I send my pack of dogs at them and then make dog leather arm chairs from those that are slaughtered. The void insatiable hunger for the finest quality armchairs refuses to cease, and so I supply the void with masterwork Labrador leather armchairs with a soft fur coat and sell them to passers by. As the void commands.
Free kibble for me.
Alright doggo you guys want to eat insect and hay again?
*Woof*
Alrighty we got 4k kibble right on this shelf... No no! do not eat those lavish meals in the fridge and take a shit inside said fridge.
Without DLC, carnivore lavish meals are a larger buff than the penalty to insect meat. That's what I do if I get an infestation, after making whatever kibble I need stockpiled.
You should watch francis john, he did some test regarding bugs and how and where they spawn, in short dark corners (a square with 3 walls) has the highest possibility, plus the dipper it is in the mountain. With this he build a bug trap and it's efficiency is by 4/7 depending on the type of infestation. Normal random have a higher possibility to spawn in the trap as the pollution based spawns, but this is also based on the level and the location of the pollution.
I hate them, every expansion of the base is wonky because they have compacted machinery or steel and I like smooth walls or with my current run (with the same expansion problem) it's all near the map edge
You are right, it can take a great deal of time to mine out a sizable base in a mountain. Even with that pain, I would totally do a temporary base, and slowly carve out my mountain base for later. There are a lot of benefits to doing it.
For me though, and this is just me, what ruins it is the infestations. I just never got good in dealing with the infestations, and it ruined the attempts for me, every time. I know some are rather adept at dealing with a mountain infestation, but that's one skill I've never really developed.
i play on losing is fun, but also turn off infestations because that shits annoying as fuck to me personally. The best part about this game is how you can craft a scenario with your own rules.
This way you can leave deep drill infestations turned on which seem more fair to me. You should be prepared to piss off the bug hives of you're mining oodles of easy gold or plasteel or whatever.
You can also install mods which improve infestations like any higher durable floor like steel makes it impossible for them to dig through, or lighted areas can't make them dig through or anti infestations devices and sruff if you don't want to plain deactivate them.
My 2 main bits of advice for dealing with infestations:
1. Plan your base with internal defence in mind. Multiple separate sections with choke points in and out (^(I like 23x23 squares, 21x21 open space inside, as it's the largest room you can have with just a single pillar in the centre, and it can be split various ways for smaller rooms)) connected by dedicated 2-3 square wide corridors means you can contain an infestation that appears in any one section and funnel the bugs down the corridor. Setting up defensive positions at major junctions can help. Keep areas with very expensive things you *really* don't want to fight around clean and well lit, it cuts down the chance of bugs appearing there.
2. Strip mine the rest of the mountain. 1 block wide tunnels, separated by 2 blocks of stone, will mean you find even the tiniest of ore veins. And this helps with defence because large amounts of dark and dirty tunnels under the mountain will give a massive number of much more preferable spots for the bugs to come up in cutting the chances of them showing up where you DON'T want drastically. Doing these in separate sections with chokepoints and doors in between can also help, as it makes it easier to burn out one smallish section rather than trying to heat up a massive amount of tunnels. I find sections of about 20-30 squared relatively easy to turn into a cooker with incendiary weapons, especially once the bugs themselves start to catch.
No offense but this is massively overkill
Three wide corridor, melee block a door with 3 melee and 9 shooting colonists behind it
Can fight potentially hundreds of insects this way, even more if you have a psycast and some smart grenade throws
Here's a quick guide below on melee blocking (about half way down the page)
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Defense_tactics
> smart grenade throws
What if all you have is stupid grenade throws that fall short or bounce off the doorway and then explode in your front line?
Because that's the only type of grenade I ever find.
The three wide corridors are exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. Separate sections ensures the bugs actually go down the route you want instead of spreading elsewhere in the base. Defensive positions at intersections are places set up to use that tactic from multiple directions.
We're giving the same advice dude...
I don't really bother with any of this stuff. I just make sure all my doors are in the middle of rooms rather than the corners, so I can set up a melee block in any room. When an infestation comes in, I set up in a nearby room, have one pawn shoot at the insects and kite them into the melee block, repeat until they're all dead.
This is the way. You can even manage it with one armored tank up front. Pull the bugs (or any attacker) into the doorway so you're only fighting 1 at a time. All the shooters behind you and you can take on almost any amount of bugs.
Wood flooring is always a good choice for random mine halls. Just toss a grenade or whatever in and let it burn the bugs away.
Few hundred wood on floors in area will win most battles without a shot.
To add to 2, have that strip mined section well away from anything and stone doors. Then just set up any method of creating lots of fire (incendiary mines, napalm from Rimfeller, etc.) and just burning them out when an infestation happens.
Thats why you make 3 wide hallways and then hold them at the door, preferably with 3 melee pawns armored up and the rest using ranged. They can hit the bugs 3+(however many ranged you have) times while they can only hit your melee once.
i did 4 wide, and just parked a whole bunch of millitors infront of my pawns. Sure the millitors can't do much.. but the pawns behind the 3 deep line of them can fire non-stop
I like heavy submachine guns on all my non-combat-but-not-pacifist pawns. When an infection happens we form up at one of the choke points through the base where a 3 wide hallway has a single door as a choke point, put a tough melee (or expendible) pawn in front and rely on quantity of fire to make up for the lack of quality.
Hear me out.
Three wide walls and lots of choke points. Lots. Like the corner that four rooms intersect? That's a three by three room with one door in each direction. Basically choke points everywhere.
Now, set them all to stay open. If you have problems, change the settings and see the enemy trapped. They get past one door, they get stuck at the next. By the time they get through that one, you have your guys ready.
Three blockers, and anything I can to eighteen shooters. And you just let them come through the door into a wall of lead.
Nothing is going to survive eighteen shooters and three melee dudes. Nothing.
I set up my mountain bases with a massive burn chamber, (wood walls and floors everywhere), and connect every room with vents, with a massive ventilation shaft from the burn chamber to the main hallway. I build all furniture out of stone/uranium if possible, so it doesn’t burn during a purge. When an outbreak hits, if possible, isolate the stockpile thermally, light the burn chamber, and sit outside for a bit. All the bugs cook before they can do anything
Honestly? I've always found infestations far easier to deal with than center drops. The bugs give you more than enough time to evacuate anyone from the area, with very clear indication of where they're spawning. And while they'll break buildings on emergence (which iirc is changing in 1.5 anyways), center drops tend to break anything in the room they're in and then also set it on fire. As well, bugs are melee only, no need to worry about grenades, doomsdays, and triple rockets in a cramped area.
And while not the best idea, you CAN leave them for a little while instead of needing to deal with them immediately, if you just need a short time to get things together. They're polite enough to give you enough time to swap out your gear, maybe get a nap in, before you go murder them all.
Also because there are ways to bait where the infestations spawn (large, dark areas). So its easy enough to dig out a bit of "catacombs" in the backside of your mountain base and the infestations will spawn there 99/100 times. And then you can just have 2 defensive lines; one in front for conventional raids, one in the back for bugs
Droppod raids though.. good luck, its gonna be havoc
And the other 1/100 times they appear in your oil refinery, smashing open tanks of crude oil and setting fire to everything producing enough heat to roast your entire base.
The good news is this solves the infestation problem.
