Unless they have fixed the bug in creative mode, power does not work correctly in that mode. It works normally in all the other modes. I think in creative only solar works...not sure been a long time since I played in creative.

Solar panels. They are best efficient for bases that are over -100m
They get less and less eficient the lower you are.
They only charge the power to your base during the day. So during the night you will be using the reserve power. If it ends before the night ends the base will be without power. The oxygen is provided as soon as you have power in your base. The more solar panels you get the faster it will charge your energy and the more energy it has during the night.

Solar panels to start the. Once you get established and get some materials you can get bioreactors and the such

Solar panels, bioreactor, thermal reactor + power connectors, or a nuclear reactor

During the day you can use solar panels but during the night you can use bio reactors. Also attach a base air pump.

I guess because bases are often used to charge batteries and power cells, they figured it might confuse some players and they'd end up draining their base batteries charging tool batteries and vehicles.

But I agree for a small minimalist storage base with lights and air only, it would be a cool option to power it with batteries or cells.

The power is a little weird in this game. Light stick batteries last forever. Yet the flashlight eats batteries.

Lights on other stuff like the seaglide and seatruck I'm not sure about. Seems like you can leave the truck parked with the lights left on indefinitely. The prawn's lights are always on, too, with no way to turn them off that I know of.

If you add floodlights to your base they drain way too much power IMO. I like them, but won't use them because they just require way, way too much.

The snow fox eats a standard battery very quickly. The ion battery does a little better.

All bases are automatically powered in creative. There's no way to turn power off and back on.

Solar is perfect for a starter base and a main base close to the surface. Just make sure to have enough that you don’t run out of power in the middle of the night.

Thermal is my favorite but it’s limited in where it can be used. They have fast power generation that never slows. Find a thermal vent and you can cover it in thermal plants for near endless power.

Bioreactors are pretty nifty. No matter where you are, you can get power. Dead Zone? No problem. The cold, lightless depths behind the Aurora? No sweat! Just make sure to bring a few seeds so you can keep feeding it. Slow power generation so don’t expect to run much, even with a few.

Nuclear is hands down the best power in the game. It has the best of both Thermal (fast power gen) and Bio (no area limits) plus it sips gently off of the fuel you give it. The only time in my over 600 hour of playtime that I ever built and used Nuclear Reactors was when I built a base in the Dead Zone. The Reactor and the Fuel Rods aren’t cheap... it gets difficult to justify when you already have a thermal plant or two and a farm around your bioreactor.

In my first play through, I used strictly solar until >!I got the cyclops!<, then I tore all but 1 tube, 2 hatches, >!6 power cell chargers, and 2 battery chargers!< and juuuust enough solar to keep it all running. Then, I got >!the cyclops thermal generator!< and tore the rest of my base down.

Start with solar and work your way to bio if you have fish and stuff

The best way I found was to start off with solar, and when you have resources to build out and have all kinds of rooms, switch to a bio reactor and fill it with coral tubes. They’re super easy to get and you will have an unlimited supply of them

The next time someone gets stranded here they're going to wonder why you left.. such a nice build

I love it, especially the many GrowBeds

Nice. Good use of the alien containment aquarium floor in the bedroom. Good usage of glass.

Nice base and good use of the plants to provide colour and illumination.

In case you didn't know you can stack the alien containment to make a larger "fish tank". I stacked 3 on top of each other and as well as supporting many more fish (both food and fuel for the bioreactors) it has enough height to support taller plants like the kelp reach full height and produce its fruit.

Seems pretty based to me (I'm sorry)

Near Delta island has a lot of thermal vents

Also, try using the other corridor pieces to connect your base, you seem to only be using the “i” and curved pieces. If you want to dismantle a piece, make sure to dismantle everything inside it as well as any windows or reinforcements. If you’re struggling to connect 2 pieces, make sure there’s nothing near where the 2 pieces will connect both outside and inside

First of all, you don't really need to put any Power Transmitter while using Solar Panels. Putting them on or very close to any base part is enough for them to be connected to your base.

As for the closest thermal spire/geyser, there are two options for Twisty Bridges:

1. Deep Twisty Bridges: Have you ever been to the deepest part of this biome, where you could find fragments for >!Fabricator & Storage Modules for Seatruck!<? There are three Thermal Spire clusters there that you can easily convey energy from by Power Transmitters. The distance may seem excessive but the maximum range between consecutive Power Transmitters is 100m and they don't have to have a clear line of sight. Only the first one that you place next to Thermal Plant has to be really close, within 25m.

