Any cool building tricks/tips?

Greetings exiles!

I finally figured out how to do the foundation raise trick while still being snapped/connected to a lower foundation. Took me longer than I care to admit even after watching two videos on it :joy:

Anyways, any other building tricks out there?
I donā€™t mean hacks/glitches but just cool tips/tricks for building.

Awesome!
Great stuff thanks

Iā€™m planning on a horizontal elevator (Iā€™ve been calling them gondolas :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:) so good to know the max distance

Check also some wall tricksā€¦
And btw try youtubeā€¦ u may learn faster than readingā€¦ :slight_smile:

Nice! Iā€™ll check it out

I just checked my base this morning and I lost stability on a troublesome section. It has to do the the wedge ceiling tiles. Those have been more trouble than they are worth for me lately.

Anyways I had 3 new pillars down in different areas. The pillars were all 100 stability last night. This morning they are 35-40. They are built on a 100 foundation. But they were built from the above wedge tiles down.

Hereā€™s what Iā€™m thinking the issue is. Let me know if that could be what is happening. The pillars were centred on the wedge tile and built down. So when they attached to the square base foundation they werenā€™t in the centre of the foundation but in other parts of it (as you can imagine from wedge tiles above).

Does that make sense?

Would the solution be:

  1. Centre the pillars on the base foundation and go up?
  2. Replace the square base foundations that are under wedge ceiling tiles with wedge foundations? Then hopefully centring on the wedge tile will also centre on the wedge foundation

My brain hurts :face_with_head_bandage:

  1. Pillars can be extended down from ceiling tiles back to the ground, and the top edges of foundations can be snapped to the edges of a ceiling tile. So when building bridges or vertical elevators, you can extend pillars down, put a ceiling tile on the bottom, and then snap a foundation to it.

  2. If youā€™re having trouble adding roof sections, try adding some ceiling tiles just under the level of the roof on the inside. They can help sure-up the stability in order for the roof pieces to socket into place.

  3. Maprooms are huge, but you can help mitigate how much floorspace they take up by sinking them into the floor a few clicks. Also, to preempt maproom glitches where the lights donā€™t show up, place radium torches of the appropriate color by each activation point and rename the torches to match. Now youā€™ll always know where youā€™re clicking.

  4. You can place foundations atop ceiling tiles if you want a thicker floor.

  5. Fence foundations can be offset on a foundation (including another fence foundation) by a half-unit and even rotated by 90Ā°. Since you can snap fences or walls onto fence foundations, this allows you to create room dividers and the like in the middle of your floor.

  6. All the decay system cares about is that stuff was built on the same snap grid. Thus if you want to have a separate building within your base, build foundations or fence foundations over to so that it will share the same decay timer as your main base. After youā€™ve done so, you can then dismantle the ā€œdecay umbilicalā€ and it will remain on the same timer as the main base since it is associated with the same snap grid.

  7. Animal pens are a real pain to place and decay quickly if not on foundations. However, the entire base does not need to have foundations under it! Use the trick above to place a smaller number of foundations just under where you want the center to be the put the animal pen on top of it. You can even delete any foundations that stick out from the edges.

  8. If you need to set up a base quickly and on-the-cheap, gate-frames have the surface area of 12 wall sections (3x4) but cost only a small fraction to build.

  9. Vaults are gigantic and bulky, and their dimensions are weird (4.5w x 3.5d x 2.5h). However, you can more easily enclose them in your base by using the foundation trick mentioned above to lower the floor beneath them and then sinking it in partially. In this way, you can then fit it below a 2-unit tall ceiling. Additionally, since the vault can be accessed from any side, you can wall it in entirely and just leave window frames to access it from wherever is convenient.

  10. Lastly, you can use the various distances at which decay, resource despawning, and landclaim take effect to place items directly on the ground for decorative effect, or to protect resources without despawning them. These distances are roughly a 1-second sprint for placeables to share the decay timer of a structure, resources get despawned within a 2-second sprint, and landclaim goes out to a 3-second sprint (assuming the same defaults that are used on Official servers).

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No build zone elevators.

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20181013024155_1
You can place foundations on ceilings.


