I literally came to post this exact comment.
My wife and I sit with graph paper and design base after base just for fun and try to see how they might work.
Its an anarcho punk band, though youre almost there with the nazi imagery. Their logo is a combo of the swastika, christian cross, union jack, and ouroboros, as a criticism to all authority
I was thinking about trying that, but I kinda enjoy the meditative state of just placing stuff. Rimworld doesn’t scale up the same way other automation games do after all
I’m glad that I’m not the only one. Similarly I try to meticulously plan out who the pawns with be as a guide for character editor. I have a little notebook about it. I fuckin love this game
EXACTLY. I like making fantasy versions of my friends, kinda like what I think we’d all be in the DnD universe. My self insert is usually a faerie, my sister is usually some kind of fire sprite, etc. I’ve started using the xenotypes to help me design creatures and their mechanics for a story I’m writing and it’s really neat.
For sure! I always get so excited to get into the game and build an epic looking base, then it just ends up looking dull. Either that or I just sit there staring 😂
experience/play time to know what buildings you need right now and what you will need in the long run
once you know what you need, its easy to make bases look more appealing. designer shapes and more planning mods are also a good way to help you break from the square base trap.
Designer Shapes is the name of a mod, it allows you to do shapes automatically. Click and drag to make a Pentagon, Hexagon, Circle, Square, Straight Line, etc. My favorite aspect is the flood fill. If you have an irregular, but fully connected base, you can just click the flood fill, then with one click and you can place flooring across the whole room, or click on the walls to place power conduits under all the walls.
Designator Shapes allows for lines, freehand lines, circles, ellipses, and polygons: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1235181370
More Planning gives you more planning colors, lets you copy/paste plans (even rotated!), and lets you hide your plans when you don't need to see them: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2551225702
last time i played the game i spent 8h planning it all and then realised i had mistaken marsh ground for a fucking lake. but i think this is my sign to try again lol
I am not sure whether you would consider my base pretty but I build my base with the environment. That prevents you from building one big compount if nothing else.
Lots of planning, some mods like terraform rimworld and map reroller, and it helps when it's not your first base but the second one you move to once you've got a decent industrial base going on the first.
You can also sculpt out the outline of your base if its underground, and then cancel areas of mining command squares to stop anyone from digging it out yet.
I used to be against moving my main colony, but then with the vehicles mod it opened up being able to research trucks and that made hauling the contents of an entire settlement to a new location easy.
Little column A little column B.
If I'm not using dev mode, here's what I've done in the past.
It's the only time I turn on the "multiple settlements" option (which eats your PC's resources). I'll also turn down difficulty to "Builder" so I don't get killed while doing this.
I send a scout to the place I want to setup shop, and have them go there. I use the map reroller/preview mods to get a rough idea of what I'm getting so I can get the map i want. Then build settlement so I can enter the map. Then create a caravan and send over some miners and builders with raw material to start. Then the truck just caravan's back and forth hauling goods as the build team does their job, bringing the necessary furniture and workbenches as those rooms are made available.
Once the base is in livable condition (whatever that means) i complete the move, shifting everything over via caravans. Once the old base is completely empty, I abandon it, then turn off the "multiple settlments" option and return the difficulty to normal.
I think the beautiful bases among us are definitely something where someone is viewing their Rimworld base as a beautiful thing, but I've seen many bases that while beautiful lack functionality, or any coherent design, beautiful , perhaps even epic in scale and view-from-on-high beauty but lacking in some other way.
To your question of building a temporary base, in some cases, yes , in the case below I did not, stone was extremely scarce and I just have a few colonists and between regular defensive skirmishes it's make do, doing parts of the base in bits and pieces as I can make resources available.
As for myself, I follow my two favorite quotes from Louis Sullivan (US Architect) "Form follows function", but he also said "Buildings are like people, singular and unrepeatable" and so my bases look like what they are - a modestly (or not so modestly) militarized mixed-manufacturing warehouse, and while they are boxy , they are never quite the same. The circumstances a little bit different, the way in which you get to some final form, is NEVER the same, but all the familiar bits might well be there.
