Base Design

[Mero]

I generally start with a small cave or a dug out room. I then continue to dig out the area to give me more starting area. Then I use a turtle to dig out an entire chunk somewhere in the general area, usually a chunk directly next to my starting room. After that is done I start adding floors for various productions. Liquid storage gets a new chunk dug out, for the BC tank stacks, next to the production floors.

If I happen to build a building up top it is a 18x18, which eventually gets dug out below it doing the whole floor thing with different stuff on each floor.

 

[Niels Henriksen]

I have always build square but right now I have started to build domes. My domes will be 27 block in diameter. That gives space for one mulitifarm or 16 alveray or 8 36HP boiler etc per dome. But instead of building it by my self I will make a turtle script to make it. So if I will have a server-reset then its easy to download the script from pastebin and within a few minutes to build the first dome.

 

[Yusunoha]

I've tried building my bases above ground from time to time, but I want my base to look really neat, so no visible cables, pipes or anything like that. and I haven't really been able to do that above ground, so I usually end up building my base underground. the entrance is always inside a wall or hill, with a staircase going down 8 levels, from there I build a 11x11 room where I have my basic machines and storage, and from there my bases always end up differently. one time I'll build an underground farm, the other time I build a whole storage room, or I end up building machine rooms.

 

[lazaruz76]

I have done a lot of different styles. I built towers, domes, underwater, and 9x9's. Currently I'm trying to build 'with' the land. Got a nice cliff face overlooking a cove where I built log cabin with some simple machines, ae system, and bed. Wooden walkways suspended in air with stairways to get from place to place. Power gen is in the side of a mountain while automated ore processing is in a bunker underground near the beach. Still working on this one, but ain't we all. The real point is, find what works of YOU. Find what makes you happy. There is no 'right' way to build.

 

[Bibble]

Personally, I get lazy at first, appropriating any useful structure (Redwoods, villages, temples, barrows, AM towers, etc.). Once I've established a little, I'll attempt to build my own house, typically square box, about 3-4 blocks high, skylights, and the basement with power and processing. Then I get bored halfway though, scrap the world and start afresh.

 

[Staxed]

I normally work on the outside look of my house, and then separate it into rooms on the inside. If I end up running out of room I'll build additional buildings. Though most of my "mechanical" stuffs gets dug down into the basement level. I like the asthetics on the outside to be nice, then I worry about where to fit everything.

 

[Yusunoha]

when I try to build efficiently, I can never build nice looking things. when I try to build nice looking things, I can never figure out how to add the machines and such and still have it look good

 

[DREVL]

Wrong. 20x40x12.

you fail.

 

[ThePixie35]

In FTB, how much does functionality have to play in your bases? Is form more important to you guys?

 

[fergcraft]

well in my base it usually has some dangerous places like when I was working in my cave of shame I had my hub entrance in a hut inside my mining cave with a short walk to my cave. people got lost a lot.

 

[Enigmius1]

In FTB, how much does functionality have to play in your bases? Is form more important to you guys?

I ultimately build for form, but I keep function in mind as I do so. All I really need to know about function is that I'll want a lot of space available. As long as I've got that space, I can add on all manner of cosmetic details whether they're functional or not.

 

[Bigpak]

My very first time I played modded minecraft I just built a giant prison yard that was like 100x100 and that looked like crap but boy did it have enough space, it went up really high too, from like 7 to 160? something around there, either way it was awesome but it looked like crap. Go for what YOU want and what feels right.

 

[draeath]

My bases tend to be very compact multilevel affairs. If you go here, I've got a bunch of screenshots. The screenshots with a date/time code between "2013-10-04 15-25-59-72" and "2013-10-04 15-28-59-81" (everything, at the moment) are screenshots from different angles around my base. It should be enough to give you an idea. Obviously I try to hide cables/pipes etc when possible.

