Am I missing something about the underground?

[tksolway]

Do you seriously have to setup lights every dozen hexes just to see anything? Do you have to build Struts constantly to keep your stuff from being buried by constant rubble falls? It seems like I don't get power or water from above ground even though it seems like the elevator has hookups for it (numbers don't show on the map).

Are there any guides for how the underground works?

 

[YertyL]

You theoretically have to set up lights everywhere. but I rarely do, except around domes. You can see anomalies and depots without lights, and rover lights are usually enough for me to maneuver around. I also usually build 1 strut per dome at most, and that only if there are many buildings around it. Underground marsquakes are pretty rare and the damage is not that bad.

You should get power and water from above ground when it is needed and can be supplied. The only stuff that's wonky is storage -- the elevator will supply excess power/life support, which is not the same as a connected grid. For example, a water extractor above ground will not produce more to fill up storage below. There is also some wonkiness if you have both producers and storage on both sides -- I have found that briefly turning off producers on one side can help.

The main advantages of underground:

1. No dust storms or cold waves. You can e.g. move fuel and oxygen production below ground. Saves a surprising amount of storage/power/maintenance on disaster-heavy settings.
2. Underground fungal farms are fantastic. You can get 20+ food/sol for 0.5 water.
3. Research collaboration loss is separate. This means in terms of best research per worker, you should build underground labs before you build hawking institutes
4. If you have spelunker profile or a certain breakthrough, you get (at least) +6 sanity heal and no disaster sanity damage. Together with the +5 for well rested this means you do not need any sanity heal to reliably run out-of-dome-buildings, or combine with a gym to run heavy workloads on colonists with a social interest (e.g. scientists). Pretty damn strong for polymer factories, fungal farms, mines, labs....makes every underground dome almost as good as the geoscape dome wonder.