Lo-Fi Games

so I just build my first base, or actually the second, as I will elaborate later. It was rough, my squad was not prepared a large group of lvl20 Ninjas. They tore through my (lvl2?) gate/walls within 20 seconds at best and my 4 (lvl2) turrets didn't do much damage. They wiped me pretty badly and I resorted to cheating by reloading the save and watching their antics stealthed in the corner of my outpost. Now my question is, is this normal? They all ran frantically from one building to another for HOURS seemingly not actually doing anything. What do they actually do, take food only (Ninjas too?)? Is it viable to just put the items on the ground hidden behind the base? Now they took so long with whatever they were doing that I ran away and hired Mercs to guard my outpost. Unfortunately these went to my other "outpost" which is just two little farms and a silo at the other end of the map that was of course not under siege... so what I did then is stealthily knock out one, carry them to my squad to beat them up and rinse and repeat. Only by the time I was finished about 30 bandits were already hanging out with the left over Ninjas inside my main building. Real cluster fuck. So, this is where I am now. What I'm gonna do is hire someone sitting in a bar to just chill there and in case of emergency send mercs to my correct outpost (I removed the first one with the shift+f12 thing. I guess, I hope that will do). I thought I was ready, because my squad (fighters+farmers) was able to take out a huge hungry bandid group before, without turrets. I'm in Skinner's Roam btw, would it be preferable to take out Ninja leaders? I do apparently have HN patrols (or, the prayer group) already anyway and as long as I never show them my aliens or my hash I should be fine, I guess?

yep its normal.
a base is not really meant until you are midway through the game.
best thing to do is buy houses in cities and operate from there until you are strong enough to fend off the most basic raids of that area.
most of the big cites should give you enough resources per refresh tick to help you build up inside slowly.

best part of this. no base raids against you. also no rent requests from the faction in the area as well.
the only downside is you cant build anything that can only be built outside. only what can fit on a roof limitations.

yeah I did that, researched most stuff on level 3 and built up a 100k+ cat reserve.
I've got 5 fighters of varying skill levels (up to ~40), 5+ farmers/builders, and a bull that thankfully can run alone unsupervised from Skinner's Roam all the way to Heng where my house is so the hash express will painless.
I realized I ticked the checkmark "more frequest town raids" back when it suited me (was sitting in prison) but that was probably not helping me now. Also I now decreased frequency and size a little bit.

Apart from fighting what are the consequences of raids? Most annoying thing is that they break walls including turrets, I might just open the gate and let them check out my houses. What are they stealing? And will I be raided by the holy nation when they spot a woman in my base?

some don't leave. so you would most likely have to fight any way.
as for teh HN. depends on your responses.