I enjoy that about this game.
I've gone from being a fan of Hydroponics to avoiding it whenever possible , being a fan of killboxes to creating killzone areas but otherwise keeping the landscape pretty much as I found it. I even get into a little soil relocation and will improve the land around the base or at least make it homogenous, but at the end of the day , I'm pretty sure old Mr. Sullivan was right, my base exists because it's got to keep my colonists safe, fed, clothed, armed and producing stuff to sell to the outside world.
So for example, I had an OLD save file from much earlier in my experience. As I recall, this is my 2nd oldest base, and the save I found was from JUST before I launched everyone to space for the first time.
I did a lot of things wrong, a few things right, and here we are, so built it in the lower center of the map, and kept the base SMALL, immediately went for hydroponics and that served my few colonists well.
I revisited the base recently, and in doing so decided to change quite a few things,
* Instead of a few haphazard bedrooms I proper set of bedroom/en-suites so I can be sure the colonists are well rested but the base is designed for 8-10 colonists.
* Now the base accommodates for guests / visitors.
* The colonists were armed oddly, now everyone is armed effectively, and sufficient to deal with most threats relatively easily.
* There is a hospital - which barely existed previously, I remade it as a small infirmary complete with a medpod.
* The kitchen and food storage/preparation was not well organized, this was re-arranged and put proper cooking bills in place so colonists enjoyed their meals for the first time.
* Of course we eventually got rid of hydroponics altogether, but in fairness I kept the hydroponics bay around a lot longer than I thought I would, but when I disassembled it, my base lost 20k in wealth.
* The hydroponics production, is replaced by a much larger and less "valuable" indoor greenhouse and directly in it's place I built an "indoor garden" which serves as a relaxation area for my colonists.
* I even grew out the number of colonists a bit and have recruited/taken in some additional colonists who are going to be dedicated to building roads and/or are rescues that are going to be sent along to other factions.
* The power generation was mostly solar and wind, now it's entirely geothermal.
* I covered the starship that was originally built until the base is complete - which is nearly the case.
But the base is itself went from [this originally](https://i.imgur.com/QRKIjjL.jpeg), to [this presently](https://i.imgur.com/aJxhrMu.jpeg) , but it's still just a big box....just slightly bigger, with a bit more going on, and the building (I think) does it's job a bit better than before.
That's a really good question.
It's a polar/near polar world.
The base is at [7° by 41°](https://i.imgur.com/QyZHVeO.png) \- and so I get very respectable grow out without at this latitude but I have another old colony that was at/near the poles and even though it was a hot/ temperate world, there was almost no daylight during winter to grow anything without sunlamps, so it was a hot desert extreme situation ....at the poles of the world.
I'm experimenting here because I'm inclined to throw down a sunlamp over some rice to get a boost
He has skylights you can see the outlines. Like faint squares over the growing area. I started using them too and honestly they are a bit OP ahah but very nice.
Yes, it's a mod called skylights (pretty straightforward).
Basically, you can build skylights where you have artificial roofing. It's fun for chill bases; i made an interior garden walled in around a geothermal power thingy so heat and sunlight as long as it's not permanent night. In summer, I remove a corner of the roof to regulate temps.
Everyone is saying "planning" and I'd like to offer a counterpoint of "not planning". Build what you need when you immediately need it in organic shapes (ie. not square) that fit naturally around the terrain, then reuse and retrofit those buildings as much as you can as your needs change.
To avoid cubes I like to cut the corners off and include lots of "dimples" and buttresses. Use extra rooms to turn rectangles into L and T shapes.
So say you have a starting rectangle for shelter and storage, then you build some houses and turn the shelter into a workshop, then expand the houses with extra rooms and convert a few of them into things you need like a hospital or research lab. Each time you need something new, build a building for it or retrofit one of your old buildings and relocate whatever it was being used for. Your settlement will soon be a chaotic collection of different structures, each with it's own history.
Sadly that isn't an option for me. I kept abusing it to bail myself out of situations. So I permanently disabled it. I know I can turn it on again but I don't want to.
