How to build a rooftop garden?

[Pook and Pie]

In one of the previous alphas, I think 8 or 9, a friend of mine and I built our own base upgrading reinforced wood blocks- it was something in the neighborhood of 33x33 in size. I built a garden on the roof of this house and I could grow side-by-side trees all across the top with no issue.

We began playing again after the more recent update and we're having trouble doing the rooftop garden. Our new base is about 13x13 blocks large, not very big at all (we're planning to make more rooms, but right now we've just got the one room), but every time I go up to the roof and drop some dirt, planting around 20 plants in it makes the roof collapse. The whole roof, except for the block attached to the ladder, falls in.

I have no idea why this is happening now when we had success doing this in a prior game on a much, much larger base. I figure I need more support do to a physics change, but I have no idea how much support I'd need and how many blocks above it a pillar would 'support'.

Googling doesn't exactly get me much except for topside images of people's gardens, no explanations of how structure integrity works in this game or images of underneath the garden floors, etc.. Can anyone explain this to me, or point me to where I may learn about it?

[Hedge]

Do you have supports under the bottom floor? Maybe it's not supported properly. I have no idea i'm just pontificating.

[Vigil Prime]

I've heard people say the Structural integrity has been wonky at times, just started playing this recent release. Wiki helps, atleast it hasn't done me wrong with my constructions yet.

http://7daystodie.gamepedia.com/Structural_Integrity

But as Hedge asked, are there any supports to begin with?

[YamaKami]

1st make sure there is no cave below your base, that will make physics hate on you for certain. Beyond that each various type of block has a different structural integrity. So while reinforced concrete might support that, cobble stone might not as an example. Depending on the block type used and how stable a foundation you have you will need to support that roof from the underside every so many blocks, or it will collapse under the load. You can get a lot of block info by hovering the mouse over the block in your inventory. There are guides on it too, but lots of changes since most were written to keep in mind.

Edit: I'd venture a guess at 13x13 you will likely be fine (short of a cave under you) with one column in the center of the room below

[PantLessKing]

if there is enought room before the ceiling i would run metal trussing between pillars and walls too give extra support like of they do in real life with makeing floors that are a ceiling too a basement aswell.

[Hashshashin]

I would recomend reinforcing, we had a nice poi base, walled, moated, nice house on the top and put in a garde, planted up and went out to find a shopping centre or some worm sign. We returned, crossed moat, went through wall and opened the front door, to be greeted by a lovely view all the way to the sky, everything had collapsed except the outter walls. Now I just live in caves like any true hermit should, tunnel up and happily sit and shoot hordes from my outpost. Reinforce or face a view of the sky at some point basically (I waffle soz)

[YamaKami]

引用自 Hashshashin：

I would recomend reinforcing, we had a nice poi base, walled, moated, nice house on the top and put in a garde, planted up and went out to find a shopping centre or some worm sign. We returned, crossed moat, went through wall and opened the front door, to be greeted by a lovely view all the way to the sky, everything had collapsed except the outter walls. Now I just live in caves like any true hermit should, tunnel up and happily sit and shoot hordes from my outpost. Reinforce or face a view of the sky at some point basically (I waffle soz)

If you drop a sleeping bag as a marker below, you could tunnel down more easily than up I reckon. No gravel caves in that would kill you that way either ;)

[Pook and Pie]

I figured out the problem. After the second time of trying different pillar locations inside the base, our floor caved in.

Went underneath and filled in this whole area of the tunnel, went back topside and tried it again and only one pillar was needed. No roof cave in this time.

That was very weird, though, that a cave system being a little ways under our base caused our roof to fall in the first couple times. Oh well, it's in alpha and this kind of stuff is to be expected.