No weight in manual

[dholland]

I'm still trying to complete all levels without looking at a walkthrough. But I read the forum posts for general tips. The fact that materials have no weight, only joints is not at all obvious and should be in the manual. There is no way to work this out from playing. I had given up on levels requiring counterweights because of not knowing this, even though I thought of using counterweights. Another non-obvious point is that road sections can move through each other during hydraulic phases without breaking or being strained, as if the other road was not present. This I worked out through play. I would like to solve the puzzles without looking at other people's solutions, but if there are more unrealistic exploits that are required to solve levels I'd like to be warned, without being shown a solution.

For people trying to solve without walkthroughs: I've completed 81 levels so far. Only one in the last regular world (I haven't unlocked the bonus world). 70 under stress and budget.

[Zautos]

You can deffenetly learn for how the game physics work from playing or testing in game
http://steamcommunity.com/app/367450/discussions/0/483366528923135119/ that is how this person figured it out.

Also Road has weight as well.

Split joins with the number 2 don't colide with the ground. Don't think you need this one, but it can help.

And i think you can solve all levels with out counterweights on them.

I know there are workshop levels where you need to use it.

Split joints can conect to split joints. not an exploit but something that people forget.

[dholland]

Thanks. The forum list is so long I missed that post. It's very technical and hard for me to understand. I've been having a lot of trouble implementing ideas, and this is at least partly not understanding the physics model in the game. The other part is that it's so darned fiddly sometimes! Like the only one level, where in my solution I had to allow the effect of gravity to tip the drawbridge parts enough, but a tiny bit too much and they would collapse. I tend to get frustrated by the game limitations, like on hydraulics only stretching or compressing up to 50% -- er, why? Maybe when I've digested all these points I'll have a better chance at building some of the real monster bridges. But I need a lot more lateral thinking ideas on the tougher levels. It gets very annoying. I had what I thought was a brilliant, cheap solution to the head-on collision of two buses, until it failed because a split joint without any hydraulics locked (didn't know that would happen) when I wanted it free to pivot. But maybe that's considered an exploit.

It seems unfair when the very design of some levels forces you into exploits like adding ramps on a non-jump level. I also get frustrated about the thickness of road being enough to stop many vehicles driving past it, which forces the unphysical solution of having road below the surface of the track the vehicle is on, and allowing it to move up through the track under hydraulics and lift a vehicle. Pretty unreal, and it reminds me of that famous criticism of sci-fi episodes where people are out of phase with solid matter and able to walk through walls. So why don't they fall through the floor?

Yes, I knew about split joints connecting to other split joints and locking after moving (usually under hydraulics but maybe you can use counterweights). I used that on a few bridges. It's very useful because the locked joints are so much stronger.

I forgot about the sandbox, where I guess you can test any hypothesis to destruction.

[dholland]

The post says that road connected to anchors is unbreakable. This may be true at the anchor joint, but it is easy enough to break the road with a vehicle (so it breaks at the other joint), so in practice not so useful.

[dholland]

I didn't understand why cable not using joints is heavy. Surely it shouldn't weigh anything if only joints and roads have weight, like the discussion of featherweight steel arch bridges.

[dholland]

I think I've unwittingly used the fact that higher arches have no more weight than lower arches with equal joint numbers. I had a hand-made wooden arch bridge with a low arch which collapsed. I used the arc tool which forced a much higher arch. Although I had to modify it so the vehicle could get up the slope, this one didn't collapse, even under the weight of vehicle, which I didn't expect without more reinforcing. I'm not sure whether that was because of perfect symmetry or some difference in load distribution in higher arches.

[dholland]

Which leads me to the question: what kinds of curves and slope degrees are best in the game? Circular arcs are better than straight lines, but are other kinds of curve with non-constant curvature useful?

[Zautos]

this might help you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truss_bridge

Also can you show gifs of what you are meaning. It's hard to know what you mean.

[dholland]

What I meant by a curve that isn't just an arc of a circle: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771571764 The middle section is an arc, but it gave too steep a slope for the vehicle, so I dropped it down and made the outer parts less steep. Maybe I should be using more verticals rather than the approximate equilateral triangles.

[bolt986]

I think your curve is pretty good in this bridge it is very close to mine. Here is my solution (been #1 for quite a while now)
http://imgur.com/a/bDZZB

Not really sure if your going for super low budget but many times the ideas for low budget and strong are the same.

I think the main area you can improve your bridge is first to limit your trusses and number of nodes in your design. The diamond shapes you have at the top are incredibly useful. However they add two extra nodes of weight. Also your bridge is 14 roads compared to mine which uses 13. Having one less road means less trusses and nodes.

Also note the 'T' braces I have in the middle. These are used as an alternative to the diamond designs i'm using on the bottom (there are two layers of wood rods on top of the T). The 'T' brace that I'm using is more expensive than a diamond but weighs less due to having one less node. I think the 'T' is a little weaker than the diamond. Also by moving the middles of your diamonds closer together you can save marginally on your budget.

Edit: Opened wrong bridge, actually my #1 solution is $21,829 seen here. Same basic design tho just obsessively tweaked to not need the extra stuff.
http://imgur.com/a/P5xft

[dholland]

Thanks, but I already solved that level -- I deliberately gave you that one to avoid you spoiling solutions for me. And yes, I'm not very interested in improving beyond budget and strain, I'm interested in working out the ideas, myself, required to solve each level. It's not fun for me to copy someone else's solution and then try to slightly improve it, but I accept that other people may like to do that. I also don't want to spoil any of the more difficult levels for other people that I've solved.

For people who don't like full solution spoilers: here's a hint I just worked out for some of the more difficult hydraulic levels, where you have to move road through a larger distance than is comfortable or possible with direct hydraulics. For example, you might have a limited number of hydraulics, not enough to move the distance directly, or you might have no limit but the direct distance is so long that it is unwieldy to chain a large number of hydraulics twice that distance. What you need is a gearing system, whereby when your hydraulics move a certain distance, the gearing makes another part of the structure (containing road that has to move) move through a greater distance. Once you think of that, there's a pretty obvious engineering solution.