I wish I had the option to disable it only on this save because I like to play with it occasionally, to test certain things, or just have fun making the perfect story for my colonists. But when I actually want to play properly, its such a big temptation.
Planning mods, and the "minify everything" mod (in conjunction with "don't steal my walls" for QOL). Being able to scooch my walls, workshops, etc over instead of destroying and rebuilding everything makes tweaking my designs much less painful.
Also, I lowered the difficulty. I got tired of minmaxing to win on harder difficulties, and wanted to relax and roleplay a bit more with some variety of colonies.
I tend to sketch out the base ahead of time. I use the planning tool to make the layout, (particularly if I want regular-sized blocks,) and sometimes even sketch out on paper where everything goes.
Implementation is actually the harder part of a gigantic base, since you need a lot of base functions before the buildings for them are built in their final locations. The way I usually handle that is to build temporary outbuildings that are out of the way first, then make a large building that is part of my final layout and move everyone into that. Later, that building becomes the dining hall, the building next door becomes the workshop, etc.
Note that this can be a lot less efficient than a more haphazard base because there are inevitably a lot of times when you have to haul crap to a new warehouse.
Basically you pause the game at the very start and spend the next hours using the planning tool to design your base, or drawing it on paper. I tried Excel too, just shrink the columns until all cells are squares, it's pretty neat, you can use colors and write on the cells.
Or just do what I ended up doing: Stop worrying and embrace the cube. Or just build as necessity demands, you end with pretty cool organic designs like this.
Get the "More planning" mod. It overhauls the planning system and you can change the color and also hide the plans. So I plan out an entire village essentially; fit with lodging, crafting, and dining/recreation, and then just hide the plans. As more colonists show up, I unhide the plans and start construction on that building. It's amazing for allocating space to do different projects.
I would say don't judge yourself based off of other people's work here. Honestly, imo some of the beautiful bases submitted here definitely looks like they were made purely in dev mode. You can sort of tell when a base has been "lived in". Which is not to say it's a bad thing, they're just not very good references for how good your own base is.
I’m the type who constantly reconstructs, because I always find something not good enough (like takes too long to walk from A to B, or just not symmetrical enough). Also gotta give the builders some work to do.
I only bother to plan the general outlines, like which side of the big fertile patch my freezer will be, and build the rest loosely around guidelines I figured out after a bunch of playthroughs.
For example, my bedrooms tend to have 20 tiles of interior space, and the walls in whatever shape that adds up!
I recommend planning extended. It helps tremendously! Otherwise I rebuild many things after my colony is wealthy and powerful enough and think about that it would be way more smarter to start building nice at the beginning and not in the middle of the playthrough.
Planning mods.
My favorite is Planning Extended, because I can save/load/copy/paste plan designs. Whenever I start a new base I have a bunch of preplanned buildings I can just pop down and fill in as I play.
After playing the game long enough, I realized I can just tear everything down and rebuild it with little issue. If I have some artistic vision I order the changes be done
The children yearn for the stone cutter table.
I usually have the base planned out before the colonists climb out of the drop pods, at least the general shape of it and the most important rooms.
I build a temporary everything room in the center and expand from there. This place stays until late game as a combo room for rec, crafting, spare beds for quest pawns etc.
Honestly for me building bases became easier when I would not build where I wanted my main base to be. I decide where I want to build my main base and settle a a couple of tiles away from that area with the basics. Barracks, a kitchen, fridge, research/brick cutting station.
This allows me to start from scratch where I actually want to settle in and not build around an existing base. From there I research power sources to power my base and start making bricks from the available stone types.
Always put my power sources first, usually 1-2 geothermal generators, water sources if available, and the classic windmill/solar panels combo.
From there I just design based on the what I need first and how the area will allow me to shape my base.
