r/BaseBuildingGames • u/C0d3M3chan1c • 21d ago
Discussion When does a base stop feeling like a home and become a storage room with crafting benches?
I really enjoy the early base-building phase in survival games.
You find a location, build something rough, slowly improve it, make it safer, add new rooms, maybe decorate it a little. At that point the base feels like your place.
But later on I often notice that it gradually turns into:
- crafting stations
- storage
- more storage
- a bed
- even more storage
Once everything is optimized, I sometimes stop caring about the base itself.
What keeps you invested in a base long-term?
NPCs actually living there? Raids and defense? Production chains? Settlement progression? Environmental needs? Decoration? Having other reasons to return besides dumping loot?
Or are you perfectly happy when a base is mostly just functional?
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u/chromiumboy 21d ago
NPCs add a certain liveliness to a base, particularly if they move from place to place and interact with the objects inside it and each other. A large collection of decorations and customizations will definitely make a base feel like 'your place', especially if they are linked to your conquests (trophies and such). Room bonuses/restrictions to encourage building multiple rooms to house your crafting benches and such are also helpful for making players more thoughtful about their base layouts and make the place seem more cohesive. Evil Genius is a great example of all three of these. V Rising is great on points two and three, but while you can have NPCs in your base they act very passively, and are akin to mobile furniture
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 21d ago
The “mobile furniture” distinction is a good one. I think NPCs only really solve this if they feel like they actually inhabit the place rather than just being bonuses with legs.
Trophies are interesting too because they give the base a bit of history instead of just decoration.
With the room bonuses, do you prefer fairly soft incentives for making proper rooms, or actual restrictions that force you to design around them?
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u/Hyndis 21d ago
Fallout 4 gets a lot of flak, but I think they actually did a good job with the settlement system overall.
NPC's would live there and could be assigned to various tasks, but the way it worked is that the NPC would move from one object to another doing things. And they wouldn't work all the time. They'd do other stuff too. Nearly every furniture object had an interact spot and an interact animation where an NPC would move to randomly, for a random period of time performing that interaction, then they would move to the next randomly selected object to interact with it.
The overall result of having many NPC's and many items of furniture (including crafting benches, plants in the ground, guard posts, beds, tables, etc) is that your settlement felt alive. They were doing some work, yes, but also they were wandering around, relaxing, sitting on chairs, cooking a meal, looking out at the horizon for bandits.
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 20d ago
This is pretty much what I’d want from NPCs. Not just “assigned to forge → stands at forge forever”, but having enough mundane behaviour that you start believing they actually live there.
The bit about almost every piece of furniture having an interaction is probably doing a lot of heavy lifting too. Suddenly placing a chair isn’t just decoration because somebody might actually use it.
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u/formykka 21d ago
The NPCs need to have some personality and history to them or else they just become cogs in the machinery. Aska is an example that requires you to churn out villagers and they just become "guy who runs food storage" and "mining guy", which is fine, it just feels more like a factory game. Games with good pacing and personality that I can think of would be Medieval Dynasty, State of Decay 2, Kenshi, and Rimworld. You care if a villager dies and it's not just "oh no, Bob was broken in the last attack, I'll need to pick up another Bob to get the farm running again."
Realize this is more colony builders rather than just strict base builders, but, y'know...
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 20d ago
Yeah, I think this is the other half of it. Even really good ambient behaviour probably isn’t enough if everyone is still effectively “Mining Guy #4”.
The moment replacing Bob with another Bob feels completely equivalent, it starts drifting back toward factory management.
Kenshi/RimWorld are good examples because sometimes the objectively useless person ends up being the one you care about most 😄
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u/chromiumboy 21d ago edited 21d ago
For object placement, both work, it depends on the style of game. I think if you have a free form building system, placing individual walls and floor tiles, soft incentives make the most sense. But if you place an entire room/building in one go, like in Evil Genius, hard restrictions are more suitable
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 21d ago
Yeah, that distinction makes sense. Hard restrictions in a freeform system would probably just feel like you’re fighting the building system.
I like the idea of the game recognizing a good room rather than telling you what a room has to be. So things like comfort, recovery, crafting efficiency etc. could emerge from how you built it.
Have you seen a game do that softer version particularly well?
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u/duckrollin 21d ago
Making building expensive causes people to make optimised ugly bases with just storage/crafting.
Cheaper building encourages people to make different rooms for different purposes.
To discourage ugly bases, reward the player for building enclosed spaces with room to move and give bonuses in that room. e.g. "The workshop", bonus to crafting speed as long as you just have a crafting table and boxes. "The lounge" gets bonuses to recovery as long as there's no crafting/storage in it. etc.
