Airtightness that isn't, dead elevator blocks

[VulcanTourist]

I have a vertical elevator shaft in a mountain base, the shorter of two (by far), that is fully enclosed by blocks, shows as airtight and containing oxygen throughout. However, a third of the way up the shaft the airtightness becomes a lie and the elevator blocks are nonfunctional, and this state remains until exiting the top of the shaft into the fully enclosed structure at the top; that structure is also aerated but doesn't even contain a ventilator, which is in the connecting tunnel below the shaft!

At the same point that the airtightness becomes a lie and the elevator blocks fail, I also begin to hear the howling wind sound of the mountain biome; I don't hear this in the lower third of the shaft or the connecting tunnel below or in the structure above, ONLY in the upper third of the shaft. I have rebuilt the shaft and even relocated it one block to one side, to no avail. At every step it has displayed as airtight throughout and shown continuous oxygenation, yet the dead elevator blocks and the biome intrusion remains in the upper third. When I first placed the elevator blocks the ones in the middle even showed as "off" with no lighting effect, but after the next restart that ended and hasn't returned even when I rebuilt the elevator blocks. I've even enclosed the shaft in another layer of blocks and added another ventilator right on top of the last elevator block in the structure above, and it changed nothing. This shaft could now withstand a nuclear blast.

This is one of the most bizarre inexplicable bugs I think I've ever encountered.

[ravien_ff]

Can you upload a blueprint of your base to the Steam workshop as public and link it here so people can take a look?

99% chance your base isn't actually airtight and there's a leak somewhere.

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

Can you upload a blueprint of your base to the Steam workshop as public and link it here so people can take a look?

99% chance your base isn't actually airtight and there's a leak somewhere.

If there was a leak somewhere, the airtightness would actually show as failing at some point with the Debug test; it doesn't. I'll see about blueprinting it. Otherwise I wouldn't bother because it's "part 1 of 3" separate bases that make up the whole base, and it can never be reconstructed elsewhere.

[VulcanTourist]

Published:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1569492766

Ignore the lower unfinished elevator shaft and the section under the solar panels; neither will show as airtight. I "cheated" with the airtightness and MaxCount of the small panels and also mucked with turret MaxCounts, so ignore those things. It's the now heavily armored uppermost shaft that is at issue.

[GTO]

Have you tried cycling your base power? Just taking a stab, have not looked at the bp. Since the airtightness is lost where the ele blocks are not lighted, seems like that would be an issue, if I am understanding correctly. And maybe sound is blocked or insulated through airtightness as well, which would explain why the biome noise is coming through at that spot.cycling the power and restoring it to those ele blocks would take care of the sound issue as well......but just stabbing in the wind

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by gtocloner:

Have you tried cycling your base power?

I wouldn't have expected that to affect airtightness, which isn't supposed to be dependent upon power input, and it didn't affect it. The bug is still present.

Originally posted by gtocloner:

...but just stabbing in the wind

I saw whut ya did there.

[ravien_ff]

Your base is too tall to spawn. If you take your blueprint and try to spawn it into a creative game you'll see what I mean.

That is probably what is causing your airtight issue.

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

Your base is too tall to spawn. If you take your blueprint and try to spawn it into a creative game you'll see what I mean.

That is probably what is causing your airtight issue.

Then why is the small building at the top of that elevator shaft still airtight and sealed to the elements? You step away from the top elevator block and immediately you can breath again and the biome sounds stop. You'd expect everything past whatever limit is being imposed to be affected. And why would the game let me build something in survival mode that can't even be spawned in creative? That makes no sense.

[Dark Altair]

I was able to spawn this base in creative mode, but I dont see walls or floors. To make the base airtight, you have to add walls and floor. The rock doesnt give any airtightness. Overall, I think this base is too big. I got error "Too far away from the center of the structure"

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by Dark Altair:

I was able to spawn this base in creative mode, but I dont see walls or floors. To make the base airtight, you have to add walls and floor. The rock doesnt give any airtightness. Overall, I think this base is too big. I got error "Too far away from the center of the structure"

It has walls and floors, except for the unfinished bottom elevator shaft and the linked remote turret installations. The native stone hangar part of the base is another story, but that's a story you don't even see in the blueprint. I know how to make a structure airtight. The entire reason this post exists is because I do know how and the game isn't behaving as expected.

