So, many of us agree that the colonists rather epically fail self-care, that they don't heed Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (google it) very well. And, it's rather glaringly obvious that martino et al don't want to implement substantive changes to the AI, or make storage systems which would help keep the AI's failure to prioritize from being fatal, or even change the informational UIs in order to let us see aggregate and oncoming problems. (If you're of the ilk who think this is part of the challenge of the game, I invite you to stop reading now.)

With that in mind, here are some tips for build/management techniques that should take what we have for game mechanics and compensate for the Lemmings-ness of our colonists, as well as make more efficient bases.

A build for AFTER plastic production is reasonably good

Purpose: to battle famine (widespread hunger, thirst, and/or malnutrition)
Materials required: 22-30 bioplastic initially, 9 metal
Space required: 2 medium domes, 1 corridor connecting them (shortest viable)
Ideal connected structure: a storage dome which gets a lot of raw veg/meat
Optional connected structure: O2 generator (this may be a high-traffic area at times)

Build instructions:
Plop down 2 max size canteens, connected to each other. The one connected to the storage, or nearest to it as the crow flies (aka by radius, not shortest path - limitation to the AI pathing discussed in other posts on this forum), we call the kitchen; the other's the cafeteria.
In the kitchen, plop down as many meal makers as you can afford (and fill it the rest of the way as you get more plastic). In the cafeteria, plop down as many 4-top (2x2) tables as you want (this can be expanded as needed. The cafeteria should have some slots on the fringe (aka not blocking potential table expansion) which will still accomodate plants or water fountains. I prefer going whole-hog on water fountains myself, but YMMV. The walls of both structures can be spammed with TVs if morale requires.

The meal makers will tend to act as a mass storage for meals; and building them in as few waves as possible (1 is ideal) will significantly lower the likelihood that they get stuffed with just 1 harvest of 1 veggie, so it's more likely to be a stock of mixed meals.

Everyone says to place an airlock close to your mines; I say that's too little, you need to optimize your miners' entryway as much as possible to keep the production chain at max. I suggest that you build that airlock right off of a processing center (in the midgame, one that's dedicated to ore processing, no starch). Branched off of that processing center should be a med bay with at least 2 beds - mining accidents are the most common, fully-non-preventable injury, and the quicker they get to a med bed, the quicker they get back to work. (In the midgame, adding a Robot Facility off of the same processing center and installing at least 2 Bot Autorepairs serves a similar purpose.) And that processing center should also branch to a storage directly, both for ore overflow and produced metal.

It's annoying how often it seems that everyone will try and go eat/sleep/play at the same time, leaving productivity in the lurch. Luckily, we can exploit the fact that sleep often tends to be the longest-to-satisfy of those needs in order to put the base on something close to shifts.

(Note for CABIN-users: this technique is MUCH TOUGHER to use in bases that have cabins; I also would suggest that you never use cabins, as too often people will walk from one side of the base to the other to get to Their Bed. In my experience, plopping a bar or multidome occasionally (or even spamming TVs in the cafeteria/canteen, or filling yet-to-be-designated biodome space with trees) will solve the same amount of morale issues in less time, due to less idiotic pathing. If you insist on using cabins, skip this suggestion.)

First, build up a stock of food (or meals, if you've got a kitchen built), and switch off colonists and visitors. Then, ensure you have enough beds for 1/3rd of your population (eg 4 bunks for 24-30 colonists); if you've got more than that already, turn off domes/deconstruct beds until you meet this. Then, turn off your dorm for a day, starting at the beginning of the night. This will force the colonists into a state of sleep deprivation.
Once a day (a full day/night cycle) has passed, or once every colonist has a yellow Z over his head (whichever happens first), turn on your bunks (again, just enough for 1/3rd of your colonists), and leave it like that for 1.5 days (a full and a half cycle), before turning on/reconstructing the rest of your beds.
Colonists will fulfill their sleep needs in shifts, of a long length given the deprivation, and in my experience will keep to the new schedule for at least 30 days - longer if you've got a bot army doing most of your hauling/spares work/construction/mining, because they won't exhaust themselves over long walks. And, given this is the longest-to-fill need, at least most of them will tend to switch to breakfast and dinner for awhile, rather than just eating whenever.

