Yep, right now buried stuff is a lot safer, and it makes sense to stay like that because you will always see a base before a buried chest. But we really need more incentives to base-building and solutions to server-hopping.
Some partial solutions that comes to my mind:
Some AI guards protecting the base (reparable drons or mercs)
Hidden death-traps. We kinda already have some but we probably need some more options if we have to protect the base with only that.
Some kind of new lockable-storage/strongbox opened by password or id-card and only breakable by strong explosives.