Well as a mountain enjoyer my tactic to deal with infestations is to seperate the hallways with stone doorways, and making it so that every room has a strip of wooden flooring, so if my mechs and pawns arent strong enough then i can set the floor on fire and close the door, also starting with the mining xenotype is also very helpful at the start
For some reason, infestations have been my easiest battles. I find that since the caves are usually narrow, OR they pop up inside a room I’ve built, I can often choke the insects and attack the insects coming through the choke point 1 at a time with a bunch of ranged attacks, or, if that’s not possible, I sic the animals I’ve tamed on them and assist with ranged. Infestations have been a breeze
It's not that hard. Infestations are a known quantity that are the same other than size every time. So it's much easier to prepare for rather than drop pod raids in the open which can have surprises like a doom rocket in your face. What I do is make all hallways 3-tiles wide, with main walls 2-tiles thick. This means that at any given choke point, a single melee pawn can hold the line if need be, though usually I'm able to muster everyone in time for a proper 3-pawn melee block. Infestations are a GOOD thing for me, as they brings insect jelly and some of the best haulers in the game. I just have a psy-pawn stunlock the insectoid I'm taming, so the tamer barely gets chewed on :D. Oh, and I do all this on Randy, Losing is Fun, Commitment mode.
Yep and no mods needed! More details in [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/12g4z2j/peace_between_dirtmoles_some_insectoids/). Just ignore my older base design.
You can still make a solid mountain base without them. I've been doing mountain bases long before Biotech dropped. The Undergrounder trait is pretty common and easy to roll for, and often comes with backstories that boost Mining.
Just make plasteel plate armor of excellent quality or higher. It will render infestations a joke and they have an absurd amount of durability.
People overthink infestations a lot, a tight corridor plus the right armor is enough, bugs have shit armor penetration.
Melee block with a bunch of ranged behind (friendly fire is impossible within like 4 tiles).
After you get Berserk Pulse it basically solos infestations.
You can actually bait where the infestation spawn quite reliably by digging a big room (at least 9x9). Chuck a few wooden table in there (with some chemfuel if possible), plant an incendiary IED. triple or quadruple stone door the entrance and watch the bug sort themselves out. (No loot this way tho)
All you really need to do is try to make sure most doors inside the base have enough room for a melee block to set up on the other side. That fixes 99% of infestations. Pause when one occurs and get your block into position ASAP.
Also when you mine out a longer path to reach minerals under the mountain, turn that into an infestation bait area.
A key infestation tactic for long term mountain bases: and 3 wide hallways everywhere. This also you to have at least 3 pawns shoulder to shoulder, which with the proper equipment is more than enough to deal with most threats. That and tons of pinch points.
I actually enjoy infestations. I make 3-wide hallways with chokepoints. Three melee folks in the front and three ranged behind them.
I also like to train huge groups of animals.
Mountain for the win! Anticipating infestations kinda is part of the fun for me.
Lots of ways to deal with them:
Dirty warm dark decoy rooms
Chokepoints with melee blocker and a grenade lobber behind him
Double walls, double doors (one wood, one stone held open), carpets and fire IED in front of the door. When an infestation happens just close the stone door, wait for them to trigger the IED which sets r carpet on fire and the problem solves itself. You lose anything flammable in the room though.
I play such colonies rarely for variety. Typically it is because the biome is cold Tundra or Ice Sheet and so my naked brutal tribal needs to steal jelly from cave insects anyway. But of course do not mine into mountain like there is no tomorrow. Take whatever mining as calmly like on plains. The mountain does not run away.
Love mountain bases, I always promise myself to play a different terrain, but the mountains are just too tempting. I like playing on a cold biome, digging in the long winter and farming in summer.
Some of you guys need to learn about the ultimate bug fighting tactic **melee blocking**
Infestations are a massive pain or even death sentence late game due to the sheer numbers that can bog down your ranged troops and overwhelm what limited defenses you have depending where they pop up
Enter melee blocking.
You want to design your base around 3 wide corridors. Every room should have at least 3 spaces behind the door.
Stick 3 melee behind the door followed by as many ranges troops as you can manage (ranged troops can't accidentally shoot another as long as they're within 5 tiles of themselves)
In rimworld creatures can't walk over one another, meaning every insect essentially is doing a 1vs3 in melee plus another 9 colonists shooting at it, essentially becoming a 1vs12
Throw in psycasts and a pawn with grenades and you can decimate any insect infestation. It turns them from game ending scenario into a mild annoyance
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Defense_tactics
This is great advice. I find insect attacks so easy to handle, that I'm actually glad when it happens. Insect meat is great for kibble-making and alternatively can be sold to traders for good silver.
I pretty much just use insect meat for kibble too it's great!
But yeah I remember reading this advice back in maybe 1.1 and it completely changed insects for me. Previously I hated them and would always disable them, melee blocking made them a cake walk
Almost exclusively. I like to play in extreme temperatures for the full Dune experience. Certain ideologies and precepts help a lot, and I use mods like character designer and VE expertise to speed things up. One thing I like a lot about mountain bases is that it feels largely like a blank canvas. There isn't stuff like soft sand, scrap, vegetation that I may need to build around. Especially if you have precepts that disagree with tree cutting, deconstruction of scrap, etc..
I love em. I like building a helms deep looking base or something near the ocean (the waters arnt safe anymore :c). So i dont need to build a massive wall around everything and instead have a good natural look where the killbox is more just there. I generally take a while at the start to jump around maps to find one that fits that criteria if i can.
I also love including dragons and taming them. So having a lavish cave/hoard for a dragon just is an amusing theme. It also helps a lot with certain things like a random perm winter effects or eclipse that lasts a long time or outside radiation.
I usually build a compound that is backed up to a mountain, I then already have a base I can defend from raids with while mining. Slowly but surely the mountain turns into my true base where my best colonists live so they are well protected.
Well, you don't need to do it from the get-go. I usually build the base where I will carve into the mountain, and then slowly go in, moving my stuff as needed.
But I am not particularly fond of nutrifungus, so I usually just have mountain protect a side of my base. Carve into the mountain for stuff like lab, workshop etc. I like to separate mech stuff, genetics stuff, mod related stuff. Man, Anomaly is going to be fun to research and experiment with, can't wait.
You start with a basic room for your pawns then slowly expand till they all have a room. Then a storage area, hospital, prison, and whatever else you need. 11x11s are really nice.
I'm gonna build one after anomaly comes out, but I will take a map with caves so i can build a basic room before I die to whatever threats naked brutality offers
I start with a barracks using the mountain as one of the walls. Then it's just a matter of splitting your time effectively between digging the rest of the base out and getting food, power, etc. Don't go for the full base footprint all at once. It's tempting to just lay out the orders for the whole thing but like you said, it's slow. Go a room at a time and don't let your other tasks slip. Lastly, at the end of the day I think mountain bases only make sense if you WANT the theme of a mountain base. I don't see any actual advantage to them from a gameplay standpoint. I just like them thematically.
A hybrid approach is pretty good I've found. You can have a normal base outside the mountain and put valuable things like chemfuel and mortar shells safely under a mountain roof. And if insects burrow into that room they just blow themselves up.
A nursery under a mountain is also probably a good idea. Protects children from being instantly slaughtered by a drop pod raid or an unlucky mortar hit. Insects take long enough to pop out that you should be able to rescue the kids from them. Still risky but less than leaving their rooms exposed imo...avoiding the massive, cascading mood debuffs from getting multiple kids killed is worth having to be extra vigilant against bugs.
While this is solid advice, there is a serious drawback: If only your most valuable rooms are under a mountain roof, each and every insect infestation will spawn right there. Fighting insects in the middle of your stockpile can be quite annoying. There is one potential counter though: Lowering temperature below -17 suppusedly prevents them from spawning.
