To be honest, it's a lot more fun going in blind and discovering stuff for yourself. The only slightly annoying part of that is that you have to find specific blueprints to, for example, unlock building the big submarine that allows you to go deeper, and then *other* blueprints to upgrade it to the max depth possible that will be needed to finish the storyline, and that can be a bit of a random process.
One thing I will say: when building a base, be sure to pay attention to the hull strength. This goes down when adding new modules, and up if you add reinforcements to the base. If the hull strength goes below 0 then you'll start getting flooding and that's a real pain to deal with.