It would be nice if there could be a type of tile that was spread throughout the world that allowed for the placement of infrastructure outside the base.
These foundations could be thought of as being similar to the way ice works, except the opposite; ice can be edited but not built upon, foundations could be built upon but not edited.
Unlike simply providing more natural infrastructure (like cable relays or power reflectors) foundations wouldn't throw out the balance of the early game, but would provide more opportunity to influence the world outside the base after a settlement gets more advanced.
I think the main advantage to using them would be that in the late game, two chains of relays would only require a single extra relay to be linked could have that missing link filled in - and who doesn't love long cable relays?
The outpost concept is what
The outpost concept is what comes to me when I think of this. Perhaps slight upgrades would be made depending on what stage of the game the settlement is at, ie: foundaton area, from 2, 4, 6, 9 tiles etc.
This foundation idea could have problems when >1 settlement is present in the world. Does each settlement have its own foundation real estate? or are they shared.
I always imagined them to be
I always imagined them to be single tiles, and available for anyone to build upon, like ice. If there are no settlements, then foundations would still be there. They just wouldn't be useful because no one would have anything to place on them. That is kind of the point. The foundations themselves wouldn't have to grow with your settlement, just the possibilities for them.