While building energy transmission lines I usually place a beacon next to the last Power Transmitter I built and move away 100m towards the base I'm trying to convey energy to and then find a suitable place to place the next Power Transmitter. In your case you should be able to reach your base from Deep Twisty Bridges with 3 or 4 transmitters.

2. Another geyser spot is inside a SeaMonkey Cave (Arctic Kelp Caves) to the East of starting location. (>!Entrances to this cave system are close to Alterra Crane Platform where you find Pathfinder Tool fragment.!<)

The best heat source in this map, though, is below >!Thermal Spires and Delta Island!<. These geysers look more dangerous than they actually are. (I presume this is where you call Lava Biome?)

I always try to use my space the most efficiently, so seeing this is so refreshing. I will try to build something like this on my next playthrough

This base is so deranged. I love it

I have my storage in the multipurpose room still, but I just built the large room, so I want to move all my materials in to the large room… just haven’t gotten that far yet.

I think that leviathans should be able to attack bases, but if that will be the case there should also be a sort of a repellent. Maybe a base compartment which creates a sort of safe space around the base at the cost of some piwer.

Make it a setting. Toggle between "vanilla basebuilding" and "difficult basebuilding"

As a long term fan of project zomboid, keep it there, please, do not bring these kinds of mechanics for those games to ones that do not reflect them. People do not play Subnautica for realism.

I just think about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Every fucking time i got in a (human) base and had to wait till i finally could enter/leave. Naaa i don't need that in Subnautica

A lot of your complaints can be implemented into SN1 by simply roleplaying choices.

Hardcore is pretty difficult and tedious if you avoid using vehicles completely.

You can put “airlocks” in your base via the bulkhead door.

No bulkhead door yet? Your base is then restricted to being build above water level.

Exactly, no one's gonna play if there base is destroyed by stalkers in 10 minutes and it takes an extra vour to get the stuff for an o2 system

Just make it a forcefield like the alien bases, alterra took the technology and uses it in their bases now. There you go realism intact

While I understand the reduced realism of just using a single hatch to walk into the base, I don’t think the realism is worth it if it actually just means that we have to have extra busywork.

Well, oxygen production systems were built into the frame of the structure pieces you fabricate, it required external power to function. You have to remember that Subnautica is not a base building sim, it's operation is simplified to keep the flow of the game pleasant for most people.

If you have a water purifier, that would be a huge drain on your base, that and moonpools with vehicles in their bays. Increase power capacity by any means and it should get better from there, especially if the bulk of power you have is only solar and you are in a dark spot

You have the diving mask on in the second image. Is your base flooded?

The deeper you go, the more you'll want to use the thermal reactor as light becomes less available

Moon pools? Battery chargers? Water purifiers? If you are drawing more power than you are making this will happen.

It could (one of) several things. Do you have other machinery that might be using up all that power? Moonpools and Water Filtration Machines especially use a lot of power. This can be fixed by either not having more than you need of either, or building more energy sources.

I can also see you're 159m deep. Assuming your solar panels are around there as well, it's likely that they won't catch a lot of sunlight. You can check this by getting close to a solar panel, and you'll see how much energy it's collecting. In general, the closer a solar panel is to the surface, the more sunlight it will catch.

It's also possible your solar panels are too far from your seabase to transfer energy. In that case, you might need to build a few power transmitters between your solar panels and your seabase.

Subnautica is the only survival game that has ever gotten underwater base building right imo. I don’t know how they would do it in Rust but it would be fun. I wish we had more reasons to go into the ocean.

Underwater free building would be really hard to implement in a way that doesn’t just result in a bunch of underwater bunkers 6 grids off the map.

What would be really cool IMO and a bit more realistic is some sort of prebaked geometry with buildable areas, basically how caves work.   Just instead of a big silo cave or whatever it’s some mega-underwater labs-style structure that has big halls and silos that the player can build in. 

Ya vac bases are pretty lame, spent hours on tusos looking for bitches that decided to build and maintain them.

It's also a pain in the ass to live in a 2x1 packed with chests and furnaces, but people still do that.