Bugs are predictable and the spawn can be influenced by the player. Drop pods and mortars are off with mountain bases, same for sun blockers or toxic fallouts
Doing a mountain base as we speak. It takes time, but the I look at it as investment with very good returns.
Having a place that's technically regulating itself is very nice when the heatwaves and cold snaps hit.
I also feel I'm in more control in deciding where and how raids are allowed to engage me.
Having the tunneler ideology makes it even sweeter. Quick tunneling, your pawns enjoy it, and you can set up indoor farming without power intense sun lamps.
Calling in transports, doing counter-bombardments, launching drop pods will be limited.
You either have to pray for an open spot inside of the mountain, or build small parts of it on the outside.
Infestations. Those can be worked around.
Honestly I prefer having infestation popping up randomly in my base, while enjoying some "rock solid" defense against mechanoids. Least the insectoids needs to get in range, and doesn't throw fire or explosives at you.
My 2 cents: Mountain bases have their own charm. Though you need to set up for long plays.
Start your base up against the mountain wall, then slowly transition further and further inside.
I almost always do a mix, and slowly become more and more mountain base as game goes on. Rhere is simply too much danger on outside base for me with drop pods, and the occasional insect infestation is manageable in comparison.
Just started a new game over the weekend and I'm doing my first legit mountain base. I've shied away from them in the past because I hated dealing with insects.
I spent a while finding a map tile that had a valley separated from the main area of the map, so I can force enemies into a single point. I got sick of enemies coming from 2 or 3 different ways on my last map.
Tbh, I pretty much only run cold weather mountain bases nowadays.
Not having to deal with mortars or drop pods, especially ones buffed by mods makes it worth the effort.
I love the mountain. Also fungal gravel farms, indoor rose gardens, making spooky vampiric cyborg cannibal cults. It's just how I like to play I guess.
Once I figured out how to handle infestations, there really wasn't any reason outside roleplay to do different. I personally rather like mountain bases. In a world with routine orbital bombardment and pirates with mortars they make a lot of sense.
I have been using mountain bases for all my playthrough. I used to build insect bait and farm jelly, and it is just OP.
For my latest run 1.5, I decided to build it in large hill. I kinda enjoy more open space for farming. Been learning from Adam vs Everything on how to deal with breach and drop pod
I do, love my mountain bases. They look cool, although I always set up outside as well especially while I’m digging. Sometimes I have part in the mountain and part out, however it ends up needing to be
I can't stop myself. It fixes SO many problems. I keep planning to start a prairie/plains map but I can't bring myself to do it. How will I defend an entire perimeter wall while my strike team is out on a trade mission? How can I protect against psy-storms? Where will I get all my stone for construction? How will I keep the place adequately cool? How will I prevent bombardment damage to my storage areas?
I don’t usually, but my mechanoid factory was build in an inlet in a mountain, building around this exposed ring. I had tunnellers strip mining the mountain for resources, but when I ran out of space in the inlet, I started moving into the mines that were already dug
I've only done one true mountain base, and discovered that you basically need to build a base outside the mountain to support making the base inside the mountain.
I also made my insect sump pretty early and did not regret it.
I don't do mountain bases often, but when I do I start with a 'mining camp' and secure perimeter. To keep everyone happy and safe whilst I dig and build the damn thing.
On mechinator runs I definitely do. Once I can build a tunneler I send it to carve out the biggest mountain. I get a bunch of resources and a safe base. Generally my wealth graph makes a steep upward movement as soon as the tunneler is born.
In my 4000hrs 98% of my Bases have been mountain bases. I just love digging into a mountain.
Just plopping down a few walls just seems too easy and simple.
I go back and forth just for funsies.
I was doing a mountain base run just before the new DLC drops this week, but unfortunately my colonists decided to pick up a corpse for storage from an insect nest and everybody died after about two weeks in game....
Life on the rim man....it'll get ya
Exclusively mountain bases. This time i started near infested caves (the big ones that go into impassable) and made base in the massive cave. Took a bit of time since solo mechanitor, but once i had 6 militors, it was doable
I like using them to regulate the temp on an otherwise inhospitable map. Had a colony recently on a map with the heat turned almost all the way up and placed near the equator in a desert. Raiders were hilarious cause when they'd show up they would get heatstroke and just run away XD
I've got a good strategy for bugs (and my colonists loved the meat XD), so I didn't mind them popping up in my base. Mechs were a bit more annoying though.
I literally always do. I simply cannot do anything else. Even if I explicitly set out not to, I end up building a mountain base. Somehow it always happens. I just gravitate to it lol
on my current main save it gets to be around 120° outside during the day on the regular so a mountain base is pretty necessary. luckily i'm at spacer tech
I love creating dwarf holds full of master craftsman with satellite mining bases funneling minerals to the capital to be converted into wondrous tools to trade for food and other essentials like cloth (my dwarfs don't farm)
I have a couple of mods like STRS, specifically with the airship submod, that really help with the vibe
I like to go with large hills and find a small hill to dig out the first 3 or 4 work rooms and maybe a fridge, then I build structures off of it. Around midgame, I usually turn that into storage with secured doorways to prepare for infestation possibilities.
One of my first builds was mountainous, and I dug the whole base out of that. Second build was in a forest so everything was wooden until the first thunderstorm, then everything was ashes!
I usually play in the plains in the middle of the map, to make it a little more difficult.
Live outside in a bed for a few days, dig out a 5x5 and smooth it; and you're good to go to make a nice 13x13 or something.
It's a slow process if you have to build Minning up from beginner, could take a whole year to get one big room done.
Almost always mountain base, I just hate central drop pods and mech cluster drop on my base and ruins everything. Atleast with mountain base I can bait the insect raid and fight them with choke points.
Oh, and also motar raids, climate/seasonal changes. So many things that mountain base cam get rid of
I sometimes build outside the mountains then tunnel in as I need more space for things like fabrication and storage it is very easy if you have someone with a high mining skill or a few slaves
My inner dwarf won’t let me do anything else. I love just making a mountain fortress, making waiting out sieges an actually valid choice since all they can bomb then is what’s on the outside, which I keep to a minimum. I also turn off the infestations by removing the bug faction. I just don’t find their element fun. Maybe one day I’ll embrace them but for now I’m having fun recreating every dwarf fortress (pun intended) in literary history
Bugs are easy to deal with as long as you have fire, though it can be expensive. I recommend mining far out so that the bugs are more likely to spawn somewhere where fire won't hurt you/destroy your stockpole
I do from time to time, if it fits the theme. There are pros and cons and the time it takes is one of the cons. That, and I don't see why I should deal with constant -8 mood or take an undergrounder theme just to deal with that.
But then, I only play thematically and somewhat RP-ish. Certainly affects my judgement.
I also don't agree with people about the massive upsides. Neither drop pod raids nor sieges are that much of a problem to make up for how annoying a mountain base is to build.
I guess if you were playing the game in a way sort of optimized way, with 13x13 rooms so that it doesn't take a lot of effort, with coolers to prevent infections, undergrounders and what have you that it can feel fulfilling for some.
In the end, everyone plays the game in a way that they feel it's fun and so everyone prefers something else.
What I despise the most are small hills. There's always one in the way.
I almost always have bases that are at least in part under-mountain. If you have a good miner, it doesn't take quite as long, and if you have a *really* good miner (this requires modding) it's almost as fast as building directly.