The guards and guns tend to all hang out in the Command Center. So, you want your visitor airlock(s) to funnel towards your command center if possible. The drawback is, neither airlocks nor halls seem to get monitored by guards (for some unfathomably dumb reason), so connecting the airlock directly to the command center tends to lead to an early death for your guards. Plus, if you end up wanting to make more of these airlocks (after all, trading happens at the starport, and throughput is quite the issue), the command center's furniture style (on the wall rather than in the middle of the floor) comes into play - every connection to the command center essentially shrinks the room.

Luckily, the fact that trading happens at the airlock(s) near the pads helps us: Storage Rooms are great hubs, and they're monitored; as icing on the cake, most tasks inside them are quick to complete, so unarmed colonists are unlikely to be hanging around in them.
So, branching off of your base, ideally somewhere with either no preexisting airlocks or somewhere you're OK removing the current airlock, place a small command center, connected to a storage, and then to an airlock. Build/move your pad(s) outside that airlock. The storage shouldn't be connected by hallways to anything other than the airlock and command center (and, if needed in the future, more airlocks and maybe more storages if you do huge trades), and the command center should only have one other connection (to what doesn't really matter). This command center should have only guard stations (I use 3, YMMV) and armories; I strongly suggest having a separate, large command center for the telescope ant antenna equipment, due to both not wanting to put those engineers and workers' lives at risk, and for redundancy (see below).

The command center that mans the visitor airlocks is dangerous; also, it's forced to have more than one connection to be useful. So, I suggest that you drive your antennae and telescopes out of another station, which you treat as a Dead End (one connection). Also, I suggest you average about 1.5 consoles per operated structure (1 antenna=2 radio consoles, 2a=3rc, 3a=5rc), to compensate for shift change post abandonment. Alternatively, you can have 2 dead-ended command centers, with half the radio and telescope consoles in each, to provide resiliency/redundancy in case of a meteor strike before you get your lasers up / that the lasers fail to stop. And, building this off of a basic canteen (not even a kitchen/cafeteria, just a mealmaker, table, fountain, plant and TV at least), with a dorm branched off from that canteen, will tend to make your security staff happy, healthy, and rested - aka ready to get back to work ASAP.

Except for the early game, it ALWAYS makes more sense to build max-size oxygen/electricity/water generators and storages - it's the same production per resource spent when you take into account the connections, and you use less spares.


Low power protocol
When you get the "power low" warning, open up the Base Management menu (second from left) and get ready to open the Grid screen (third from left on that menu). (One of the F2-F5 range pops open the same screen too.)

When it hits critical, or if the low warning comes early in the night, hit the Disable button on the Grid screen. If you're lucky enough to have enough overnight gen that you are getting some charge back, let it charge up for awhile (not to full, maybe to about 1/3), and then hit Enable; disable it again when you get the Critical message again. Repeat until sunrise. This allows your colonists to occasionally satisfy hunger/thirst/sleep during a low-power time, rather than just suffering through a base with no power. At sunrise/once power production's restored, jump to suggestion 6c INSTEAD of hitting enable.


Optimizing your base's power draw
Get to the Grid screen (explained in 6b). Hit disable. Then, manually re-enable your: Sick Bays, Command Center(s), Telescope(s), Laser(s), Antenna(e), Dorms/Cabins, Canteens, Bio-Dome(s), Lab(s), Processing Centers, Factories, Mines, Robotics Facility(s) Multi-Dome/Bar(s), and not-packed Storage(s); leave off those you don't need (eg I use empty labs as interior Base Pads), and only turn on the Starport or Landing Pad when you need it.
What you'll notice is that your Signs, Monolith(s), and most importantly, all your Corridors and Connections will be off. (Signs and Monoliths, at present, still provide their Prestige boost while off.) Colonists couldn't care less about corridors being off; and they can even take stuff from storages while they're off (they just never haul TO storages that are off). This is a significant savings in power, and makes your base continue working for longer when you need to scramble for those spares.