Originally posted by ComeOnAndSam:

I don't get why every survival game forces me to built a house. I play games like this to explore, and I don't want to get interrupted every 15 minutes to make a massive detour back to my house because my inventory's full or I have to make a crafting station.

Why can't I just put all this stuff in a boat? If my base was a viking ship that would be great. I could move it all around the world and severely reduce travel time.

This is why the only survival game I like is Subnautica. It had an extensive base building system, and it was really fun and cool, and I completely ignored it. Because you could put all that same stuff in a submarine and it was incredibly fun and convenient. I can't play a survival game unless it has that. Progressing to to the point where you can build a boat base is fine, preferred even, but the game needs to contain it.

There are a number of things that goes against 'house boats'.

1. The current balance goes out the window and would be a pain to get back if possible at all within reasonable effort.
2. The current gameplay loop is highly successful given the reviews and overall reception. While not perfect, you would mess with a successful formula by introducing a potentially gamebreaking/balance breaking new feature.
3. It doesn't seem to fit the vision of the devs - it's a Viking game, base building is a strong factor with farming and husbandry implemented.
4. Bases are fairly easy to move as they are and the voyage at sea is supposed to be about exploration and carrying material, as far as I can tell, while facing dangers and the risk of losing the ship, life and cargo. Players losing their whole base and progress would probably not something I'd like to moderate here.

There are probably more arguments against house boats and while I have nothing against the concept, it actually sounds pretty fun, I don't see it happening in this game, for good reasons.

edit: The ability to build portals allows you to skip a lot of travel time too. You just can't use them to grind metal. Which is perfectly fine for me. The way I do it is having an 'extra' portal in the homebase and carry portal materials on me to use when I want to unload stuff, get more food, just rest or log out.