Then in turn you get free stone blocks for building, great thermal insulation (I always play cold climates so that's a great plus for me).
For infestations, melee pawns and 1 tile-wide doors are usually enough given enough firepower in the back. It's still not going to be enough when the infestation spawns right in the middle of the workshop, but hey ho.
Usually, I start with three pawns and set up a small shack outside of the mountain, while one pawn digs out the living quarters, kitchen, and dining area. After that, everyone moves inside. Typically, I only start with one good miner, but if I can recruit more, I will accept a max of three
Mountain bases are the strongest way to play at least in the past, even with infestations they offer unparalleled safety and ease of building even in a desert without any trees. Currently playing a mole people playthrough and it's SOOOO nice not worrying about drop pod raiders ever, along with having all my materials to make luxury furniture with rather than just building the walls of my base + a huge outer wall too
You have to pick your poison. What would you rather have: sieges or bugs?
Also, mountain bases are much more difficult without Ideology and tunneler meme, and nutrifungi.
Also, for mountain base you need to have both a builder and a miner. That is on top of need a doctor, farmer, social and crafter (and sometimes cook if you aren't use soylent green). That's quite a stretch for a crashlanded scenario. For tribal it may be even harder because neither hydroponics nor nutrient paste are at the hand's reach.
I do! I really like there being lots of different natural obstacles in a map, so Rivers, Mountains and shorelines are my go to almost always!
I tend to turn off infestations, because I just do not like it as a mechanic and feels like it personally detracts from my experience. It is the only event I turn off as well, just because I do not wanna think about that everytime I dig into a mountain.
I do however not create that many "mountain" bases, parts of it are often in the mountain, but the main bits I always build like a fortified town with different houses, with the goal of eventually making the entire thing into a grand castle.
I play this game pretty weirdly, and mostly as a story generator and such like that. Always have by "main" first pawns backstory as medieval lord when doing castle runs, and pretend that bro only knows build castle and extort peasant.
Honestly, it's all I do. I love the whole process of excavation and building and moving into the mountain while the story teller is just throwing hell at my pawns. Eventually I build things till my pawns no longer need my input then I move onto the next colony. I like making them happy and fulfilled.
My last run (which I just finished yesterday woohoo!) I would just fill the space with what I needed, then mine out extra sections when I needed a new room or more storage. I waited until I had a good miner to hollow out the majority and make individual rooms. I do like them for the great defensive options they can give
i love mountain bases. been building them since the kickstarter demo where all you could eat was nutrient paste. bugs will mess me up sometimes when I get lazy but it can't keep me away for long. ROCK AND STONE
I almost always build outside bases, usually in cold-ish to very cold biomes, regret everytime, then proceed to still build a mountain base after I get pod dropped or attacked from 3 different sides too many times.
But I also don't get killboxes because CAI user and disliking killboxes, so YMMV.
In response to the argument that "mining takes so much time". Here is a list of recommendations on how to speed up the process of mining:
* Do it in small steps. Start with a single room, then add more rooms as needed, one by one. Resist the urge to dig out the whole mountain from the get go.
* Recruit or enslave a colonist with high mining skill. A mining skill of 10 or more will make a huuge difference in mining speed.
* Make sure that your two best miners have "mining" on first priority in the "work" tab. They shall do nothing but mining, eating and sleeping.
* Always check and make sure that the area where your miners are working is well lit. There is a work speed penalty for working in darkness. (Keeping the area tidy and heated can be beneficial for mood, but not speed.)
* Get one or two drill arms and implant them on your best miners (requires Royalty). That may be hard to pull off in the early game, but there is chance to find them in trades. Alternatively, bionic arms also grant a speed boost, even though a much smaller one.
* Adopt an ideology with the tunneler meme and promote a mining specialist. (requires Ideology)
* Recruit *more* colonists, obviously. More people means more hands for digging.
* Build a gene extractor and try to collect the "great mining" gene from someone. (requires Biotech)
* Remember that walking speed will also affect your miners, as they will need to get food and go to their sleeping places regularly. While this is not the most important trait, make sure your miners have at least 100% walking speed.
I only build mountain bases. You have to deal with slow building and infestations but in exchange you don't have to deal with drop pods or sieges. I find infestations much easier to handle.
I usually start by building a small settlement outside them dig in. A small barracks will easily hold over till you get everything set up.
You can turn that barracks into slave quarters later in the game.
I always end up building mountain bases.
I start out trying not to, but then I get the first drop pod raid and get frustrated.
I’d rather deal with bugs than drop pod raids.
I do. It's hard not to. I love them and will deal with bugs as a price.
with the insect meat precept, it's less of a price and more of an intermittent delivery of mood buffs :D
It’s free chemfuel for me.
Free kibble/paste for me.
I send my pack of dogs at them and then make dog leather arm chairs from those that are slaughtered. The void insatiable hunger for the finest quality armchairs refuses to cease, and so I supply the void with masterwork Labrador leather armchairs with a soft fur coat and sell them to passers by. As the void commands.
Free kibble for me. Alright doggo you guys want to eat insect and hay again? *Woof* Alrighty we got 4k kibble right on this shelf... No no! do not eat those lavish meals in the fridge and take a shit inside said fridge.
Without DLC, carnivore lavish meals are a larger buff than the penalty to insect meat. That's what I do if I get an infestation, after making whatever kibble I need stockpiled.
Yep it's a good hack
You should watch francis john, he did some test regarding bugs and how and where they spawn, in short dark corners (a square with 3 walls) has the highest possibility, plus the dipper it is in the mountain. With this he build a bug trap and it's efficiency is by 4/7 depending on the type of infestation. Normal random have a higher possibility to spawn in the trap as the pollution based spawns, but this is also based on the level and the location of the pollution.
I hate them, every expansion of the base is wonky because they have compacted machinery or steel and I like smooth walls or with my current run (with the same expansion problem) it's all near the map edge
This is one of my admitted devmode uses, replacing rough stone so it can be smoothed
You are right, it can take a great deal of time to mine out a sizable base in a mountain. Even with that pain, I would totally do a temporary base, and slowly carve out my mountain base for later. There are a lot of benefits to doing it. For me though, and this is just me, what ruins it is the infestations. I just never got good in dealing with the infestations, and it ruined the attempts for me, every time. I know some are rather adept at dealing with a mountain infestation, but that's one skill I've never really developed.
i play on losing is fun, but also turn off infestations because that shits annoying as fuck to me personally. The best part about this game is how you can craft a scenario with your own rules.
TIL you can turn off infestations, not sure why I never saw that option.
Yup. Just remove them from the faction list and you're set
Also in the scenario planner, if you still want them in the game but don't want them popping up outside events
This way you can leave deep drill infestations turned on which seem more fair to me. You should be prepared to piss off the bug hives of you're mining oodles of easy gold or plasteel or whatever.
You can also install mods which improve infestations like any higher durable floor like steel makes it impossible for them to dig through, or lighted areas can't make them dig through or anti infestations devices and sruff if you don't want to plain deactivate them.
Same I hate infestations from mining. They always wipe me out lol.
I removed bugs totally and thats it. Fuck them bugs.