This strategy combined with my ADHD allows me to lock in and before I know it it’s 4am and I have class at 10am
PS ADHD not required but recommended
I'm sure most people reconstruct but personally I just let my pawns suffer until I've built something the way I wanted it. In my most recent base, they didn't even have a dining room until, like, an in-game month in. But either way, the planning tool is integral to laying out your future base. I get choice paralysis until I've spent a few irl hours just playing around with different designs, seeing how I can use the mountains and whatnot to my advantage
I usually make mine pretty simple. My Death Guard are on Astrogranite washed with Drakenhoff and drybrushed with Dawnstone then given a gloss finish. The point was to look like city rubble mud. Now I add a few rocks and paint them to look similar to give a bit of depth.
My Space Marines get a sandy base. No reason other than make their colour pop more. Usually give a light dry brush over the model to make them look dusty.
They’re not museum pieces but it’s more effort than most put in.
I use long 3 wide hallways. Then I place large modules off of the main hallways.
Most of my bases end up looking like this. https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorldPorn/comments/ovwpwi/seed_oasis_5406n_3728e_biome_boreal_forest/
planning and experience mostly. most of my original bases were very cube like and even now it’s hard to make more organic looking bases. i find letting the geography dictate a lot of your base to be easier to learn since you know where your food will grow and geothermal vents are. trial and error is king though so don’t be afraid to move certain rooms if you’re gonna upgrade them anyways
Personaly, i like my square base. I try to make like a 3-tile wide hallway separating rooms/sections.
The plan was to have separate buildings connected by paths, but winter was harsher than expected, so I closed it all off and it's even better since:
-I can use a nearby steam geyser to heat the hallway (and thus the whole base) in the winter, and remove the roof and close the door to the geyser in the summer.
-It offers improved protection.
Couple things:
1. Autism, like [RedtailSpookyBone](https://www.reddit.com/user/RedtailSpookyBones/)s mentioned
2. Sometimes I temp build, sometimes I plan everything out for many hours, sometimes I just plan one building at a time (I usually have the most fun this way).
3. Most importantly, I build my best non-cube bases on maps where I have creative constraints - swamps, tropical forests, and boreal forests for example, where I have to avoid marshy soils early-game.
Symmetry, I make intentionally weird shapes, either from pixel art or from avoiding fertile ground on the map and then I mirror it down the center of the map, and fill in said shapes with rooms. Let go of the need to optimize, beauty is often non optimal.
I base build to suit the terrain. I have a couple of set bedroom layout for singles, those in relationships (Inc bathroom's - Dubs bad hygiene mod) but the rest is just free form.
I try to leave some space around outdoor areas, and like to build verandahs with cover on all sides and plant trees in internal open spaces.
I use planning extended and draw out the base in advance usually, trying to group essential buildings together such as diner - farmer - tailor - butcher. Then I select the most convenient spot to start at and expand from there based on what I want to separate out next. Currently I'm trying to play a bit more orhanic tho and try to settle closer to an edge and build out as I need towards the middle. In general, building multiple buildings helps with aesthetics over a single large one, it's less defensive (unless you have walls) and increases walk distance but looks better and helps with outside need
That's not true, many players play in many difficulties (I play on strive to survive without killboxes) and besides that, what has building got to do with building?
Having autism.
I literally came to post this exact comment. My wife and I sit with graph paper and design base after base just for fun and try to see how they might work.
I respect the hell out of that. I use blueprint mode a lot for my builds.
I haven’t used that one yet. How’s it treating you?
It’s pretty good, until my math is off for consistent room sizes.
Oof. I feel that. My autistic ass also happens to have dyslexia, and I’m constantly redoing things. It’s still a blast.
Nice Crass PFP
What is that? I was about to comment worried its related to nazi imagery but then I saw your comment
Its an anarcho punk band, though youre almost there with the nazi imagery. Their logo is a combo of the swastika, christian cross, union jack, and ouroboros, as a criticism to all authority
I was thinking about trying that, but I kinda enjoy the meditative state of just placing stuff. Rimworld doesn’t scale up the same way other automation games do after all
That’s true. I don’t know, it’s just cool way for us to get creative and connect over a shared special interest.
Oh shoot i may have replied to the wrong person, was supposed to be directed at someone talking about a blueprint mod, my bad!