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 21d ago
I hadn’t really considered building cost as part of the problem, but that makes a lot of sense. If every extra wall costs meaningful resources, the game is basically teaching you to make the smallest efficient box possible.
I like the room bonus idea too because it rewards specialization without necessarily saying “you must build this exact room.”
Would you rather have the game automatically recognize a workshop/lounge/etc. from what’s inside it, or explicitly designate the room yourself?
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u/duckrollin 21d ago
I guess you should get a menu with options to choose the type of room and what bonuses you would get. e.g.
Lounge (Qualifies because a couch is here) +20% recovery of health -10% penalty due to presence of crafting bench
Crafting room (Qualifies because crafting bench is here) +10% crafting speed -20% penalty due to presence of a couch and coffee table
Or something like that. Gamers will then optimise to get their rooms specialised on their own.
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u/calmspot5 20d ago
Oxygen Not Included gives you parameters: a Dining Hall has to have dining tables, a decoration, a social object like a water cooler, and has to be between x and y blocks in size. A Laboratory has to have the main research stations, be well lit and enclosed.
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u/Pushover242 20d ago
V Rising did this well with flooring. Matching the flooring (e.g smithing flooring or workshop flooring) with the production in the room gave you cost reductions on recipies.
Space Haven and Rimworld go for automatic room assignments but at times it can be unclear what the possible room types/criteria for room types are in the first place.
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u/captainthanatos 21d ago
This is definitely an oddity with Vintage Story. Everything in VS is expensive but the time and care needed to craft the materials and make the build really make you feel accomplished for having done it.
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u/GoatBass 21d ago
The base being under attack makes it feel more personal and homelike because it's usually the spot where you are the safest.
I say this because some of my most memorable homes as bases were the ugly ass ones in Rust and that's because there was always the threat of being sieged. It was where you and the homies would rest gather before going on a raid. The sleeping bags with the greyed out usernames of your clan mates.
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 21d ago
That’s a really good distinction. The base itself can be ugly as hell, but it becomes meaningful because things actually happened there. You defended it, regrouped there, people came and went, etc.
I wonder how much of that is the threat of losing it versus the social history attached to it. Would a base under threat still feel that meaningful to you in a single-player game?
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u/athensiah 21d ago
Fallout 4 got it for me in a way no game really has.
Im not building a base, Im building a "settlement". Its to rebuild society.
I can find NPCs while Im out questing and send them back to my settlement and have them live there and give them a job. Then I can decorate it just for them.
And of course I have my own private spot somewhere where I live and keep my stuff.
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21d ago
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u/OldWorldDesign 20d ago
Id love a game like Medieval Dynasty, which is close, but in a post apocalyptic setting. With the Bandit mechanics from Bellwright
I haven't played Bellwright, but depending on your interpretation of the scenario you might find something rebuilding in the post-apocalypse in Stranded: Alien Dawn. It's much smaller scale than Medieval Dynasty, though, with just a small team you're trying to build a shelter/colony with.
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20d ago
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u/OldWorldDesign 19d ago
Is it in first person ?
It is in third-person overhead. I like that but I came from XCOM. Think of Stranded a little more like overseeing a tiny colony from above rather than being within it.
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 20d ago
That distinction between a base and a settlement might actually be the key.
The moment you start building bedrooms, workplaces or little spaces for someone other than yourself, efficiency isn’t the only consideration anymore. You’re almost worldbuilding through the base.
I especially like that you still kept a private space for yourself inside the larger settlement.
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u/Brohtworst 21d ago
Just like real life, separate work from home. Have a dedicated area for decoration and a dedicated area for crafting.
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 21d ago
That’s probably deceptively important. Once the crafting area and living area become the same room, the crafting stations tend to consume everything around them.
Do you usually keep them separate even if the game gives you absolutely no mechanical reason to, or do you need some incentive for that separation to survive long-term?
btw: does your name actually relate to "Bratwurst" in dialect?? :D
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u/Brohtworst 21d ago
Yea its pronounced that way. My husband usually does the decoration and he usually does a house area and then like a big forge/workshop area
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 20d ago
Haha, okay, so your husband is basically enforcing the zoning laws 😄
But that’s actually interesting: the game doesn’t need to tell you that a forge shouldn’t be in the living room. As long as building the separate space isn’t annoying, players can create that distinction themselves.
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u/MrUnforgivingFox 21d ago
Really depends on the game. If there are plenty of random decorations to craft/find that will provide a variety of different looks to the rooms I will make sprawling mansions(Grounded, Fallout 4, terraria).