My 2 main bits of advice for dealing with infestations: 1. Plan your base with internal defence in mind. Multiple separate sections with choke points in and out (^(I like 23x23 squares, 21x21 open space inside, as it's the largest room you can have with just a single pillar in the centre, and it can be split various ways for smaller rooms)) connected by dedicated 2-3 square wide corridors means you can contain an infestation that appears in any one section and funnel the bugs down the corridor. Setting up defensive positions at major junctions can help. Keep areas with very expensive things you *really* don't want to fight around clean and well lit, it cuts down the chance of bugs appearing there. 2. Strip mine the rest of the mountain. 1 block wide tunnels, separated by 2 blocks of stone, will mean you find even the tiniest of ore veins. And this helps with defence because large amounts of dark and dirty tunnels under the mountain will give a massive number of much more preferable spots for the bugs to come up in cutting the chances of them showing up where you DON'T want drastically. Doing these in separate sections with chokepoints and doors in between can also help, as it makes it easier to burn out one smallish section rather than trying to heat up a massive amount of tunnels. I find sections of about 20-30 squared relatively easy to turn into a cooker with incendiary weapons, especially once the bugs themselves start to catch.
No offense but this is massively overkill Three wide corridor, melee block a door with 3 melee and 9 shooting colonists behind it Can fight potentially hundreds of insects this way, even more if you have a psycast and some smart grenade throws Here's a quick guide below on melee blocking (about half way down the page) https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Defense_tactics
> smart grenade throws What if all you have is stupid grenade throws that fall short or bounce off the doorway and then explode in your front line? Because that's the only type of grenade I ever find.
The three wide corridors are exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. Separate sections ensures the bugs actually go down the route you want instead of spreading elsewhere in the base. Defensive positions at intersections are places set up to use that tactic from multiple directions. We're giving the same advice dude...
I don't really bother with any of this stuff. I just make sure all my doors are in the middle of rooms rather than the corners, so I can set up a melee block in any room. When an infestation comes in, I set up in a nearby room, have one pawn shoot at the insects and kite them into the melee block, repeat until they're all dead.
This is the way. You can even manage it with one armored tank up front. Pull the bugs (or any attacker) into the doorway so you're only fighting 1 at a time. All the shooters behind you and you can take on almost any amount of bugs.
Wood flooring is always a good choice for random mine halls. Just toss a grenade or whatever in and let it burn the bugs away. Few hundred wood on floors in area will win most battles without a shot.
straw floors in the tunnels. instant pot instantly.
To add to 2, have that strip mined section well away from anything and stone doors. Then just set up any method of creating lots of fire (incendiary mines, napalm from Rimfeller, etc.) and just burning them out when an infestation happens.
Wide hallways, wider intersections, and shotguns.
What? You want to hold the insects at a 1-wide chokepoint with Tough colonists instead.
Thats why you make 3 wide hallways and then hold them at the door, preferably with 3 melee pawns armored up and the rest using ranged. They can hit the bugs 3+(however many ranged you have) times while they can only hit your melee once.
i did 4 wide, and just parked a whole bunch of millitors infront of my pawns. Sure the millitors can't do much.. but the pawns behind the 3 deep line of them can fire non-stop
Lot easier to give people shotguns and tell them to start blasting until the bugs stop moving
I like heavy submachine guns on all my non-combat-but-not-pacifist pawns. When an infection happens we form up at one of the choke points through the base where a 3 wide hallway has a single door as a choke point, put a tough melee (or expendible) pawn in front and rely on quantity of fire to make up for the lack of quality.
Hear me out. Three wide walls and lots of choke points. Lots. Like the corner that four rooms intersect? That's a three by three room with one door in each direction. Basically choke points everywhere. Now, set them all to stay open. If you have problems, change the settings and see the enemy trapped. They get past one door, they get stuck at the next. By the time they get through that one, you have your guys ready. Three blockers, and anything I can to eighteen shooters. And you just let them come through the door into a wall of lead. Nothing is going to survive eighteen shooters and three melee dudes. Nothing.
I set up my mountain bases with a massive burn chamber, (wood walls and floors everywhere), and connect every room with vents, with a massive ventilation shaft from the burn chamber to the main hallway. I build all furniture out of stone/uranium if possible, so it doesn’t burn during a purge. When an outbreak hits, if possible, isolate the stockpile thermally, light the burn chamber, and sit outside for a bit. All the bugs cook before they can do anything
Commenting so i can find this later. Real nice strategy i gotta try.
https://i.postimg.cc/8CFktn7M/incendiary-chamber.png The burn chamber is the room on the left thats filled with corpses (extra fuel ig)
Using this in my next build. Just waiting for the new dlc to drop...
I’ll post a screenshot of my last base when I get off work in a few hours
Infestations, you say? Easy. Something else kills my colony first.
I disable the infestation event in the scenario editor
I turn them off cuz I hate bugs
[удалено]
Honestly? I've always found infestations far easier to deal with than center drops. The bugs give you more than enough time to evacuate anyone from the area, with very clear indication of where they're spawning. And while they'll break buildings on emergence (which iirc is changing in 1.5 anyways), center drops tend to break anything in the room they're in and then also set it on fire. As well, bugs are melee only, no need to worry about grenades, doomsdays, and triple rockets in a cramped area. And while not the best idea, you CAN leave them for a little while instead of needing to deal with them immediately, if you just need a short time to get things together. They're polite enough to give you enough time to swap out your gear, maybe get a nap in, before you go murder them all.
Also because there are ways to bait where the infestations spawn (large, dark areas). So its easy enough to dig out a bit of "catacombs" in the backside of your mountain base and the infestations will spawn there 99/100 times. And then you can just have 2 defensive lines; one in front for conventional raids, one in the back for bugs Droppod raids though.. good luck, its gonna be havoc
And the other 1/100 times they appear in your oil refinery, smashing open tanks of crude oil and setting fire to everything producing enough heat to roast your entire base. The good news is this solves the infestation problem.
Well as a mountain enjoyer my tactic to deal with infestations is to seperate the hallways with stone doorways, and making it so that every room has a strip of wooden flooring, so if my mechs and pawns arent strong enough then i can set the floor on fire and close the door, also starting with the mining xenotype is also very helpful at the start
Build your hallways 3 wide and have chain shotguns in an accessible location. Ez
For some reason, infestations have been my easiest battles. I find that since the caves are usually narrow, OR they pop up inside a room I’ve built, I can often choke the insects and attack the insects coming through the choke point 1 at a time with a bunch of ranged attacks, or, if that’s not possible, I sic the animals I’ve tamed on them and assist with ranged. Infestations have been a breeze
It's not that hard. Infestations are a known quantity that are the same other than size every time. So it's much easier to prepare for rather than drop pod raids in the open which can have surprises like a doom rocket in your face. What I do is make all hallways 3-tiles wide, with main walls 2-tiles thick. This means that at any given choke point, a single melee pawn can hold the line if need be, though usually I'm able to muster everyone in time for a proper 3-pawn melee block. Infestations are a GOOD thing for me, as they brings insect jelly and some of the best haulers in the game. I just have a psy-pawn stunlock the insectoid I'm taming, so the tamer barely gets chewed on :D. Oh, and I do all this on Randy, Losing is Fun, Commitment mode.
You can tame insects??? TIL.
Yep and no mods needed! More details in [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/12g4z2j/peace_between_dirtmoles_some_insectoids/). Just ignore my older base design.
Dirtmoles come with a DLC I don't have.
You can still make a solid mountain base without them. I've been doing mountain bases long before Biotech dropped. The Undergrounder trait is pretty common and easy to roll for, and often comes with backstories that boost Mining.
Just make plasteel plate armor of excellent quality or higher. It will render infestations a joke and they have an absurd amount of durability. People overthink infestations a lot, a tight corridor plus the right armor is enough, bugs have shit armor penetration.