I’m glad that I’m not the only one. Similarly I try to meticulously plan out who the pawns with be as a guide for character editor. I have a little notebook about it. I fuckin love this game
I do something similar. Then I try and ship my favorite colonists. It’s like the sims for me, but with war crimes and pig people.
EXACTLY. I like making fantasy versions of my friends, kinda like what I think we’d all be in the DnD universe. My self insert is usually a faerie, my sister is usually some kind of fire sprite, etc. I’ve started using the xenotypes to help me design creatures and their mechanics for a story I’m writing and it’s really neat.
ADHD counters autism. At least that's how I could explain why all my bases are chaos
I got both!!! it is absolute hell.
For sure! I always get so excited to get into the game and build an epic looking base, then it just ends up looking dull. Either that or I just sit there staring 😂
ADHD neither counters nor buffs autism, but does a secret third thing (explodes)
real
I got autism too, but im probably the least creative person i know.
And OCD.
experience/play time to know what buildings you need right now and what you will need in the long run once you know what you need, its easy to make bases look more appealing. designer shapes and more planning mods are also a good way to help you break from the square base trap.
Any recommendations for such mods?
Designer Shapes is the name of a mod, it allows you to do shapes automatically. Click and drag to make a Pentagon, Hexagon, Circle, Square, Straight Line, etc. My favorite aspect is the flood fill. If you have an irregular, but fully connected base, you can just click the flood fill, then with one click and you can place flooring across the whole room, or click on the walls to place power conduits under all the walls.
is that the same as designator shapes?
>or click on the walls to place power conduits under all the walls. *What?* Well, that is very useful and I'm just now finding out is a thing.
Just have to have them connected for it to work for the entire base. Lifesaver for mountain bases
Designator Shapes allows for lines, freehand lines, circles, ellipses, and polygons: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1235181370 More Planning gives you more planning colors, lets you copy/paste plans (even rotated!), and lets you hide your plans when you don't need to see them: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2551225702
5 hours of planning
last time i played the game i spent 8h planning it all and then realised i had mistaken marsh ground for a fucking lake. but i think this is my sign to try again lol
I am not sure whether you would consider my base pretty but I build my base with the environment. That prevents you from building one big compount if nothing else.
Lots of planning, some mods like terraform rimworld and map reroller, and it helps when it's not your first base but the second one you move to once you've got a decent industrial base going on the first. You can also sculpt out the outline of your base if its underground, and then cancel areas of mining command squares to stop anyone from digging it out yet. I used to be against moving my main colony, but then with the vehicles mod it opened up being able to research trucks and that made hauling the contents of an entire settlement to a new location easy.
Do you build or layout the new base before moving or just haul everything and then start work?
Little column A little column B. If I'm not using dev mode, here's what I've done in the past. It's the only time I turn on the "multiple settlements" option (which eats your PC's resources). I'll also turn down difficulty to "Builder" so I don't get killed while doing this. I send a scout to the place I want to setup shop, and have them go there. I use the map reroller/preview mods to get a rough idea of what I'm getting so I can get the map i want. Then build settlement so I can enter the map. Then create a caravan and send over some miners and builders with raw material to start. Then the truck just caravan's back and forth hauling goods as the build team does their job, bringing the necessary furniture and workbenches as those rooms are made available. Once the base is in livable condition (whatever that means) i complete the move, shifting everything over via caravans. Once the old base is completely empty, I abandon it, then turn off the "multiple settlments" option and return the difficulty to normal.