I'm using Soartex Fanver, so if you don't recognize the machines... most of what you see is going to be IC2 and Forestry. In particular though, the orange area with the skull sign is my reactor stuff. It's automatic - when power storage drops below 5% capacity it will run the reactor until the capacity is 95% full (or more). This way it's not constantly flapping on and off, and it gives my LV solar array a chance to actually do something (it's enough to run my ME storage system almost constantly - it would probably take a week real-time for it to drain enough to trigger the reactor). As well there's a thermal cutoff and a manual shutoff lever (the memory card in the display case is a save-state for the Rednet controller, should i have to move things etc I can just upload the program instead of fiddling with it all over again)

EDIT: more on the reactor. That's an Advanced Power Monitor with the green bar. It's linked to the MFE that's below it (with the lever on it's front). The PRC (far bottom left) compares the signal from the power monitor (recall this is monitoring the MFE), the thermal monitor ("500" thing left of the reactor), and the cutoff lever (top left). Only when it has a signal from the power monitor, but NO signal from the thermal monitor or lever, will the PRC output to turn the reactor on. The lever orientation makes sense to me, but it's easy enough to flip the required signal around. Whatever floats your boat. The reactor itself is a simple and safe design. I also have a normal generator (to the bottom-right of the whole affair, under the coal coke barrel) able to power the basic machines or charge a RE-Bat(pack) (and that's it, intentionally) - the batpack charging is meant to let me get into my ME storage if the power situation is critical. I keep a charged battery in a case above the ME system, for that.

 

[Hambeau]

In FTB, how much does functionality have to play in your bases? Is form more important to you guys?

Well, at some point I want to get a bit "artistic"... I want to paint my Natura Redwoods white with black striping, like a Saturn V rocket

 

[wolfsilver00]

I usually start pretty cheap until i get a quarry, then i scrap a full chunk and build on it, only that chunk. Making layers, and placing a chunk loader that loads ONLY that chunk, its pretty efficient. Because of the lack of blocks, the full lack of mobs and also, no 3x3 chunk loading, it just goes smooth without ram impact. For the building i make at the center of the chunk a 2x2 column with 1 liquiduct with water, 1 ME interface cable, a MJ transport cable (usually TE ones, as they have a loss of only 5% no matter the distance) and EU transport (at the start, i use fiber, but after some time i usually upgrade it to high voltage)... Then i build around it, making layers and looking for efficiency, and when i need to hook up something, i do it to the main line which comes from the bedrock where i store my liquids and put my energy production) and when i need something else than water i use ender tanks..

 

[Wekmor]

My current base is a room 35 x 23 x 5 tall. On top of that room there's a room that's a bit smaller.
In the lower room i have my 7 smelteries to auto-process all my ores. The upper room has some ic2, bc lasers and te machines, and hidden behind the walls my power production.

 

[ThePixie35]

Everyone seems to have their method of starting up, but do people construct more than one base? Do people stay in one location and make it look pretty or do you move on after your base resources get to a high level?

 

[Wekmor]

Everyone seems to have their method of starting up, but do people construct more than one base? Do people stay in one location and make it look pretty or do you move on after your base resources get to a high level?

For me: No.
I always start out digging in a mountain, building a small squary box, or something similar. I then get everything I need (armour, weapons, tools, quarry, basic power, etc.) and travel until I find a nice place to call my new home. The old base usualy gets farmed into a gigantic manual 'food' farm.

 

[Yusunoha]

Everyone seems to have their method of starting up, but do people construct more than one base? Do people stay in one location and make it look pretty or do you move on after your base resources get to a high level?

I hardly reach this point, as I often delete the world by then, but the few times I did reach this point, my base usually started getting too small for all my machines and farms, so I ended up making a new mystcraft age, or moving to a big open plains biome and started a new base there

 

[persona ingrata]

Man cave, every time. Once I can get that pretty I'll probably venture into building actual houses on the surface but after two years of playing Minecraft my buildings still look like crap so I'm not holding my breath.