Optimal Colony Layout in RimWorld 1.6 | Mountain vs Gravship

RimWorld 1.6.4871 · Odyssey layout playbook

Optimal Colony Layout in RimWorld 1.6 | Mountain vs Gravship

Compact hubs still win early. Sketch with the Plan tool before you pour steel, keep a door buffer on every freezer, then pick mountain static or Gravship mobile priorities once Odyssey enters the run. Jump to playstyle chooser.

Plan tool add / remove + expand / shrink / copy / colors Cooler 200W · −21 energy/s · AirConditioning Doors open bleed heat fast · vestibule still helps Grav Anchor keeps the map · launch without = abandon
Playstyle chooser Plan tool Freezer doors Gravship diffs Sister blueprint tool
Instant answer

Early game: one tight hub with dining–kitchen–freezer–rec touching each other. Use Orders → Plan marks so you do not rebuild walls twice. Freezers still want a double-door vestibule because open doors equalize temperature much faster than closed ones — there is no dedicated temperature “airlock” building. Odyssey splits the late game: mountain bases stay fixed and stone-heavy; Gravships optimize substructure, oxygen, and whether a Grav Anchor keeps the map after launch.

Playstyle chooser: mountain, open field, or Gravship

Pick how you actually play. The early hub stays the same; the priorities after that change hard.

Mountain priorities

Treat the rock as free armor and plan infestation breaks before you dig a palace.

    Plan tool upgrades in 1.6

    Designator_Plan_Add and Designator_Plan_Remove still live in the Orders tab. That part did not move. What changed for players is the planning workflow: expand, shrink, copy, and colored plan marks so wings stay readable while pawns still ignore them as real walls.

    Still there Add / remove plans

    Block out bedrooms, freezer footprints, and killbox mouths before a single brick. Plans cost nothing and leave no wealth trail.

    1.6 player upgrades Expand · shrink · copy · colors

    Grow a wing, trim a mistake, duplicate a barracks module, then color-code food vs combat vs living so the map stays sane at 3x zoom.

    Practical habit: plan the food chain and defense spine first, living rooms second. Pretty bedrooms do not matter if meals rot while pawns sprint across half the map.
    Orders tabPlan marks
    CostZero wealth
    PawnsIgnore plans
    Best usePre-steel sketch

    Room adjacency that still pays rent

    Kitchen–freezer–dining is still the highest-value triangle in RimWorld. Keep butcher dirty and separate, hydroponics reachable without cutting through bedrooms, and hospital off the public hallway.

    Food chain Freezer → kitchen → dining

    Cooks grab from cold storage, drop meals next door. No marathon hauls across a courtyard.

    Butcher Own dirty room

    Blood and cleanliness penalties do not belong in the kitchen. Door it off the freezer wing.

    Grow food Hydro near power

    Indoor grow rooms want short cable runs and easy haul to the freezer. See the hydroponics tool page.

            [ REC / DINING ]
               |
     [ KITCHEN ]--[ FREEZER ]
          |             ^
     [ BUTCHER ]        | door buffer
                        v
                 [ vestibule ]
    Early hub rule of thumb: if a cook, hauler, and hungry pawn can all finish their loop without crossing a 20+ tile hallway, your layout is already better than most “pretty” bases.

    Freezer doors still matter

    Coolers still draw 200W, cool at energyPerSecond −21, and unlock from AirConditioning. The soft part of freezer design is traffic, not the cooler number.

    Temperature reality Open doors equalize fast

    When a door sits open, rooms bleed temperature much faster than when it stays closed. A one-tile vestibule with two doors (the classic “airlock”) still cuts how often the freezer is open to warm air. There is no dedicated temperature airlock building — you build it from doors and walls.

    Odyssey note VacBarrier ≠ freezer airlock

    VacBarrier is vacuum sealing for Odyssey space / hull traffic. Do not confuse vacuum airlocks with the freezer temperature buffer. Deep dive: freezer airlock fix.

    Cooler power200W
    Cool rate−21 / s
    ResearchAirConditioning
    Hot sideUnroofed outdoors
    Hot tip: never roof the cooler exhaust. If the hot side dumps into a hallway, you are just moving the meltdown.

    Defense spine, not a maze

    Layout fails when wounded pawns path through kitchens while raiders knock on the wrong wall. Build one clear combat approach and a short rescue line into the hospital.

    • Main hall 2–3 tiles once traffic and breach pressure rise. Side halls can stay narrower.
    • Hospital on the spine — close to the fight lane, away from butcher blood and public dining chaos.
    • Barracks / armory branch so drafted pawns gear up without looping the food wing.
    • Firebreaks between wood-heavy wings; mountain bases get infestation cutouts between dug chambers.
    • Escape doors that do not open the freezer or chemfuel room to the raid vector.
      OUTSIDE → [ choke / kill lane ]
                    |
              [ 3-tile SPINE ]
               /     |      \
        [ARMORY] [HOSPITAL] [CORE HUB]

    Gravship layout differences (Odyssey)

    A mountain base is a forever shell. A Gravship is a flying budget: every tile of substructure, every oxygen pocket, and every pile of wealth on the hull changes how hard the next landing hits. Build walkthrough: how to build a Gravship.

    Hull first Substructure footprint

    Plan rooms that fit the ship tile budget. Do not copy a sprawling mountain palace onto a hull and wonder why launch fails.

    Life support Oxygen + seals

    Vacuum kills layouts that ignore doors and pumps. Size pumps to room area and keep a vacuum airlock at exits — details in the oxygen pump tool.

    Raid pressure Wealth vs mobility

    Ship wealth travels with you. Prefer compact production, shelved stock, and leave non-critical luxury on the ground base when you can.

    Grav Anchor rule: launching with a Grav Anchor preserves the map. Launching without one abandons the map. That single choice decides whether your mountain shell is a forever home or a disposable staging pad.
    Mountain static Priorities

    Thick stone, infestation breaks, fixed killbox, deep storage, pretty bedrooms later. Map loyalty is assumed.

    Gravship nomad Priorities

    Substructure economy, sealed rooms, oxygen redundancy, short corridors, Anchor decision before every launch.

    Sister planner — live blueprint tool

    This page is the playbook: mountain vs Gravship priorities, Plan tool habits, freezer door buffers. For a live room-by-room blueprint generator, use the sister page — do not treat this URL as a second copy of that tool.

    Open best base layout tool →

    FAQ

    Short answers for the questions that keep showing up next to this money page.

    Is a compact hub still best early in 1.6?
    Yes. Keep dining, kitchen, freezer, and rec tight. Expand after the food chain and defense spine are stable.
    Do freezer airlocks still matter?
    Yes for temperature. Open doors equalize much faster than closed ones, so a double-door vestibule still helps. VacBarrier is Odyssey vacuum gear, not a freezer cooler cheat.
    Where is the Plan tool?
    Orders tab: plan add and remove are still there. 1.6 also lets you expand, shrink, copy, and color plans so large bases stay legible.
    What does Grav Anchor change for layout?
    With an Anchor, launch keeps the map — your fixed base stays real. Without one, launch abandons the map, so build like a temporary pad plus a ship that carries the colony.
    Cooler power and research?
    Cooler: 200W, energyPerSecond −21, AirConditioning research. Vent the hot side outdoors with no roof.