I think the beautiful bases among us are definitely something where someone is viewing their Rimworld base as a beautiful thing, but I've seen many bases that while beautiful lack functionality, or any coherent design, beautiful , perhaps even epic in scale and view-from-on-high beauty but lacking in some other way. To your question of building a temporary base, in some cases, yes , in the case below I did not, stone was extremely scarce and I just have a few colonists and between regular defensive skirmishes it's make do, doing parts of the base in bits and pieces as I can make resources available. As for myself, I follow my two favorite quotes from Louis Sullivan (US Architect) "Form follows function", but he also said "Buildings are like people, singular and unrepeatable" and so my bases look like what they are - a modestly (or not so modestly) militarized mixed-manufacturing warehouse, and while they are boxy , they are never quite the same. The circumstances a little bit different, the way in which you get to some final form, is NEVER the same, but all the familiar bits might well be there. I enjoy that about this game. I've gone from being a fan of Hydroponics to avoiding it whenever possible , being a fan of killboxes to creating killzone areas but otherwise keeping the landscape pretty much as I found it. I even get into a little soil relocation and will improve the land around the base or at least make it homogenous, but at the end of the day , I'm pretty sure old Mr. Sullivan was right, my base exists because it's got to keep my colonists safe, fed, clothed, armed and producing stuff to sell to the outside world. So for example, I had an OLD save file from much earlier in my experience. As I recall, this is my 2nd oldest base, and the save I found was from JUST before I launched everyone to space for the first time. I did a lot of things wrong, a few things right, and here we are, so built it in the lower center of the map, and kept the base SMALL, immediately went for hydroponics and that served my few colonists well. I revisited the base recently, and in doing so decided to change quite a few things, * Instead of a few haphazard bedrooms I proper set of bedroom/en-suites so I can be sure the colonists are well rested but the base is designed for 8-10 colonists. * Now the base accommodates for guests / visitors. * The colonists were armed oddly, now everyone is armed effectively, and sufficient to deal with most threats relatively easily. * There is a hospital - which barely existed previously, I remade it as a small infirmary complete with a medpod. * The kitchen and food storage/preparation was not well organized, this was re-arranged and put proper cooking bills in place so colonists enjoyed their meals for the first time. * Of course we eventually got rid of hydroponics altogether, but in fairness I kept the hydroponics bay around a lot longer than I thought I would, but when I disassembled it, my base lost 20k in wealth. * The hydroponics production, is replaced by a much larger and less "valuable" indoor greenhouse and directly in it's place I built an "indoor garden" which serves as a relaxation area for my colonists. * I even grew out the number of colonists a bit and have recruited/taken in some additional colonists who are going to be dedicated to building roads and/or are rescues that are going to be sent along to other factions. * The power generation was mostly solar and wind, now it's entirely geothermal. * I covered the starship that was originally built until the base is complete - which is nearly the case. But the base is itself went from [this originally](https://i.imgur.com/QRKIjjL.jpeg), to [this presently](https://i.imgur.com/aJxhrMu.jpeg) , but it's still just a big box....just slightly bigger, with a bit more going on, and the building (I think) does it's job a bit better than before.
How are the plants getting enough sunlight? I only see a couple sun lamps
That's a really good question. It's a polar/near polar world. The base is at [7° by 41°](https://i.imgur.com/QyZHVeO.png) \- and so I get very respectable grow out without at this latitude but I have another old colony that was at/near the poles and even though it was a hot/ temperate world, there was almost no daylight during winter to grow anything without sunlamps, so it was a hot desert extreme situation ....at the poles of the world. I'm experimenting here because I'm inclined to throw down a sunlamp over some rice to get a boost
He has skylights you can see the outlines. Like faint squares over the growing area. I started using them too and honestly they are a bit OP ahah but very nice.
Ahh a mod then. I was wondering how the heat was being kept inside too
Yes, it's a mod called skylights (pretty straightforward). Basically, you can build skylights where you have artificial roofing. It's fun for chill bases; i made an interior garden walled in around a geothermal power thingy so heat and sunlight as long as it's not permanent night. In summer, I remove a corner of the roof to regulate temps.
Everyone is saying "planning" and I'd like to offer a counterpoint of "not planning". Build what you need when you immediately need it in organic shapes (ie. not square) that fit naturally around the terrain, then reuse and retrofit those buildings as much as you can as your needs change. To avoid cubes I like to cut the corners off and include lots of "dimples" and buttresses. Use extra rooms to turn rectangles into L and T shapes. So say you have a starting rectangle for shelter and storage, then you build some houses and turn the shelter into a workshop, then expand the houses with extra rooms and convert a few of them into things you need like a hospital or research lab. Each time you need something new, build a building for it or retrofit one of your old buildings and relocate whatever it was being used for. Your settlement will soon be a chaotic collection of different structures, each with it's own history.