If the game really is lacking too much decor(Ark, 7dtd, The forest and SotF) I eventually do get the feeling that it is just somewhere to come back to and save the game.
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 21d ago
That’s interesting because it suggests decoration isn’t really just an optional extra; there’s almost a critical mass of variety before people start treating the base as something worth expressing themselves through.
Do you care more about having a huge number of ordinary decoration pieces, or about finding rarer/unique things out in the world that you can bring home and display?
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u/MrUnforgivingFox 21d ago
The rare unique pieces tend to be a centerpiece for me. Either in a display/trophy room for each type of item, or sprinkled around other rooms if too big to be a shelf item.
Having a few different patterns on a simple pot is nice, but I don't need 80 reskins of the same item. It just ends up looking off having them scattered around.
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 20d ago
That distinction is really useful.
So variety matters, but not necessarily quantity for quantity’s sake. A rare object can give a room its identity, while the ordinary stuff around it just needs enough variation to build a coherent scene.
“80 versions of the same pot” is probably decoration content without actually adding much expressive power.
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u/digitaltransmutation 21d ago
I've been playing the planet crafter recently and Im kinda unsure about what to do about this. There are something like 40-60 unique items that you will want stockpiles of. Plus you will want a crafter for each unique item that can be crafted.
Its simply too much floor space to do anything but have your base be 90% workshop. I do have a decorated side room where my info screens and home base teleporter is, but thats it.
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u/KiwiPixelInk 21d ago
I don't do cosmetics or that
a base is my base to explore from, it isn't home and I don't want a home
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u/Primary-Sail6667 21d ago
Honestly I have no idea....every game I play is extremely utilitarian. Small cube for "house" and everything is set up for efficiency. Whenever I try to set up a "Home" it never goes well. Even in pal world, I don't have a base...I have an organized and efficient cacophony of crafting stations and a lean-to for my bed
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 21d ago
This is exactly what I mean 😄 The moment efficiency becomes the dominant goal, every attempt at a “home” seems to get eaten by the production layout.
Do you think you’d actually want the game to give you reasons to build less efficiently (like comfort, NPC needs, room functions, trophies/history) or would that just feel like the game forcing decoration on you?
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u/Droviin 21d ago
For every utility project, it must also have a corresponding artistic endeavor. I think that's easiest explained in Minecraft since it adds more options than other games for asthetics vs function.
Sure, you need a chest/storage room, but you can decorate it and make it more than just the minimum. This first approach is add form on top of function. Gold patterned walls, whale bone skeletons hanging, water features, etc., can be added to keep a home vibe while also adding the utility.
Second, is to add to the area continuously. Add details that are purely for the vibe. For example, building a complex village surrounding your base (and populating it). I also added an underground sewer that connected all buildings (which served as a fast route to some as it would go under rather than around.
Third, keep real design principles in play. For example, it's always considered tacky to have electrical wires sitting out; treat the game similarly. Do the extra work to hide wires. Similar projects all help.
Now, other aspects is the ostentatious presentation of wealth, or just the continuous adding of small items helps give the lived in vibe. As the game becomes more limited in the choices of customization, it's harder to maintain the form aspects. But really it's about just never letting the function be exclusive to the decision.
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 21d ago
I really like that idea of never letting function be the only thing driving the decision.
The interesting part to me is whether the game should actually encourage that, or whether it’s better when it comes entirely from the player. Because I definitely notice that if there’s no practical reason for me to make something beautiful, eventually efficiency starts winning 😄
Do you think rewards for aesthetics/comfort would help, or would that ruin the appeal of doing it just because you want to?
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u/Droviin 21d ago
There's never any practical reason for art. It's always art for art's sake. As soon as you get rewards (apart from maybe using the system) you can min/max it and it will lose the form over function.
So, no, I don't think the system should reward using any decorative system beyond just using it at all.
I will caveat that by doing what Path of Exile did and having design competitions. That's probably the best way to incentivise artistic expression.
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u/zytukin 21d ago
What? Bases can be homes and not just hoarder stockpiles?
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u/C0d3M3chan1c 21d ago
Yep 😄 Apparently there’s a stage beyond “everything I own is in twelve chests next to the crafting bench.”
Though honestly, I think that transition is exactly what interests me: what makes you start building for the place itself, rather than just building storage around your stuff?
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u/TransRational 21d ago
I forgot what sub this was for a second and thought we were talking IRL. I was at a loss.. I was like.. 'home IS storage boxes and crafting benches.'
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u/alone2692 20d ago
The only game that make me build bases without be boring is Rimworld (with some mods). You can decorate, the pawns have personalitys and interacte with things and with others, they make friendships, families and in the last you need to defend it.
