacon point. I may just use it anyway so I can seal the base completely against outside influence. If the beacon is the stockpile that I keep all tradable items on, then people will get a breath of fresh air when they go to drop stuff off there. That'll work, right? My colony looks a little something like this and that screenshot is bugged in that it's not rendering shadows, pawns, a geothermal vent that's inside the open area to the south and is obviously showing the locations of metal. Puush and Rimworld don't play nice, this happens often. Invisible UI is the other common thing.

On an unrelated note This occured moments after that screenshot above. I thought it was maybe an event (seeing as I have a couple mods installed) but I got no message for an event. Hitting ESC clears it up but as soon as the game starts playing again, the foggy rain effect builds up until I can't see the colony and a weird effect is going on with name tags. Probably just Out of Memory issues, I play on a bad laptop.

[HatesYourFace]

Here's an example of a decent sized outdoor base (The aptly named "Shantytown")just as proof that it's not much harder then a mountain base. I find that the A.I. rarely tries to break through walls that are 3 or more blocks thick. As far as drop pods go, perhaps I've just been lucky but I haven't had too many in the year or so this particular colony has been going and the few that happened were dealt with fairly easily. (They tend to land in either the upper or lower clearings, where my 20+ Colonists and a few turrets make short work of them.) As you can see I don't have any solar panels, 3 Thermal Gens provide all the power the base needs. (Provided both Turret fields aren't online at the same time.) I don't have a door blocking off the 1 entrance/exit so my Colonists don't suffer from Cabin fever, also rebuilding it after every raid was a pain lol. I used to exclusively build mountain base's but I wanted to try something different, and after doing so I'm of the opinion that they both have their pros and cons. In broad terms I'd say the mountain base is harder early game but pays off in the late game. Outdoor base's are much easier in the early game but later on you will basically have to build your own "mountain" around it in the form of a very thick stone wall if you hope to survive.

[FMK]

There's a glitched event where each square or so will have a dropped raider, This includes spaces underneath mountains.

So drop pods can go through mountains, its just incredibly rare. Like once per 2-3 years.

I'm pretty sure it's more along the line of the game just having too many raiders being dropped in at once, so it just starts throwing the excess drop pods to random locations without checking whether or not they're valid to drop in at.

[Clayton]

An outside colony is the best; living inside a mountain in the cheap way out and, frankly, I don't see how it's even fun. Live in a mountain and make a kill box = you win. How's that fun?

The funnest challenge I've had on this game is building a colony without walls, more akin to a "city" set up of buildings. You haven't truly experienced fun when you're fighting between your houses, raiders coming from you mess hall. Your other colonists are trapped inside the armory from enemy fire...

Truly the best way to play. No cheap strategies.

[Clayton]

And on another note, it's not a colony if you're just building a big box. Then it's just a big box with rooms. It's equally as mundane and cheap as mountain bases.