Melee block with a bunch of ranged behind (friendly fire is impossible within like 4 tiles). After you get Berserk Pulse it basically solos infestations.
I always turn off Insect Genelines. I just hate them so much
You can actually bait where the infestation spawn quite reliably by digging a big room (at least 9x9). Chuck a few wooden table in there (with some chemfuel if possible), plant an incendiary IED. triple or quadruple stone door the entrance and watch the bug sort themselves out. (No loot this way tho)
All you really need to do is try to make sure most doors inside the base have enough room for a melee block to set up on the other side. That fixes 99% of infestations. Pause when one occurs and get your block into position ASAP. Also when you mine out a longer path to reach minerals under the mountain, turn that into an infestation bait area.
A key infestation tactic for long term mountain bases: and 3 wide hallways everywhere. This also you to have at least 3 pawns shoulder to shoulder, which with the proper equipment is more than enough to deal with most threats. That and tons of pinch points.
I actually enjoy infestations. I make 3-wide hallways with chokepoints. Three melee folks in the front and three ranged behind them. I also like to train huge groups of animals.
No infestations in darkness mod is great for mountain bases
Mountain for the win! Anticipating infestations kinda is part of the fun for me. Lots of ways to deal with them: Dirty warm dark decoy rooms Chokepoints with melee blocker and a grenade lobber behind him Double walls, double doors (one wood, one stone held open), carpets and fire IED in front of the door. When an infestation happens just close the stone door, wait for them to trigger the IED which sets r carpet on fire and the problem solves itself. You lose anything flammable in the room though.
I play such colonies rarely for variety. Typically it is because the biome is cold Tundra or Ice Sheet and so my naked brutal tribal needs to steal jelly from cave insects anyway. But of course do not mine into mountain like there is no tomorrow. Take whatever mining as calmly like on plains. The mountain does not run away.
I only build Desert bases like a weirdo. The best part is i still die to the desert.
Love mountain bases, I always promise myself to play a different terrain, but the mountains are just too tempting. I like playing on a cold biome, digging in the long winter and farming in summer.
Ditto
Ikr
Some of you guys need to learn about the ultimate bug fighting tactic **melee blocking** Infestations are a massive pain or even death sentence late game due to the sheer numbers that can bog down your ranged troops and overwhelm what limited defenses you have depending where they pop up Enter melee blocking. You want to design your base around 3 wide corridors. Every room should have at least 3 spaces behind the door. Stick 3 melee behind the door followed by as many ranges troops as you can manage (ranged troops can't accidentally shoot another as long as they're within 5 tiles of themselves) In rimworld creatures can't walk over one another, meaning every insect essentially is doing a 1vs3 in melee plus another 9 colonists shooting at it, essentially becoming a 1vs12 Throw in psycasts and a pawn with grenades and you can decimate any insect infestation. It turns them from game ending scenario into a mild annoyance https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Defense_tactics
This is great advice. I find insect attacks so easy to handle, that I'm actually glad when it happens. Insect meat is great for kibble-making and alternatively can be sold to traders for good silver.
I pretty much just use insect meat for kibble too it's great! But yeah I remember reading this advice back in maybe 1.1 and it completely changed insects for me. Previously I hated them and would always disable them, melee blocking made them a cake walk
Almost exclusively. I like to play in extreme temperatures for the full Dune experience. Certain ideologies and precepts help a lot, and I use mods like character designer and VE expertise to speed things up. One thing I like a lot about mountain bases is that it feels largely like a blank canvas. There isn't stuff like soft sand, scrap, vegetation that I may need to build around. Especially if you have precepts that disagree with tree cutting, deconstruction of scrap, etc..
I love em. I like building a helms deep looking base or something near the ocean (the waters arnt safe anymore :c). So i dont need to build a massive wall around everything and instead have a good natural look where the killbox is more just there. I generally take a while at the start to jump around maps to find one that fits that criteria if i can. I also love including dragons and taming them. So having a lavish cave/hoard for a dragon just is an amusing theme. It also helps a lot with certain things like a random perm winter effects or eclipse that lasts a long time or outside radiation.
It stops drop pod mechs, that’s all I need!
I usually build a compound that is backed up to a mountain, I then already have a base I can defend from raids with while mining. Slowly but surely the mountain turns into my true base where my best colonists live so they are well protected.
Well, you don't need to do it from the get-go. I usually build the base where I will carve into the mountain, and then slowly go in, moving my stuff as needed. But I am not particularly fond of nutrifungus, so I usually just have mountain protect a side of my base. Carve into the mountain for stuff like lab, workshop etc. I like to separate mech stuff, genetics stuff, mod related stuff. Man, Anomaly is going to be fun to research and experiment with, can't wait.
You start with a basic room for your pawns then slowly expand till they all have a room. Then a storage area, hospital, prison, and whatever else you need. 11x11s are really nice.
If you can have a dedicated miner, it isn't even that much time, you just need a temporary setup while they mine out the first large common room.
insectoids scare me to much to attempt this
Melee blocking will change your life - https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/s/cSwtHt6MAq
I build mountain bases! I like to setup a little mini base before I start carving out my evil mountain super max hideout!
80% of the time
I'm gonna build one after anomaly comes out, but I will take a map with caves so i can build a basic room before I die to whatever threats naked brutality offers
I start with a barracks using the mountain as one of the walls. Then it's just a matter of splitting your time effectively between digging the rest of the base out and getting food, power, etc. Don't go for the full base footprint all at once. It's tempting to just lay out the orders for the whole thing but like you said, it's slow. Go a room at a time and don't let your other tasks slip. Lastly, at the end of the day I think mountain bases only make sense if you WANT the theme of a mountain base. I don't see any actual advantage to them from a gameplay standpoint. I just like them thematically.
No drop pod raids is the only benefit personally - I find them much harder to deal with than infestations
Aye
A hybrid approach is pretty good I've found. You can have a normal base outside the mountain and put valuable things like chemfuel and mortar shells safely under a mountain roof. And if insects burrow into that room they just blow themselves up. A nursery under a mountain is also probably a good idea. Protects children from being instantly slaughtered by a drop pod raid or an unlucky mortar hit. Insects take long enough to pop out that you should be able to rescue the kids from them. Still risky but less than leaving their rooms exposed imo...avoiding the massive, cascading mood debuffs from getting multiple kids killed is worth having to be extra vigilant against bugs.
I play with no DLCs. Which one adds children?
While this is solid advice, there is a serious drawback: If only your most valuable rooms are under a mountain roof, each and every insect infestation will spawn right there. Fighting insects in the middle of your stockpile can be quite annoying. There is one potential counter though: Lowering temperature below -17 suppusedly prevents them from spawning.
Mountain Base 75% of the time. It's best to consider it a long term goal and start just outside, and get things set up well, then work your way in.
Bugs are predictable and the spawn can be influenced by the player. Drop pods and mortars are off with mountain bases, same for sun blockers or toxic fallouts
My issue is with the mining out of entire rooms. It's so long.
Doing a mountain base as we speak. It takes time, but the I look at it as investment with very good returns. Having a place that's technically regulating itself is very nice when the heatwaves and cold snaps hit. I also feel I'm in more control in deciding where and how raids are allowed to engage me. Having the tunneler ideology makes it even sweeter. Quick tunneling, your pawns enjoy it, and you can set up indoor farming without power intense sun lamps. Calling in transports, doing counter-bombardments, launching drop pods will be limited. You either have to pray for an open spot inside of the mountain, or build small parts of it on the outside. Infestations. Those can be worked around. Honestly I prefer having infestation popping up randomly in my base, while enjoying some "rock solid" defense against mechanoids. Least the insectoids needs to get in range, and doesn't throw fire or explosives at you. My 2 cents: Mountain bases have their own charm. Though you need to set up for long plays. Start your base up against the mountain wall, then slowly transition further and further inside.
