Issue with "soil pile" and "foundations"

[hydegeoff]

I have unlocked the ability to gather terrain and ran into a problem early game where the game will not give me soil pile unless I create "foundation" in inventory. At one iron plate per foundation - it takes one steel plate to make foundation which is why the iron plate is required - that is an expensive use of foundation to get soil pile. Why doesn't the game recognize that I have 53k soil pile? Why do I need expensive foundations to flatten or fill in terrain? This doesn't make any sense. Stupid game design is not only stupid, it's holding back my creativity!

[Evil Tidings]

Yep... That's about how it works lol, The soil pile you currently have is likely from placing buildings and whatnot on the ground, it automatically levels the surface when you do so.... But to get the nice concrete surface you have no choice but to use foundations. The soil pile is basically used to fill in the holes while the concrete is laid on top.. so... yep. If you're not worried about the achievements possibly getting messed up then there is at least 1 mod, maybe 2 for getting around the need for soil pile and the cost of foundations

[umop-apisdn]

Make a half-dozen storage or assemblers, stamp them out on the higher terrain, pick them back up, et voila. Soil pile sans foundations.

Or am I misunderstanding the issue?

[ZenonXVII]

it's an intended gameplay loop, needing to flatten mountains on other planets to fill in lakes and craters, facilitating another reason to explore that's technically completely optional. and another reason to scale a bigger mine/smelter/fabricator setup, making a power improvement more important, leads into all the other game mechanics and is the entire point of a factory game like this. also giving more of an accomplishment for actually paving an entire planet with 'expensive' materials. as soon as you get planetary transport you can produce so much concrete that you need several logi stations just to have it delivered as fast as you can pave entire solar systems for mining operations