Re-establishing a base, building some new labs - how do you do yours?

[Larmonade]

So I've finally found a spot to build my new base and finally move out of my winding, built-as-needed glorified hole in the ground. For my new base, I'm going to plan out as much as possible, and I've got a handle on like 90% of that.

Two of the last things I did in my current base were to use my vast piles of resources to finish up most of my thaumcraft (3) research, and delve into, for the first time, the delicious hands-ony-ness of tinker's construct. So now I got a heap of that if research done and I know the basics of how to tinker.

In my current, about-to-be-abandoned base, both of these "labs" were kinda just...wherever. The thaum stuff that I bothered to build was in two cramped little corners of my base, and my tinkers construct smeltery thing was just plopped in the courtyard-ish area. But in my next base, I wanna do it right. I want it to look nice, function even nicer, and hopefully include everything I'll need, or at least be easily expandable.

So how are your labs set up? Is your thaum lab the center of your base? How many crucibles do you have? Where the heck do you put your infernal furnace and do you even use that thing?

And TiCo! Is that the proper abbreviation for that? How many smelter things do you have, and how "deep" are they? Which of the many table-y things do you have, and how do you have them arranged? And isn't it fun to pour molten stuff into a mold of something?

I suppose pictures would be nice, but I'll settle for vivid description or thoughtful discussion of gameplay strategy what's your setup?

 

[rhn]

Thaumcraft I just stick in wherever there is room. Doesn't have to take up a lot of space if you can build jar storage over/under the main lab. Never bothered with the infernal furnace. By the time I have set up thaumcraft, I already have a fully functioning and crudely automated IC2 setup.


I'm not really a big fan of TiC tbh. Sure the tools it offers are a great improvement of normal tool, but I find that by the time I have the stuff needed for smeltery etc. I also have the stuff needed for the IC2 powered tools. And I still prefer those tbh. But I have made a basic smelter. The depth of the smelter was actually determined by the deer that I have imported from the Twilight Forest. They kept walking up and falling in

You can find a few pics in this album:
http://imgur.com/a/dSMKv
Newest pictures are furthest down.

 

[Omicron]

A good idea is just to make themed rooms or buildings. For example, my IC2 setups tend to go into sterile factory halls of glass and iron and marble/quarried stone... but my reactor went into a spherical cavern bored into a mountain. My Railcraft boiler rooms make an effort to be looking steampunkish. For a TiCo setup I'd probably use Bibliocraft shelves and racks to hand parts and tools all over the place, like a homeworker's garage. Thaumcraft stuff always looks neat with bookshelves for walls and the abundant usage of nitor for lighting. Also integrate vanilla potionmaking and enchanting tables.

The greatest difficulty is often coming up with a general concept; and the themes give you that. The details come by themselves when you get started.

 

[Ryan Mesure]

A good idea is just to make themed rooms or buildings. For example, my IC2 setups tend to go into sterile factory halls of glass and iron and marble/quarried stone... but my reactor went into a spherical cavern bored into a mountain. My Railcraft boiler rooms make an effort to be looking steampunkish. For a TiCo setup I'd probably use Bibliocraft shelves and racks to hand parts and tools all over the place, like a homeworker's garage. Thaumcraft stuff always looks neat with bookshelves for walls and the abundant usage of nitor for lighting. Also integrate vanilla potionmaking and enchanting tables.

The greatest difficulty is often coming up with a general concept; and the themes give you that. The details come by themselves when you get started.

Sounds like a great idea any pics?

 

[MigukNamja]

I'm with Omicron on this. I've played through 1.4.7, 1.5.2, and 1.6.2/4 a combined total of maybe 5 or 6 times. Each time, I've tried to hone my concept of a proper "build". My first build was a Hovel of Shame that chaotically developed from there. I've also done "1 or 2 huge building" builds and I've done "keep building down / into a mountain" underground builds.

Through that process, I've found what works best for me, i.e. my opinion and not fact or gospel by any means, is keeping my main functions (by time spent) mostly above ground and splitting by base up into logical functions, each in their own building.

Currently, I have:

• Wizard's tower for magic stuff
• Tech building for tech stuff
• Mining/smeltery (TiCo) for mining stuff
• Storage building for barrel and AE storage stuff
• Tank room for liquid storage
• Power room for power production

Each building is built out of materials suitable for its purpose and lit by lighting that suits the theme. While most mods go into their own building and most buildings have just a few mods, that's not strictly true. I'll have bit and pieces of AE here and there (though mostly hidden) and bits and pieces of TE3 here and there, but sometimes hidden.

Also planned is a bee house for Bees and ExtraBees stuff and a wood-themed house to focus on tree breeding and ethanol production.

I try to keep the best-looking stuff above ground and put the least-attractive or else really space-consuming stuff below ground. Pipes and wires, IMHO, are not that attractive. Yes, I like looking at them and admiring the engineering challenge, but I keep that in huge underground caverns.

Above ground are crops, trees, Thaumcraft, nice-looking buildings, etc.,. In real life, I would not want to live in a house in the middle of an industrial zone. Likewise, in my MC base, I want to live in place with some water, grass, trees, (friendly) bees buzzing around, flowers, crops, and friendly golems running around, all surrounded by mountains, forests, and ocean (beach).

I also find movement is important and having a logical flow is important. My magic is nowhere near my tech and my bees are in between magic and tech, as is my inventory building, which is a combination of AE (high-tech) and barrels (relatively low-tech). My mining is built half-way into a mountain in an Extreme Hills biome while my farms are on the edge of a Forest biome. Likewise, my bees are half-way between a Forest and Ocean biome so I can have two biomes for breeding and production.

For me, where I build my base is critical and keeping it looking nice is a top priority.

 

[Neirin]

My current base is a giant ring. In the center is a cylindrical building that houses my mob farms. Around the edge are a ton of factorization mirrors + solar boiler setups (I decided to try doing the MJ equivalent of solar panels for power this time around). In between I have themed buildings for everything else. I've got a honeycomb shaped building for my bees, an evil altar to do my Thaumcraft, that sort of thing. I'm thinking of building a sheep around my sheep farm.

 

[Jess887cp]

I don't usually have labs or anything, as I usually build sets of tiny houses clumped together, each containing one part of a whole. After all, steampunky villages are cool. No lie.


If I did have proper sciency labs though, I would probably compartmentalize EVERYTHING. I would build long halls and large, white, extremely sterile rooms like something out of Portal.

I'd probably then assign hallways to mods. A hallway for magic/TC/TiC, with everything neatly set up, in a string of technomagic rooms. Another hallway for processors and building machines. A hallway for animals and farms. And finally, a hallway for various tests, like TNT cannons and vanilla redstone, or incomplete machines to be moved into another hallway on completion.

 

[wildc4rd]

My bases are normally a bit chaotic, but as one thing has ceased to lead to another in my 1.5 world, I was just messing about with some designs I want to implement in 1.6 when it arrives. This being my favorite so far, with space for everything and expansion being as easy as just carrying on the pattern.

 

[mfgamesys]

I have built a few bases over the past year from starting in the middle of a lake to bedrock. Currently the base I am working on is a single floor carve out of in a mountain which keeps the original terrain around it but everything unseen has pipes and wires going through it .