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Hi.

I seek advice: what location / temperature would be the most safe place for a long-term (dozens in-game years) colony?

Before giving any advice, please consider my circumstances:

Going with vanilla + royalty; 2nd-highest difficulty; Randy for Story Teller (that bastard! :D ); tundra biome (with year-round temperatures _just_ below treshold for allowing warm-climate disease, and in the same time still featuring growing season long enough for trees, rice and potatoes). I'm doing lots of micro, and i'm ~2 in-game years in already. In this time, i've developed the following:

- almost all technologies up to and including advanced fabrication;

- starting location into ~dozen-pawn base, sitting in the open map, producing high-quality art, dusters, parkas, weapons;

- hunting outpost couple tiles out, sitting in the open map, with 3 pawns hunting wild-life for meat and furs;

- a potential main base, with its own ~dozen pawns, actively digging into nearby mountain.

The latter is planned to be under thick-mountain roof entirely, plus to have all of its living and storage areas refrigerated to ~60C or so - the hope is to prevent infestations into the base entirely, plus have enough insulation (tripple walls planned) and initial temperature difference to still remain below -17C during solar flares (thus granting 100% infestation resistance). "Slept in cold" mood debuff and work speed debuff will both be endured through. But, is there anything else detrimental to having this kind of a base?

And, couple more questions about it.

What kind of defenses should i plan / build for _other_ than a killbox? Sooner or later there will be raids during a solar flare, meaning turrets won't help at all. How to i defend against overwhelmindly strong raids, then? Let's say some 50 pawns with rocket launchers and snipers rolling in, this sort of attack. IEDs?

What to do with mortars if it's under-mountain base being the safest overall? They require no-roof to fire. What will happen if i carefully drop a single tile of roof, place a mortar right under it (so it can fire) - will that single "no roof" tile then be able drop pod raids through, or will they not target that particular tyle / location because of the mortar placed there?

Last but not least - what would be the safest way to get food for this "under-mountain, frozen" base? Hydroponics obviosly won't work (nothing grows at -60C). Relying on animals grazing outdoors is hardly an option due to long and cold winters. Trading (buying food) - is intermittent. Any better ideas?
You correctly note most of the disadvantages of an extremely cold base - but it also applies a hefty penalty to medical actions as well, tending and surgery. There are other ways to deal with infestations - first, you can somewhat control *where* they happen - they happen more often in dark areas - so first, keep important areas well-lit. Next, build an internal killbox facing a large, open and completely dark area - infestations will be far more likely to happen here then in the other well-lit areas.

An alternative idea, instead of the internal killbox, would be to fully enclose this dark area with 2-3 tile thick stone walls and doors (ideally granite), place some incendiary IED traps, and a few wooden stools - this will burn out the infestation as it happens with little effort on your part, though you won't get anything out of it (temperatures in this kind of trap room can easily hit 1000F - stuff autoignites). With this strategy, once the IEDs and stools (to provide longer-lasting fires to raise temperatures so the insects burn too) are placed, be sure to forbid the doors so pawns don't try to get in, especially when things are burning.

Note, if you turn on dev mode, thee's an overlay that shows how likely an infestation is to hit a tile. Be aware, the infestation event hits a single tile, and then spawns stuff around that tile - so a single dark tile in an otherwise completely lit area can have the event happen to it - causing hives to spawn in the lit area.

Another note, whethe you go for a cold base or not, the ideology plants specialist provides +30% harvest yield - very useful when you have limited farming time or space. - a cold base only has the summer's ~15 days to grow the year's everything, while a hydroponics room in a warm base needs a huge amount of power.


As to dealing with the new anti-killbox stuff from 1.3, there's really no good options without mods - breach axes aren't too bad, they're melee and still take a bit to break through walls, but termites are incredibly dangerous - their weapon breaks everything short of plasteel in a single hit (which takes two hits).
You need to have a combination of defences ready depending on what type of attack you have to deal with and if you want to protect your underground base, you need to have multiple options ready. Developing the Berserk ability or buying psychic lances are a great option for gumming up attacks. Carefully look at approaching enemies and look for anyone with deadly close combat weapons or explosives, and then shock or berserk those enemies to take them out of the fight. The psychic abilities of Vertigo Pulse or Blinding Pulse are great to use on groups entering your killbox and can quickly turn a dangerous attack into a disorganized mess. Keep EMP weapons handy for dealing with machines. Cover the floors of your base with floor tiles (even cheap ones) to minimize the chance of insects breaking through.
As for food, if you don't have enough power for heating and growing fungus or greenhouses you are stuck hunting and trading, and will probably have to limit your population.