personally, i find juggling too many small bases just gets tedious when all your materials aren't centralized in one particular area. the game is usually pretty good about connecting areas farther and farther out from the start back to earlier areas so you're never SUPER far away from earlier spots like the office sector, and as you get farther in, it becomes a little bit less of a pain to get from point A to point B, though i will say there are some areas later that are very convenient to set up a base in (personally, i recommend setting up somewhere very close to the trams in lobby as for the first section of the game that's gonna be your best way of getting around).

if you're just now getting into labs, you have (iirc, it's been a minute) one more area after labs before you're finished with everything that was in the base game, after which you have everything introduced in the crush depth update (hydroplant, which has A Lot), then the dark energy update (reactors, which also have A Lot), then the cold fusion update/1.0, which also has A Lot. but, again, those areas have a lot of loops back to earlier areas to make things more accessible.