Woo... took a bit of digging to find this thread again. While most of you were no doubt surviving, I opted to continue building as I still hadn't made a succesful HCB base yet. I settled in a swamp and got to work and I figured I'd just show some (preliminary) results.
When building stuff, I generally try to pick a style - a theme that guides my designs. In this particular case I had gone for low-tech base, situated in a shallow lake out in the swamp (in part to have water available, in part for safety, in part for my sanity as a 3-deep trench of water keeps the slimes at bay). Limited use of stone; no immense structures; a haphazard, somewhat cramped layout. And this is the result so far:
Obviously I started out with the bare necessities (both my saw and millstone are in fact still wind-powered)
had some fun trying to figure out how to build a somewhat low-tech looking fireplace in an otherwise wooden base:
Around that time, mobs started to get a taste for the local wildlife, so my animals got situated to a somewhat safer spot right in the middle of my base.
While taking that screenshot I realised that my windmill was short one windmill, so a quick fix later I could get back to screenshotting.
I got a kiln up, designed specifically for charcoal (the piston stops the log from burning), only to then never actually use it for charcoal. Oh well...
Also got a waterless pottery going thanks to a "faulty" double piston. It extends a bit slower and "neglects" to pull the clay back all the way. This effectively pushes clay balls into the first hopper, the pottery in the second and then leaves the clay on the turntable for the next one.
Around that time food started becoming ever more important, so I constructed a small farm that could provide me with leather, wool and meat. It's even animal-friendly as they get to frolic and play in the grass until their date with the saws below (not that they ever do, mind you, as they'll just stick to the spot beneath their parents).
Mushrooms became more important too, so I ended up automating those as well. Each level holds one of each type of mushroom, carefully placed so that mushrooms of each type are never within the 9x9x3 box around the others. The floors are all the same, spiraling down into the ground. Every once in a while, the piston pulls back, flushing down any new mushrooms into my hopper at the bottom.
The basement is where most of the machinery resides. All in all nothing too exciting to look at, so I won't bother you with many screenshots, but I was rather happy about this. I don't usually have fully exposed machinery, but in this case I did want it to look somewhat industrial so I just "hid" the gearboxes and axles behind some slats. I definitely have to experiment with it a bit more.
Ofcourse, there was one building that just wouldn't work in a non-immense, cramped style and that was my mobtrap. Instead of going completely underground or overpowering my base with it, I decided to slightly adjust my plans, changing my base to more of a research-station, situated near a massive temple out in the swamp. It's half piston-based to kill the occasional enderman as I still don't have enough pearls to actually visit the end. Now I just need to work on its efficiency, as I later found out the ground below makes swiss cheese look solid.
Mind you, it still needs a lot of work as this is just the "functional" part. I still intend to build a three-tiered ziggurat around the base to really finish that temple look.
All in all, I had a great time trying to figure out the best way to build somewhat organic rooftops. I also messed around with lighting a bit, constructing most of the base with stairs, halfslabs, sidings, etc, just so I could leave out the occasional torch. That allowed me to make the base look a bit more "grungy" at night, as opposed to most brightly lit builds.
It's also damn nice to actually build a base with a wall around it as, once I finish that last bit, I'll actually have a "complete" base; one that I can visit and not go "ugh, still need to do so much more" all the time.
P.S. Yes, I'll get around to surviving sooner or later, but I'd rather do so when it has stabilised a bit. Besides, I had just started this base when FC started hardcore survival and I didn't feel like abandoning it as I've done a few before.