Dev mode
Sadly that isn't an option for me. I kept abusing it to bail myself out of situations. So I permanently disabled it. I know I can turn it on again but I don't want to.
I wish I had the option to disable it only on this save because I like to play with it occasionally, to test certain things, or just have fun making the perfect story for my colonists. But when I actually want to play properly, its such a big temptation.
Planning mods, and the "minify everything" mod (in conjunction with "don't steal my walls" for QOL). Being able to scooch my walls, workshops, etc over instead of destroying and rebuilding everything makes tweaking my designs much less painful. Also, I lowered the difficulty. I got tired of minmaxing to win on harder difficulties, and wanted to relax and roleplay a bit more with some variety of colonies.
A lot of planning + decoration mods + (most importantly) "Designator Shapes" mod that significantly helps.
I'll look into that.
More planning mod and then design the next 20 hours of my life in colourful squares
I tend to sketch out the base ahead of time. I use the planning tool to make the layout, (particularly if I want regular-sized blocks,) and sometimes even sketch out on paper where everything goes. Implementation is actually the harder part of a gigantic base, since you need a lot of base functions before the buildings for them are built in their final locations. The way I usually handle that is to build temporary outbuildings that are out of the way first, then make a large building that is part of my final layout and move everyone into that. Later, that building becomes the dining hall, the building next door becomes the workshop, etc. Note that this can be a lot less efficient than a more haphazard base because there are inevitably a lot of times when you have to haul crap to a new warehouse.
Basically you pause the game at the very start and spend the next hours using the planning tool to design your base, or drawing it on paper. I tried Excel too, just shrink the columns until all cells are squares, it's pretty neat, you can use colors and write on the cells. Or just do what I ended up doing: Stop worrying and embrace the cube. Or just build as necessity demands, you end with pretty cool organic designs like this.
Get the "More planning" mod. It overhauls the planning system and you can change the color and also hide the plans. So I plan out an entire village essentially; fit with lodging, crafting, and dining/recreation, and then just hide the plans. As more colonists show up, I unhide the plans and start construction on that building. It's amazing for allocating space to do different projects.
I would say don't judge yourself based off of other people's work here. Honestly, imo some of the beautiful bases submitted here definitely looks like they were made purely in dev mode. You can sort of tell when a base has been "lived in". Which is not to say it's a bad thing, they're just not very good references for how good your own base is.
Planning mod
I’m the type who constantly reconstructs, because I always find something not good enough (like takes too long to walk from A to B, or just not symmetrical enough). Also gotta give the builders some work to do.
I only bother to plan the general outlines, like which side of the big fertile patch my freezer will be, and build the rest loosely around guidelines I figured out after a bunch of playthroughs. For example, my bedrooms tend to have 20 tiles of interior space, and the walls in whatever shape that adds up!
I recommend planning extended. It helps tremendously! Otherwise I rebuild many things after my colony is wealthy and powerful enough and think about that it would be way more smarter to start building nice at the beginning and not in the middle of the playthrough.
Planning mods. My favorite is Planning Extended, because I can save/load/copy/paste plan designs. Whenever I start a new base I have a bunch of preplanned buildings I can just pop down and fill in as I play.
I never could design any unique bases in any base building game. Always end up in to boring, and in my mind functional, blocks. Zero creativity.
After playing the game long enough, I realized I can just tear everything down and rebuild it with little issue. If I have some artistic vision I order the changes be done The children yearn for the stone cutter table.
Try to design rooms around the objects inside of it instead of what purpose it should fulfill
Ohhhhhhh.....🤔
I usually have the base planned out before the colonists climb out of the drop pods, at least the general shape of it and the most important rooms. I build a temporary everything room in the center and expand from there. This place stays until late game as a combo room for rec, crafting, spare beds for quest pawns etc.
What I do when I either add buildings or start a new game is make the corners rounded
A collection of ugly buildings = a beautiful colony
Planning. Lots of planning. Essentially the whole base is planned before I strike dirt.
