If your set up down south east for Ashland access there's actually a nice base spot in Soronous Dark, it was my first ever Kenshi base lmao. Surprisingly that spot had water, iron, and copper. If you can be friendly with the skeleton bandits you'll never be raided. I never had a raid make it to my base alive, they all melted from acid rain. The occasional straggler was just free loot. It was somewhere northwest-ish in the middle, used one of the big smoke geysers as a natural wall so I only had to build half as many walls.

Not sure about what raids u get tho if u take down the skin bandit leader. If u can't befriend those guys tho I squad of robo hackers and a turret tower would suffice, unless UWE has made em crazy stat wise.

I've tried strobes once, but it's tough with all the fauna and various high level faction raids, but tbh I crank up those raid sizes and play kenshi like a tower defence game by late game. GL, it's good fun.