I wanted to build a base on a radio tower, and I’ve run into frustration with the construction system’s limitations. The way the tower, and many other structures, are built a player could not use the construction menu to replicate them. Buildings with balconies, for instance, don’t seem replicable. I get that some constructions won’t be possible for one person, or even a small team to replicate, as they may require machines or techniques that are no linger available, but something as simple as filling in the gaps in the floors of a radio tower or making a second+ floor have a larger footprint than the floors below it should be doable.
I’m frustrated with the SUPPORTS_ROOF tag. It seems less about what you can expect to find in the tile above it and more about whether there’s a ceiling in the tile. If there’s no ceiling then you can’t build above it, but many existing constructions do just that.
I’m thinking about the possibility of making some sort of support as a piece of furniture. It would let you build, say a floor, on the tile above it. The support wouldn’t be grabbable or movable, and could be built on an open air tile adjacent to a tile with SUPPORTS_ROOF. I’m having trouble with some of the logic involved, though, and thought I’d put it to the forum.
How do y’all think building balconies or filling in airgaps in existing structures should work?
This sound pretty good, although your solution is far from the most optimized. Hopefully Kevin or one of the other more skilled contributors can assist with this.
The problem with roofs is that they need to be supported on two orthagonal sides. This keeps roofs from extending beyond the footprint of the building. If they only needed support on one side, though, we could build roofs of infinite size, supported by a single tile, which isn’t a good fix. I’m trying to come up with a workaround that preserves the existing logic but expands on our capabilities. Balconies shouldn’t be forbidden technology.
Maybe the support granted by walls should extend more than one square
It would make sense to allow roofs to extend to a limited distance from the footprint of the supports. However, that would make sprawling buildings without supports in the interior an issue: you should at least be able to drive any standard issue through a garage, which means an 8 tile free span in between supports, and more if you expect to be able to turn.
It could also be argued that different materials have different strength and ability to span distances, but it could get messy.
Agreed, PALU. This is why I’m not certain how to implement the logic behind improving the construction system. Seems like there’s lots of tradeoffs to consider. I’d prefer a simple, even elegant solution, but that might not be feasible. I worry the only way to make it match our expectations for construction is to make it very complicated.
So maybe the idea that support radiates a few tiles out should be considered
Allowing a support to reach 6 tiles out (should give enough room for most vehicles to drive around a garage, but a flatbed might still have issues, so there should be some testing with “cones” on the ground [it can also be noted that the model of swiveling around the center of the vehicle makes the task rather different in the game compared to the real world, so real world experience is of limited use]), regardless of the material would be reasonably simple and not too unrealistic. Before that, the roof would have to be separated from the floor and belong to the level above, so smashing the floor would make a hole in it, but do nothing to the roof.
However, a support concept would require checks to detect when the last supporting tile is removed to generate collapses of the unsupported tiles (if desired it might drag additional, weakly supported tiles down with it, but that may be too complicated and unpredictable).