The Boor Pass
[Location]
Between the Hub and the Dust King's tower, built on the side of the borderland's river valley. I've always been interested in the spot because of the bridge placed there and thought it would be a neat place to make a small base. Being close to the hub and the rebel base provides two NPC venders within a reasonable run distance, not much for ware selection unless you join the thieves guild.
[Resources]
Pretty newbie friendly borderlands region, its an arid biome with a
tiny bit of green that helps grow wheat and hemp.
Iron, while there is a chunk close to falling from the cliff, is a short run east across the bridge near the river bed. It is a 100% iron deposit with no underground penalty AND it is within range of the base so the AI will auto-haul from the mine to the base.
Copper is to the west, there is a sharp bend with a 60% copper deposit, also within base range auto-hauling.
Water is not terrible, there is actually LESS water in the river valley, this spot has some of the highest water available in this narrow 60 belt. I guess if you have the fishing mod the river could be a food source. It would be a long walk to get up to the base from the river though.
Stone is pretty... meh here. The highest stone concentration in this little spot is around 65% I think, there are some 100% stone spots, but you can't build ON the cliff side. =[
Wind is fairly consistent, wind generators will often produce between 40-50 power. However, there are some significant down times where there is no wind for 1-3 days.
[Building Room]
Certainly there is much to ask for if you want more space to build in; however, if you pack things together you will get what you need. The wide building types are not easy to place so I will be saving up building materials for taller buildings. Wind generators can also fit pretty high up on the cliff side btw.
[Defense]
While the narrow road and bridge seems pretty near to defend... good luck building a gate in here. Or walls. I mean, you CAN build walls on the cliff, no one is going to attack from there. Maybe you want to spit harpoons down on the bandits as the patrol the river bed? Won't help much when they zig-zag their way up the cliff. If you pull the buildings in more an internal wall could be set-up. I did not set this up expecting to make a fort though. More of a semi-functioning base.
[Threats]
At least its just bandits.
Dust bandits may have bugged out, they only sent one demand, which promptly turned and ran off. We've been cool for around 20 days now, my weapon and armour smiths now make money on their products. I will be expanding my fighting force to 10 and begin my campaign of war against the dust bandits.
[Population]
Currently 10 strong... well, only 5 are trained as fighters, the other 5 are the workers.
2 are farmers / cooks
1 is the hauler / misc worker
1 weapon smith
1 armour smith
[Production]
Between the 5 workers I've overlapped a few of the jobs. Both chefs are assigned to both cooking stoves as an example, it means if one is free they can cook. They are assigned to the main cooking stove that makes dustwiches. Bread is my limiting factor on that so the second stove can queue up chewsticks if I want more rations available. This is done at the secondary stove which the cooks will go to if the primary stove is either used or has no bread.
There are 4 farm plots, 1 cactus, 1 wheat, and 2 hemp. I need lots of hemp to feed my crafters. The surplus goes into fuel (Hex is operating it in the picture). Soon I'll build my 3rd building for expanding my crafting to include medkits, armour plates, and heavy armour.
I do not have any dedicated workers on producing iron plates or building materials. I either buy them or I assigned some of my fighting squad to stock up on ore and plates while the others mines and sold copper for cats.
Currently my weapon smith can critical Catun No. 1 weapons and my armour smith makes [standard grade] consistently. This means I do not need to mine copper to make up the loss of value from the crafter's poor skill. (I just gotta make lots of Wakazashis for a low material cost to their good sell value). Cloth armour does not sell well anyway, I need to find animal skin / leather to make the good stuff.
I likely will not expand their ranks by very much. Maybe an extra farmer so I can add extra farms to gear up dustwich production. Currently I get a SMALL surplus of dustwiches. while feeding this 10 pop group and if I want to go to war with the Dustbandits I will need an extra 5 mouths to feed at minimum. Adding a 6th to help the farm and run the iron refinery would free up the workers.
[Pros]
- Decent newbie start
- Is not ACTUALLY on a main road, it overlooks most of the traffic. Could be a con if you like to fight. But hey, lots of dust bandits in spitting range.
- Visually it is in a neat tuck away, I wanted it to be an open and un-walled base, small in scale.
- Resources are not bad, I could become sustainable with and extra 2-3 workers to run the stone and iron production.
[Cons]
- Not a LOT of room if I wanted a main base location.
- I did not set it up to be very defensible, I will need to focus on open battles.
- Needed a lot of cats to subsidize its development.
- While the bridge does LOOK nice... it is the devil. When people auto-haul iron ore from the iron to the east, they ALWAYS get stuck on the bridge. They can move across it; however, it is most likely a problem with path finding TO the iron refinery that breaks. I can fix their path-finding by giving a move order across the bridge, they pick up on the correct path to haul the iron ore. It is IMPOSSIBLE to make this base's iron production self sustainable without ore drills in my current set-up, if I move buildings around I can likely fix the issue.
However, I also noticed that the worker assigned to the iron refinery will mess up their work. Behind the building with Pin on the roof is where the iron refinery is hidden. To the left above Hex is the Iron Plates storage and Building Material Storage. The refinery worker will fill up on plates, take them to the storage, then stop and not move. I have to move them somewhere else to fix them, and I usually empty the rest of the iron plates by hand to give myself more time before I have to repeat this again... xD
Anyway, this is more of an issue with the iron plate refinery and can't wait until I get it fully automated (after many ancient science books of course) as the problem is less about hauling plates out and more about operating the refinery. The bridge does not help, it adds an extra step that breaks down the production line more.
Setting it up for the new update, unless it breaks and is not compatible, in that case it is good practice.