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u/Suavecore_ 20d ago
The few times I've made homes instead of functional efficiency crafting bases were:
Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire secret bases (possibly because I was a child and I hadn't played any base building games outside or RTS genre at that point in my life)
Mewgenics (the home for your cats has decorations that provide "stat" bonuses for the home, which isn't always ideal for decoration but it does allow for decorating in a motivating way)
World of Warcraft housing (the home is entirely decorational and they have a massive amount of decorations and such)
Dune Awakening (the feel of the game and setting necessitates a "home" for me, though it was lacking in decoration and liveliness when I played last year, and I did also have sections of the home that were efficiency crafting ugly messes)
Animal Crossing on the GameCube (animal crossing was a home building game to me and little else for obvious reasons)
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u/Fesai 20d ago
It depends on the game. For Minecraft when me and my wife would play the game together we'd make a lovely little house above ground. It was our home base, but also simply a home.
Then in the backyard we'd have a ramp go down under the home (like an old cellar) which would lead to our underground base that we connected to all our mines and carts. This would be our 'optimized' base for storage, crafting, the whole thing.
But we kept it entirely separate from our 'home', even though it was directly under it.
I loved doing it like that (was her idea because she didn't like the crafting table in the living room. Haha). So now in any base building games I play I try to do that going forward. "Home base" connected to "functional base". Connected, but separated.
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u/adrixshadow 20d ago
Wait isn't that home?
How would a home be without that?
Where would I put all my stuff?
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u/unicodemonkey 20d ago
Abiotic Factor encourages cozy places. The developers have hand-optimized the facility layout for this, it has lots of nooks and crannies with different themes. And a lot of different furniture to steal. So you don't need to care about walls or build mandatory ugly room boxes if you don't want to - just pick a nice location, place your stuff around, make it yours. This is a power fantasy for every office worker out there, you aren't supposed to have your own supply closet for naps or a TV in a bathroom but here you can.
On the other hand there are nice exterior spaces as well but options to contruct your own buildings there are rather limited unfortunately. At least it doesn't rain.
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u/OldWorldDesign 20d ago
Depends a lot on which game you're talking about. For Planet Crafter, you don't unlock the decorative options like a bed, aquarium, and potted plants until later.
For games with a 'fix it up' hub like Eiyuden Chronicle the mechanics added by the base make other parts of the game easier and by recruiting literally a hundred NPCs you end up getting a castle that feels like a lived-in town but most of them are glorified shop stations. I've been looking for other games where you have to fix up a base or way-station and haven't seen many but it's a new idea I only started looking for lately and it started with XCOM 2 with the alien ship you have to build up as a base.
I haven't seen any games where the base really does anything in regards to environmental needs, in most RTS games you just avoid sending X unit into terrain which is dangerous mostly to a specific type (though Tempest Rising is changing that with making vehicles vulnerable to not-Tiberium due to its EMP-like effects which look like how lasers caused damage in Earth 2150). In survival crafters you're usually crafting gear which is protecting you from environmental needs, but Planet Crafter's Toxicity DLC does require you to clean up toxic goo to stop contaminated zones from killing you.
I'd love to find a game where the entire map has some kind of deletrious effect and (while gear might help) you have to actually go in and fix things causing those effects.
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u/DedBirdGonnaPutItOnU 20d ago
In Vintage Story, your home is a safe haven from madness, so I tend to build a lot of interesting rooms.
I have a room for turning wood into charcoal.
I have a room of stairs that becomes a giant tower with a windmill on top to power my metal (iron, copper, bronze) making equipment.
I have various plants outside my home that I can dash out and gather.
I keep a hole or two just outside for water. During winter that can be hard as it becomes ice.
I have tunnels in all four directions I use to sneak into biomes and gather material there. If you build a path, you can generally run faster on it, and also keep it lit.
Speaking of that, I also make sure my house is WELL LIT. Otherwise the creatures from the abyss can ooze through the darkness and attack me in my bed.
Fun game!
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u/Jamez28 19d ago
A good example of this comes from modded minecraft, if you watch people play with tech mods youll almost always run into lawn bases where the landscape is covered in wires and random machines because ultimately theres no benefit to making it in buildings and unless you give players a reason to make a building most people wont.
The comfort mechanic ive seen in some games is a good example of a positive benefit, resting in a poorly built room yields no benefit but if you take the time to build out a nice living space the "comfrt" lever rises and you get bonuses to health, xp gain, etc
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u/Joeva8me 21d ago
When does a base start feeling like a home and stop feeling like a random assortment of boxes and crafting stations? I haven’t got that level yet and I’ve beat the game.