Anyone had success with underground bases?

I have had the same issue as @TWISM prior to 1.32 update. Had been using cuboid rooms to make a huge underground room and after some time, the ground just reset and all rooms were filled back in with ground again. I then decided to not build underground at all to not risk running into issues.

I did however use cuboid rooms (square and curved) to get a curved wall in place as rotation and orientation made it impossible to get it right, as you can see in the image below. Did this in 4 spots total at my base.


Considering my experience with the surface resetting, I expected this to at some point get filled back in automatically again. This did not happen however, not prior to 1.32, not when 1.32 arrived and still not with the latest update 1.33. This has left me to wonder as to why these holes would not reset. Only difference I can think of is the fact that I had these cuboid blocks removed again, where with my attempt for a room underground, all the cuboid rooms were still there when they got filled back in (reset).

So did leaving the cuboid rooms make a difference prior to 1.32/1.33? Has this been fixed regardless with both these updates we had? Or have I just been unlucky for some reason? I have by now seen others building in/underground without issues, so I assume it has been fixed. I will however wait until I come to a point where I plan on building a new base, before I will consider building underground again.

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Update: Warning!

Currently doing some testing in creative mode, where I built a room underground to the limit, with some cuboid rooms removed to leave a hole. Flew away from the base till about a 1 minute distance at high speed. Upon return to the base, lo and behold … the cuboid rooms all had the terrain reset, while the hole where I removed the cuboids after placing did not reset.

Hole created by placing, then removing cuboid room - No Reset

Cuboid Rooms placed underground - Reset

Same Cuboid Rooms (some terrain removed with Terrain Manipulator from outside)

Will do some further testing with a variety of different structure parts/rooms as well as limit or no limit reached and update my findings. For now be aware that this may happen, it does for me at least on PC.

Edit #1:
Additional Info:
Initially I tested with only a few blocks underground, to then fly away and wait for 10 mins, 30 mins, 1hr, 1.5hrs to no avail. Reloading a save or restarting the game had no results either, the terrain just never reset with only a few Cuboid Rooms underground.

I decided to stay at the base with only reloads, while staying at the build limit with a huge amount of Cuboid Rooms above ground, I started to slowly increase the amount of Cuboid Rooms underground, taking them away from above ground, until a reset happened. Apparently the amount of blocks used underground causes the terrain to partially reset. I had always thought the terrain would fully reset, but this is actually not the case. At some point I ended up having 69 Cuboid Rooms underground, when I noticed a reset to have happened. Using my Terrain Manipulator, I did some investigating and found a big part of the underground room, not having terrain inside.

I then decided to not stay at the build limit, no longer using Cuboid Rooms above ground, apart from the entrance. I then started increasing the amount of underground Cuboid Rooms, until I once again noticed the terrain to only partially reset. This happens at over 60 Cuboid Rooms used underground. This also means that being at the build limit is no requirement. A reload/restart or moving far enough away from the area to unload the region is however required for this to be triggered. The result of this last test can be seen in the video below:

I still plan on some further testing with other building parts and will keep you informed on those results.

Edit #2:
Additional info:
The same appears to happen when using other building parts. Only the Bio Dome seems to remain unaffected. As soon as you reach a high amount of building parts used underground, the partial terrain reset will happen after a reload/restart or unloading/reloading the area.

Terrain which is then removed using the Terrain Manipulator will remain removed it seems. It can just be very hard to do so especially if this is required to be done from the inside where the tool does not work. Sometimes however, you can find a sweet spot inside where the tool does work (atmosphere affects player). Terrain likely starts to partially reset at the location where you started building underground.

This concludes my testing for now. All should be fine up to 60 building parts used underground. More may be possible, but becomes risky and may require the Terrain Manipulator to fix up unwanted terrain inside your underground base. So once at the tricky stage, reload often, to check. Happy building :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I wonder how underground tunnels between above ground structures would be affected?

Based on what I have tried to test so far, just tunnels, if created by placing and then removing building parts, should be fine and not reset. Any reset that happened during my testing was apparently caused by the amount of actual placed parts underground. there appears to be a limit where this resetting of terrain starts to happen.

I am not sure about tunnels being created by using the Terrain Manipulator. This would probably deserve some extensive testing on its own. I did however notice that trying to fill in holes where I had previously placed parts underground or affecting the terrain, not always fully remain filled. Parts of the holes continue to re-appear on a reload for some reason.

