How do I level the ground?

[DeadPoolX]

For reference, I don't mean "making a building or vehicle level," I mean "reworking the ground to be level."

Basically, I have a slope, and I want to uniformaly reduce the slope by leveling it out some. I've been getting around this somewhat by using blocks to create level areas, but in spots where the ground is too high, the blocks won't work.

I know the voxel hand tools are there, but they're extremely inaccurate, so you end up with unleveled ground anyway.

There has to be a way to level out the ground that doesn't result in giant potholes and craters everywhere. If there isn't, then that's a major oversight that needs to be addressed.

[MysticMalevolence]

The best you can hope for is setting voxel tools to be grid-locked and being very careful.

[casualsailor]

Although this video is about using voxel hands to build underground bases the techniques used should help you level the terrain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7EKvLHmH8w

[cptsavarus]

Originally posted by DeadPoolX:

...There has to be a way to level out the ground that doesn't result in giant potholes and craters everywhere. If there isn't, then that's a major oversight that needs to be addressed.

Been trying to find a good solution to this for ages. Tried setting up a project on here back along to get people coming up with ideas but it was stillborn, Seems like for some reason, most of the community aren't even interested in asking this question, let alone trying to answer it!
Most of the replies I got talked about flattening terrain, not levelling it. I had a bit of a hard time getting people to understand the difference. And of course then everyone started talking about voxel hands, which it looks like they're still doing...

Anyhow...
I have 2 designs on my workshop pages that do what you want but are limited in so far as where they can be used & what shapes they can carve into the terrain. Both do a good job of levelling areas & leaving the terrain nice & smooth but neither is an ideal solution.
Have a look. Might give you some ideas.

I'm with you though that this is an oversight. There needs to be a straightforward way of doing it in survival mode using things you've built... and there just isn't one.

[Tryst49]

If there was a tool we could craft that allowed us to dig/fill the terrain in a similar way to the voxel hands, it would help those who don't want to use creative to do things like this.

Empyrion has a mining/filling tool that players often use for underground bases. A similar tool to dig, fill and flatten would be nice here too.

[DeadPoolX]

Originally posted by cptsavarus:

Originally posted by DeadPoolX:

...There has to be a way to level out the ground that doesn't result in giant potholes and craters everywhere. If there isn't, then that's a major oversight that needs to be addressed.

Been trying to find a good solution to this for ages. Tried setting up a project on here back along to get people coming up with ideas but it was stillborn, Seems like for some reason, most of the community aren't even interested in asking this question, let alone trying to answer it!
Most of the replies I got talked about flattening terrain, not levelling it. I had a bit of a hard time getting people to understand the difference. And of course then everyone started talking about voxel hands, which it looks like they're still doing...

Anyhow...
I have 2 designs on my workshop pages that do what you want but are limited in so far as where they can be used & what shapes they can carve into the terrain. Both do a good job of levelling areas & leaving the terrain nice & smooth but neither is an ideal solution.
Have a look. Might give you some ideas.

I'm with you though that this is an oversight. There needs to be a straightforward way of doing it in survival mode using things you've built... and there just isn't one.

Saw your mods and thought they looked good, so I downloaded them. I probably have way too many mods now, but whatever... :P

[Ω Spriggan Ω]

i remember seeing some time back a decent enough way to do it is build a basic miner fly above the ground you're looking to level out and mine it going side to side slowly....evenutally moving foward or backward a bit........... it takes some time but until keen adds someway of neatly shaping voxel we're screwed until then.

[cptsavarus]

Originally posted by DeadPoolX:

Saw your mods and thought they looked good, so I downloaded them. I probably have way too many mods now, but whatever... :P

They're not mods, they're just things you can build or load into the world. No alterations to the game at all. No modded blocks either - pure vanilla.
Look at them, see how they work, get your ideas then save them or discard them. No need to clutter up your downloads list.

As for a "convenient tool" I have to disagree with Tryst49... I think it should be something that has to be built - a machine. Having a hand tool that does it for you automatically would feel a lot like cheating or exploiting the game.

What I'd like to see is a mechanic for auto-levelling a ground vehicle on the X & Y axes using pistons or similar for a ship using thrusters. If that were possible it'd pave the way for levelling terrain.

I know it's possible using script mods but from what I can tell the best mod for the job is pretty complex to configure. We really need a very simple vanilla way to do this.

As it stands though, there's no way of knowing just how level the terrain in an area is until you place a line of blocks. The artificial horizon and gravity "globe" just don't give the right information to tell if the terrain is level or not.

[callme-jk]

lets check some options KSH gave us:

- maybe with the ME-shovel, no wait... wrong game. :P - no smugglers around...

- maybe with the video-editor... no wait nobody needs... / nobody use it

- maybe with the mission-editor... argh wrong again... nobody use it


sorry we have become alot of useless stuff in the near past like a game without sunglasses for the suncrap here..., but nothing what we all want.... like voxel-change option in survival / better voxel-hands..., skill-system, economy-system, more gameintothesandbox-stuff, etc...

[DeadPoolX]

Originally posted by cptsavarus:

Originally posted by DeadPoolX:

Saw your mods and thought they looked good, so I downloaded them. I probably have way too many mods now, but whatever... :P

They're not mods, they're just things you can build or load into the world. No alterations to the game at all. No modded blocks either - pure vanilla.
Look at them, see how they work, get your ideas then save them or discard them. No need to clutter up your downloads list

Right, sorry, I have a bad habit of calling anything in the workshop a "mod" even though I know that's incorrect.

What I meant to say is that I've downloaded your ships (pretty much all of them, actually, even the ones that have nothing to do with leveling terrain), but I haven't had a chance to use them yet.

[AlanEsh]

Horizontal pistons with a line of drills pointing down? It won't be perfectly smooth, but if you build the anchor platform "level" with gravity, it will work (with frequent grinding and re-welding of pistons and drills).