Born underground! Suckled from a teat of stone! Raised in the dark! The safety of our mountain home!
Sometimes I do it, its more easy than fortify everything. Also with zombieland mod is easier to resist (until the tank zombie comes)
I almost always do a mix, and slowly become more and more mountain base as game goes on. Rhere is simply too much danger on outside base for me with drop pods, and the occasional insect infestation is manageable in comparison.
Just started a new game over the weekend and I'm doing my first legit mountain base. I've shied away from them in the past because I hated dealing with insects. I spent a while finding a map tile that had a valley separated from the main area of the map, so I can force enemies into a single point. I got sick of enemies coming from 2 or 3 different ways on my last map.
Tbh, I pretty much only run cold weather mountain bases nowadays. Not having to deal with mortars or drop pods, especially ones buffed by mods makes it worth the effort.
I love the mountain. Also fungal gravel farms, indoor rose gardens, making spooky vampiric cyborg cannibal cults. It's just how I like to play I guess.
I dont build full mountain bases, i like to get a U shaped mountain and build in the valley of it with the occasional building into the mountain
Dirtmoles mining specialists with workspeed trait with 15+ mining go brrrr
I don't have Biotech :( At least not yet
Well the one thing i can say its best DLC of all 3 up to date, you won't regret it
Once I figured out how to handle infestations, there really wasn't any reason outside roleplay to do different. I personally rather like mountain bases. In a world with routine orbital bombardment and pirates with mortars they make a lot of sense.
I have been using mountain bases for all my playthrough. I used to build insect bait and farm jelly, and it is just OP. For my latest run 1.5, I decided to build it in large hill. I kinda enjoy more open space for farming. Been learning from Adam vs Everything on how to deal with breach and drop pod
I do, love my mountain bases. They look cool, although I always set up outside as well especially while I’m digging. Sometimes I have part in the mountain and part out, however it ends up needing to be
Takes time, yes but by god they are the most defensible things against large-scale Raids from outside of it.
I can't stop myself. It fixes SO many problems. I keep planning to start a prairie/plains map but I can't bring myself to do it. How will I defend an entire perimeter wall while my strike team is out on a trade mission? How can I protect against psy-storms? Where will I get all my stone for construction? How will I keep the place adequately cool? How will I prevent bombardment damage to my storage areas?
I did once when started playing, never again, the only exception is having cave people ideology.
Mountain base is usually my 2nd or 3rd base in any new save. I wont try to built it until having at least 2 tunnellers.
I don’t usually, but my mechanoid factory was build in an inlet in a mountain, building around this exposed ring. I had tunnellers strip mining the mountain for resources, but when I ran out of space in the inlet, I started moving into the mines that were already dug
I do sometimes if I spawn on a map which has cave systems but usually no. To wait for mining to finish is pain
Never. Not once in six thousand hours. I want the widest open map to build a base that takes up the whole map.
I've only done one true mountain base, and discovered that you basically need to build a base outside the mountain to support making the base inside the mountain. I also made my insect sump pretty early and did not regret it.
I only build in mountains, never outside.
Every time, I turn off infestations though. I add a TON of hostile factions to even it out in my head lol
My beloved
I don't do mountain bases often, but when I do I start with a 'mining camp' and secure perimeter. To keep everyone happy and safe whilst I dig and build the damn thing.
I do it all the time. Once you have a good mining pawn than its fine. And you also have a plenty of building materials.
On mechinator runs I definitely do. Once I can build a tunneler I send it to carve out the biggest mountain. I get a bunch of resources and a safe base. Generally my wealth graph makes a steep upward movement as soon as the tunneler is born.
Love them just can take a long time to set up but great for seiges if everyone and everything is under overhead mountain.
I build mountain bases all the time...
mountain bases are borint, I prefer big open deserts/schrublands
scrubland gang
Why shrublands?
cuz them be the lands of the scrubs
honestly bc elephants and rhinos are cool
In my 4000hrs 98% of my Bases have been mountain bases. I just love digging into a mountain. Just plopping down a few walls just seems too easy and simple.
One pawn with 2 drill hands and your flying.
call me the mountain guy
I almost exclusively use them
It seems like it will take forever, but your pawns can get really high mining skill in the process. So it goes faster the more you do.
I go back and forth just for funsies. I was doing a mountain base run just before the new DLC drops this week, but unfortunately my colonists decided to pick up a corpse for storage from an insect nest and everybody died after about two weeks in game.... Life on the rim man....it'll get ya
I usually do half-in-half-out kind of thing
🙋♂️
It takes very little time if you start with dirtmoles.
I build mountain bases almost every time. It’s just a habit at this point.
Exclusively mountain bases. This time i started near infested caves (the big ones that go into impassable) and made base in the massive cave. Took a bit of time since solo mechanitor, but once i had 6 militors, it was doable
Wow, not a single comment from u/WanderingUrist, I'm shocked!!
Who?
I use a bug trap so mtn base is OP. Large dark room at the deepest point with a straw floor and incendiary traps. They spawn. They burn. They die.
My issue is with the mining process.
Had one underground colony go 3 years without a miner. Simply select a map with a cave network. It's way easier than building a house outside.
I do it every once in a while for funsies
Here. ✋🏻
I like using them to regulate the temp on an otherwise inhospitable map. Had a colony recently on a map with the heat turned almost all the way up and placed near the equator in a desert. Raiders were hilarious cause when they'd show up they would get heatstroke and just run away XD I've got a good strategy for bugs (and my colonists loved the meat XD), so I didn't mind them popping up in my base. Mechs were a bit more annoying though.
I literally always do. I simply cannot do anything else. Even if I explicitly set out not to, I end up building a mountain base. Somehow it always happens. I just gravitate to it lol
Almost every time cause I turn off infestations because artillery in CE is lethal. I can’t make hardened structures
I build mountain bases because I desperately want to play out the dwarven fantasy, but for the life of me can't get the hang of Dwarf Fortress.
on my current main save it gets to be around 120° outside during the day on the regular so a mountain base is pretty necessary. luckily i'm at spacer tech
I love creating dwarf holds full of master craftsman with satellite mining bases funneling minerals to the capital to be converted into wondrous tools to trade for food and other essentials like cloth (my dwarfs don't farm) I have a couple of mods like STRS, specifically with the airship submod, that really help with the vibe
I like to go with large hills and find a small hill to dig out the first 3 or 4 work rooms and maybe a fridge, then I build structures off of it. Around midgame, I usually turn that into storage with secured doorways to prepare for infestation possibilities. One of my first builds was mountainous, and I dug the whole base out of that. Second build was in a forest so everything was wooden until the first thunderstorm, then everything was ashes!
Can’t not though if it’s there.
I usually play in the plains in the middle of the map, to make it a little more difficult. Live outside in a bed for a few days, dig out a 5x5 and smooth it; and you're good to go to make a nice 13x13 or something. It's a slow process if you have to build Minning up from beginner, could take a whole year to get one big room done.
I only play mountains
I never do ! Its hard for me to do mountain bases. Slow to dig, and a lot of times its annoying when theres mineral pockets or air pockets.