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I’ve made a nice “winery” with underground tunnel access to a cube-room, which space got mainly hollowed by erasing a cylinder-room and some multi-tooling around the edges, on the first day. Green ambient lights on the tunnels and all…
So far it has remained, unchanged, as far as I can tell.
Since then, I’m moving into more extreme landscaping, by creating a “mountain” over my base, including “small-brush” texturing to make it look almost fully natural (or rather proceduraly-noisy-looking) If that tunnel I first created disappears, I will know I’ve hit the limit…

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Sounds pretty cool. Keeping fingers crossed for it to work out. Would love to see some images once you are done with your project.

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It’s begun to bug out… I think I might have reached the limit, but will try pushing it a bit more.
So, this would be my base as it would appear to any player…


And this is how I actually see it myself, using a combination of SpaceDream, BigThings, Shaiak’sGenration and DiverseEnvironments

My “winery”… true underground part.

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Wow it looks beautiful with your mods!

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I finished it… It is definitely bugging out now. Maybe I went over the limit, maybe has to do with proximity of certain base elements… not sure. But some parts kind of disappeared, and certain details are only seen on the distance, but smooth out, when up-close. I went off the limit on some areas unknowingly, and some of that modification stayed, some went. In retrospect, I learnt very little, but had some good fun!

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I like what you did there, certainly makes it look more natural. Looking forward to giving terrain editing a try myself once I moved to a new base. I will most likely try with a creative save first though. Below is a video I watched that shows how to easily build underground, but shows some strange effects as well. For example the surface changing when a part is build below. At the end he mentions that big terrain edits start to disappear. Not sure if later patches fixed this though. Did you have a similar experience?

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Yes, I don’t know in what state people would encounter it if ever… When I shared it, it was looking very much as those screencaptures, but last time I loaded my save today, the “smoothing” of features was even worst. Lot’s of holes everywhere… Some parts are really holding up, but I think the “end of the tape” effect (of running out of terrain modifications stored, and the first edits being reset) really got to me.
Next nice planet I encounter I’m going for a figurative sculpt… Was thinking skull-island pirate groove kind of deal.
I play on normal, but highly cheated. Not totally free building, like creative, but very much immortal running on transdimensional infinite energy sources.

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Thanks for all of your experimentation - answered a lot of questions for why my UG base kept filling in. Next question: do you find that deleting the parts over the 60 part limit will stop the terrain regen?

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With updates that followed since I did my research on this, I often found regen to happen even sooner now (1.38). My own base I built after my initial research, has a small room underground for storage using about 30 cuboids and will start to regen as well. This may not happen directly with just a single reload/restart, making it appear to be fine. It will however eventually start to regen as well. I would say it is totally unreliable to build anything underground in the current version 1.38.

Edit: On a side note: Keep in mind that for players visiting your base, terrain edits do not show. Not sure how this affects base building underground, but something to keep in mind as well.

In my experience, any changes made with the terrain manipulator tool are permanent. “Snapping” structures together to remove terrain will eventually fill back in.

Although this was back in early 1.3

I found all terain manipulation deteriorates.
I had an elaborate sculpture on a Heridium node that slowly vanished until even the modified Heridium filled back in.
Have found excavating freighter boxes fills in sometimes if you go to get more resources halfway through the process.
No experience with structures but not surprised if it is the same. I no longer have a TM installed on my multitool.

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I have a pretty big underground base and had no issues with it. Except for the bug that counts being underground inside the base radius as being outside, which makes the whole point of an underground base a bit moot. It’s still a nice garage for all my vehicles with a large access tunnel, I have all my containers down there and I can grow native plants.
The way I built it was by “digging down” with cylindrical rooms, then “digging out” a large cavern with square rooms (not cuboids) connected with corridors. After removing the rooms and corridors again I removed the “walls” (where the corridors connected the rooms) with some more square rooms, and I had ample space to fit my exocraft in there.
Never had any problems with resets, not even in the vehicle access tunnel which goes outside the base radius.
The only part where I needed the terrain manipulator was for the tunnel. Everything else I did by placing rooms.

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That sounds ptetty cool!
Any chance of some pictures?

3 posts were split to a new topic: Underground / Cave Bases

Discussion is continued in a new topic, which you can find below:

yea i had success with underground bases, mine one was too big and there was no issue with it,i built it with cylindrical rooms.

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