Chests are stackable.

Incidentally, you can fill water skins and glass flasks through the floor if you built your base over water.
This also means you can drink through the floor via water skin.

8 tiles across from wall to wall, for a pillarless hall.

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If you want to build something that looks cozy, donā€™t make it look cozy. Make it actually cozy, as in project yourself as being there, doing what you want to do with friends at your house.

20180719185007_1

Looks a lot more authentic.20180719185019_1

Can go one step further and tell a story through the scene.

Are the couches heavy? How drunk are you when re-arranging the couches? How much does it distort the carpet?
How should the room smell?
Are you more likely to sit on the carpet than on the couch?
Do you have a maid that cleans after you? Or do you leave steins on the floor, which describes your character?

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Nice! Thanks all!

For the one issue I have with wedge tiles and pillars either needing to snap to centre of square foundation or the centre of the wedge tile for max stability, Iā€™ve setup some tests so Iā€™ll see tomorrow after server restart. Iā€™ll report back :smiley:

After that Iā€™ll play around with all the suggestions and tips.

Some nice bases up there in those pics :point_up_2:

Sweet!

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Also handy to remember this fact when building bridges. You can have nice broad foundations for the supports instead of extending spindly little pillars downward every 4th ceiling tile. :slight_smile:

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Yes, this has certainly saved me from a few costly repairs! Of course, if youā€™re like me and often forget to put the walls down prior to adding the foundations, you can still usually clad the foundations with fence foundations after-the-fact provided you work from the ground up. Doesnā€™t always look as nice, but fence foundations have slightly more HP than walls to make up for it.

This type of building combination is always going to have stability issues.
In short place square pieces above square pieces connected by pillars ā€¦
and wedge pieces above wedge pieces connected by pillars

but wedge pieces above square pieces connected by pillars are going to be randomly unstable
AND square pieces above wedge pieces connected by pillars are going to be randomly unstable.

Whilst you can make it happen the pillar has not ā€œsnappedā€ into place correctly and even if the game says there is 100% stability with a repair hammer with all pieces often upon server restart or when the building is rendered again when you run to it, the game will recalcuate the stablity based on the actual snap points of the pieces and then you get buildings falling apart.

If playing on a PC there are player-made mods that you can use that have less strict stability coding ā€¦ allowing for building such as you describe ā€¦ so this is an option in a single player game or a private server that uses such mods.

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Thanks!
Thatā€™s what I was worried about. Once I inspected the part that broke, I started to see how the pillars were lined up. The wedges while giving some cool looks and rounded pieces, they sure are giving me headaches.

Iā€™ll destroy the various tests I have for this tonight and setup new (hopefully final) solution and see what happens after server restart.

Luckily the the place this is happening on the edge of the base so I can replace the square foundations with wedge foundations.

But now Iā€™ll always have to be aware of that line of wedges.
It makes sense how it works the way it does. Make sure pillars are snapping between two of the same shapes for true stability.

Itā€™s not like Iā€™d do the smart thing and replace it with square foundations. I like rounded staircase and building walls :sunglasses:

This forum is a fantastic place!
Quick and helpful answers from a great group of smart and helpful players!

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Useful building trick, the low cost map room everywhereā€¦ as long as you can place a pillar :smiley:

20190426094401_1

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@FrenchyCaro itā€™s low cost until you get a purge rabbit nibble at that center pillar :rabbit::carrot:

I wouldnā€™t dare sneeze in the general direction of that pillar.

Even though what u show is on point, there is a spot where u can build all the way to land piece to well of skelos. I will upload a screenshot tonight, but if u r eager to see visit 1005 pve official server. There is both bridge and elevator leading to well

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Stick to the lollypopbase. Only a flying base offers more protection. If you build on a pillar in the right way there is no way other players could even touch any building piece belonging to the base.

Indeed, on the server I play on my clan built two public highways that descend to the base of the well. One starts right by the obelisk with room enough for a maproom at the bottom (still have a horizontal elevator to the 2nd floor for the sake of novelty). The other follows the Path of the Penitent / Walkway of the Devout down and comes out at the Lotus plants.