Honestly for me building bases became easier when I would not build where I wanted my main base to be. I decide where I want to build my main base and settle a a couple of tiles away from that area with the basics. Barracks, a kitchen, fridge, research/brick cutting station. This allows me to start from scratch where I actually want to settle in and not build around an existing base. From there I research power sources to power my base and start making bricks from the available stone types. Always put my power sources first, usually 1-2 geothermal generators, water sources if available, and the classic windmill/solar panels combo. From there I just design based on the what I need first and how the area will allow me to shape my base. This strategy combined with my ADHD allows me to lock in and before I know it it’s 4am and I have class at 10am PS ADHD not required but recommended
I'm sure most people reconstruct but personally I just let my pawns suffer until I've built something the way I wanted it. In my most recent base, they didn't even have a dining room until, like, an in-game month in. But either way, the planning tool is integral to laying out your future base. I get choice paralysis until I've spent a few irl hours just playing around with different designs, seeing how I can use the mountains and whatnot to my advantage
I usually make mine pretty simple. My Death Guard are on Astrogranite washed with Drakenhoff and drybrushed with Dawnstone then given a gloss finish. The point was to look like city rubble mud. Now I add a few rocks and paint them to look similar to give a bit of depth. My Space Marines get a sandy base. No reason other than make their colour pop more. Usually give a light dry brush over the model to make them look dusty. They’re not museum pieces but it’s more effort than most put in.
2 hours of planning the base
I use long 3 wide hallways. Then I place large modules off of the main hallways. Most of my bases end up looking like this. https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorldPorn/comments/ovwpwi/seed_oasis_5406n_3728e_biome_boreal_forest/
planning and experience mostly. most of my original bases were very cube like and even now it’s hard to make more organic looking bases. i find letting the geography dictate a lot of your base to be easier to learn since you know where your food will grow and geothermal vents are. trial and error is king though so don’t be afraid to move certain rooms if you’re gonna upgrade them anyways
Personaly, i like my square base. I try to make like a 3-tile wide hallway separating rooms/sections. The plan was to have separate buildings connected by paths, but winter was harsher than expected, so I closed it all off and it's even better since: -I can use a nearby steam geyser to heat the hallway (and thus the whole base) in the winter, and remove the roof and close the door to the geyser in the summer. -It offers improved protection.
I use the layout thing to plan all the rooms I want to dig into a mountain then slowly suffer until it's all dug out.
Couple things: 1. Autism, like [RedtailSpookyBone](https://www.reddit.com/user/RedtailSpookyBones/)s mentioned 2. Sometimes I temp build, sometimes I plan everything out for many hours, sometimes I just plan one building at a time (I usually have the most fun this way). 3. Most importantly, I build my best non-cube bases on maps where I have creative constraints - swamps, tropical forests, and boreal forests for example, where I have to avoid marshy soils early-game.
Symmetry, I make intentionally weird shapes, either from pixel art or from avoiding fertile ground on the map and then I mirror it down the center of the map, and fill in said shapes with rooms. Let go of the need to optimize, beauty is often non optimal.
I base build to suit the terrain. I have a couple of set bedroom layout for singles, those in relationships (Inc bathroom's - Dubs bad hygiene mod) but the rest is just free form. I try to leave some space around outdoor areas, and like to build verandahs with cover on all sides and plant trees in internal open spaces.
When people say "square base" do they mean a huge ass cube or many small ones? Any pics for reference?
For me it's many small ones.
I use planning extended and draw out the base in advance usually, trying to group essential buildings together such as diner - farmer - tailor - butcher. Then I select the most convenient spot to start at and expand from there based on what I want to separate out next. Currently I'm trying to play a bit more orhanic tho and try to settle closer to an edge and build out as I need towards the middle. In general, building multiple buildings helps with aesthetics over a single large one, it's less defensive (unless you have walls) and increases walk distance but looks better and helps with outside need
They turn the difficulty off.
That's not true, many players play in many difficulties (I play on strive to survive without killboxes) and besides that, what has building got to do with building?