Stability Confusion & Broken Boat/Dock Connection (Demo Version)

[s_linkletter]

I am confused about stability. I am familiar with the concept from playing Conan Exiles. In that game, the further from a support your decking was, the less stable it became.

Now to this game. I have had platforms made of wooden cubes that appeared to alternate 60-70 stability with 30-40 stability. When I removed one of the 30ish stability blocks that was next to the wall, the ones further from the wall became 70-80 stability.

A more concrete example is a stack of four wooden cubes acting as a support for a concrete overhang above a concrete column that extends as far down in the ocean as I can follow it. The blocks are, in order from the bottom to the top, 74%, 94%, 97%, and 98%. I do not understand this.

Now the Boat/Dock issue. I built a dock at high tide, and put the boat next to it (the Talita). The tide soon dropped and the boat was far too low for anyone to reach it. Eventually the ocean dropped a bit and I moved the dock at the next high tide. It is now next to the boat, but the boat says there is no available dock. I cannot move the boat. I assigned crew to it but I cannot move it or give it any commands. The sailors never got onto the boat. They just stood there on a platform. So I unassigned them and now boat says nothing. The dock says no boat can dock to it. The boat is right there. I'm confused.

[The Onyx Tiger]

I made a pretty good bridge across a large gap with two pillars in the middle with two of those triangle supports on each side to form a T and using basic cubes to form the bridge and pillars.. but it would keep collapsing.

It stands upright just fine if the bridge is identical but doesn't have the T-Supports.

The bridge should work, but didn't. I was pretty bummed about it. :P

[Pezzo]

Yeah for some reason connecting two previously separated overhangs reduces stability rather than increases it, which feels very unintuitive.

[Lanthrudar]

Originally posted by Pezzo:

Yeah for some reason connecting two previously separated overhangs reduces stability rather than increases it, which feels very unintuitive.

What do you mean b y "overhang"? Depending on the structure, suddenly adding a lot of weight off one side of it, even if that connected to another building, would add a lot more stress on the structure overall.

What would be nice is if we could make solid wood, metal or stone pillars to help support things. Or have angled buttresses that would add a little more strength too.

[Pezzo]

Originally posted by Lanthrudar:

Originally posted by Pezzo:

Yeah for some reason connecting two previously separated overhangs reduces stability rather than increases it, which feels very unintuitive.

What do you mean b y "overhang"? Depending on the structure, suddenly adding a lot of weight off one side of it, even if that connected to another building, would add a lot more stress on the structure overall.

Well, when building supports out from a ledge, the parts closest to the map structure are the most stable, decreasing in stability until you reach zero, right?

However, if you build out some supports from the other end of the gap, and connect them in the center, the structure will suddenly not be stable, despite being stable if you build past the center from one end initially. It's like the game only calculates stability from one direction and never takes additional "anchor points" into account.

[Paraleo]

Agree with Pezzo, calculations seem off at least for the wood, metal which can be considered aluminium when talking about loads (no steel in the demo)
I noticed also the metal triangle is not considered as a true support for stuff that is above it (barely counts) which leads to stuff failing and players scratching their heads.
As an extreme example I had a bridge falling while I was working on a different piece not connected to it, the only thing there was is that they were sharing the same old world ruin as a base but those can't break.
Anyway I am keeping an eye on the game.

[Cidriel]

I found that sometimes the order of items added to a set of connected structures will dictate the stability calculations, as opposed to doing everything all at once when you unpause (provided you were building in the Pause screen after a collapse, as most often happens with me).

so for example, before unlocking the triangle/arc support beams, I can't build straight across a 13-block gap with any combination of support blocks - not a single row, not a double row, no amount of stacking or adding supports to the sides would work. nothing existed below in the middle to support from below with pillars.

however, if at the middle of the bridge I built two of the 2-block high stairs back-to-back with supports under it, and deleted 1 support block under the first step? somehow the entire thing is stable, and the center has the highest values (50s and 70s) whereas the blocks at the end would be only lie 5% or 8.

if you look at it's super funny, and not at all realistic. I feel like a lot of work needs to be done still to make sure the physics are consistently applied and the actual final constructed bridges and walkways make sense. showing some kind of weight value or giving more information to the player about the impact that certain tiles have on stability would also be good. right now there's only a few pieces that state that they are weak or strong for stability - junk walkways and the support arc as examples.

[s_linkletter]

I was able to cope with what the game called stability by mentally renaming it to "stress tolerance". So the bits closest to the stable structures we are building off of use up their stress tolerance as we add bits further out. The thing will break where the stress tolerance goes negative. The weird thing is that I can build from one stable base to another and the pieces don't recognize the second base as a source of weight-bearing capacity. The part I built goes from 4% to 98% end-to-end, instead of being maxed in the middle and more stressed (lower "support") at both ends. This is a weakness in the calculations.