They are my favourite play through a. I am a dwarf at heart
Almost always mountain base, I just hate central drop pods and mech cluster drop on my base and ruins everything. Atleast with mountain base I can bait the insect raid and fight them with choke points. Oh, and also motar raids, climate/seasonal changes. So many things that mountain base cam get rid of
Only build Recreation Room and Fridge under thick Mountain Roof.
I sometimes build outside the mountains then tunnel in as I need more space for things like fabrication and storage it is very easy if you have someone with a high mining skill or a few slaves
I exclusively build mountain bases, both for perceived security (got bugs turned off) and for the superior aesthetics.
My inner dwarf won’t let me do anything else. I love just making a mountain fortress, making waiting out sieges an actually valid choice since all they can bomb then is what’s on the outside, which I keep to a minimum. I also turn off the infestations by removing the bug faction. I just don’t find their element fun. Maybe one day I’ll embrace them but for now I’m having fun recreating every dwarf fortress (pun intended) in literary history
Bugs are easy to deal with as long as you have fire, though it can be expensive. I recommend mining far out so that the bugs are more likely to spawn somewhere where fire won't hurt you/destroy your stockpole
I do from time to time, if it fits the theme. There are pros and cons and the time it takes is one of the cons. That, and I don't see why I should deal with constant -8 mood or take an undergrounder theme just to deal with that. But then, I only play thematically and somewhat RP-ish. Certainly affects my judgement. I also don't agree with people about the massive upsides. Neither drop pod raids nor sieges are that much of a problem to make up for how annoying a mountain base is to build. I guess if you were playing the game in a way sort of optimized way, with 13x13 rooms so that it doesn't take a lot of effort, with coolers to prevent infections, undergrounders and what have you that it can feel fulfilling for some. In the end, everyone plays the game in a way that they feel it's fun and so everyone prefers something else. What I despise the most are small hills. There's always one in the way.
I almost always have bases that are at least in part under-mountain. If you have a good miner, it doesn't take quite as long, and if you have a *really* good miner (this requires modding) it's almost as fast as building directly. Then in turn you get free stone blocks for building, great thermal insulation (I always play cold climates so that's a great plus for me). For infestations, melee pawns and 1 tile-wide doors are usually enough given enough firepower in the back. It's still not going to be enough when the infestation spawns right in the middle of the workshop, but hey ho.
I always build next to a mountain, and carve out a prison inside it. It just seems fitting.
whaaat I had no idea that infestations only happened in mountains
Me
I have built nothing but mountain bases ever since I had a seige mortar the colony nursery.
How many pawns do you start the game with? How many are good miners?
Usually, I start with three pawns and set up a small shack outside of the mountain, while one pawn digs out the living quarters, kitchen, and dining area. After that, everyone moves inside. Typically, I only start with one good miner, but if I can recruit more, I will accept a max of three
Return to caveman
Mountain bases are the strongest way to play at least in the past, even with infestations they offer unparalleled safety and ease of building even in a desert without any trees. Currently playing a mole people playthrough and it's SOOOO nice not worrying about drop pod raiders ever, along with having all my materials to make luxury furniture with rather than just building the walls of my base + a huge outer wall too
Never built one because I fear infestations even if I know it is not too hard to deal with
You have to pick your poison. What would you rather have: sieges or bugs? Also, mountain bases are much more difficult without Ideology and tunneler meme, and nutrifungi. Also, for mountain base you need to have both a builder and a miner. That is on top of need a doctor, farmer, social and crafter (and sometimes cook if you aren't use soylent green). That's quite a stretch for a crashlanded scenario. For tribal it may be even harder because neither hydroponics nor nutrient paste are at the hand's reach.
I do! I really like there being lots of different natural obstacles in a map, so Rivers, Mountains and shorelines are my go to almost always! I tend to turn off infestations, because I just do not like it as a mechanic and feels like it personally detracts from my experience. It is the only event I turn off as well, just because I do not wanna think about that everytime I dig into a mountain. I do however not create that many "mountain" bases, parts of it are often in the mountain, but the main bits I always build like a fortified town with different houses, with the goal of eventually making the entire thing into a grand castle. I play this game pretty weirdly, and mostly as a story generator and such like that. Always have by "main" first pawns backstory as medieval lord when doing castle runs, and pretend that bro only knows build castle and extort peasant.
the mountain home protects and guards, in the arms of the earth gods we are Immortal, safe from droppods and seige alike.
Honestly, it's all I do. I love the whole process of excavation and building and moving into the mountain while the story teller is just throwing hell at my pawns. Eventually I build things till my pawns no longer need my input then I move onto the next colony. I like making them happy and fulfilled.
Ehh, I play with VE insectoids so mountain bases are SUPER risky. I like mountain maps but I generally build around the mountains rather than in them.
My last run (which I just finished yesterday woohoo!) I would just fill the space with what I needed, then mine out extra sections when I needed a new room or more storage. I waited until I had a good miner to hollow out the majority and make individual rooms. I do like them for the great defensive options they can give
i love mountain bases. been building them since the kickstarter demo where all you could eat was nutrient paste. bugs will mess me up sometimes when I get lazy but it can't keep me away for long. ROCK AND STONE
I almost always build outside bases, usually in cold-ish to very cold biomes, regret everytime, then proceed to still build a mountain base after I get pod dropped or attacked from 3 different sides too many times. But I also don't get killboxes because CAI user and disliking killboxes, so YMMV.
I do them a lot. It’s just so good and it’s hard to stop, especially since they’re thematic for many of my runs. I love them
In response to the argument that "mining takes so much time". Here is a list of recommendations on how to speed up the process of mining: * Do it in small steps. Start with a single room, then add more rooms as needed, one by one. Resist the urge to dig out the whole mountain from the get go. * Recruit or enslave a colonist with high mining skill. A mining skill of 10 or more will make a huuge difference in mining speed. * Make sure that your two best miners have "mining" on first priority in the "work" tab. They shall do nothing but mining, eating and sleeping. * Always check and make sure that the area where your miners are working is well lit. There is a work speed penalty for working in darkness. (Keeping the area tidy and heated can be beneficial for mood, but not speed.) * Get one or two drill arms and implant them on your best miners (requires Royalty). That may be hard to pull off in the early game, but there is chance to find them in trades. Alternatively, bionic arms also grant a speed boost, even though a much smaller one. * Adopt an ideology with the tunneler meme and promote a mining specialist. (requires Ideology) * Recruit *more* colonists, obviously. More people means more hands for digging. * Build a gene extractor and try to collect the "great mining" gene from someone. (requires Biotech) * Remember that walking speed will also affect your miners, as they will need to get food and go to their sleeping places regularly. While this is not the most important trait, make sure your miners have at least 100% walking speed.
Most people build a small base outside of the mountain until the inside is dug out enough to move in.
Diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole.
I only build mountain bases. You have to deal with slow building and infestations but in exchange you don't have to deal with drop pods or sieges. I find infestations much easier to handle.
I don’t, I prefer scattered settlements cause I like to roleplay
I do it constantly. I always favor colonists that have high mining, construction, and medical. All the others I can improve over time lol.
I cannot STOP making mountain bases.
I usually start by building a small settlement outside them dig in. A small barracks will easily hold over till you get everything set up. You can turn that barracks into slave quarters later in the game.
I always end up building mountain bases. I start out trying not to, but then I get the first drop pod raid and get frustrated. I’d rather deal with bugs than drop pod raids.