[VulcanTourist]

I abandoned the elevator shaft and much of the connecting tunnel, and reengineered it as a very long stairway. That eliminated the biome sound intrusion, but the uppermost part of the stairway AGAIN had issues with oxygenation even though it was fully enclosed and airtight. I managed to achieve oxygenation in that upper part of the stairway by placing ventilators every half dozen blocks or so in the stairwell ceiling, but then I considered how much energy that was wasting and so gave up fighting this bug and just left the tunnel and stairway airless, with a door at the top of the stairwell to preserve the airtightness in the structure at the top. I haven't identified the conditions that caused the bug, so I have nothing more to add. It's obviously rare and hard to reproduce, if it's not a bug new to 8.x, because I've never encountered it before in my mega-engineering and probably won't ever again.

[ravien_ff]

I too did not see any walls or floors. Just a long elevator shaft, cut off about 2/3rds of the way to the top, and then some floating turrets and solar panels and maybe a few other assorted blocks.

Vulcan, spawn your blueprint in a creative game so you can see what we're talking about. It is most likely the cause of your airtight issues. Perhaps the blocks you think are there, actually aren't.

As to why the game would let you build past the limit... I got nothing. A technical oversight on the devs part for this stage of alpha, most likely not a priority to fix yet.

For now, you'll need to split your creations up into smaller, separate bases to avoid errors such as this. :(

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

I too did not see any walls or floors. Just a long elevator shaft, cut off about 2/3rds of the way to the top, and then some floating turrets and solar panels and maybe a few other assorted blocks.

Vulcan, spawn your blueprint in a creative game so you can see what we're talking about. It is most likely the cause of your airtight issues. Perhaps the blocks you think are there, actually aren't.

The airtightness issue is nowhere near where the walls you don't see are, so while I dunno why you don't see the walls of the primary structure (around where you see solar panels) it can't have any effect or bearing on the place where the issue is occurring. The tunnel and stairs (now) where it's happening branches off that main structure and is separated from it by an airtight door. I'll try your suggestion when I can regardless, since I'm curious whether I'll see the same.

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

For now, you'll need to split your creations up into smaller, separate bases to avoid errors such as this. :(

I already am! What you were trying to spawn was one of three! Crap, do I need to snip off a chunk from #3 and create and align #4?! The alignment is tedious at odd rotation angles like this base, and then I have to place one structure's forcefield behind another structure's door (or second forcefield) to keep the illusion of continuous airtightness. The alignment must be precise to within decimals that the ents and di commands won't even display.

[ravien_ff]

Ooohhhh.. Wait, so the walls are part of a different structure?

I noticed something while making a cargo HV. If I spawned it inside my airtight oxygenated base, when I sat in the open cockpit, it would say there was no O2 and I'd have to wear my helmet even though I was in a fully airtight and oxygenated room.

Maybe if you are inside the elevator shaft, you are considered to be "inside" the base that has the elevator, and since "elevator base" is NOT airtight, the game considers it not airtight, even though that base is sitting inside another base that IS airtight.

Is that what's going on?

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

Ooohhhh.. Wait, so the walls are part of a different structure?

Nope, the walls belong to that structure. The problem is waaaay weirder than that. The point of alignment between what you tried to spawn and the next structure was the door at the bottom of the very long elevator shaft below the main building (and the buggy area was down the long tunnel branching off that and sealed by a door). Nothing else above that door touches any other base structure (yet, if I take your advice and make another).

The disembodied turrets you saw, BTW, are physically separate but linked to the base with the [N] menu. Remember, this is at the top of a mountain ridge, and I had to get crazy creative to get effective fields of fire. The damned drones were sneaking up valleys to attack that upper base, not flying over the mountaintops! The slopes were so steep that turrets placed flat on the ridge couldn't fire down the slope. I did that anyway at first, and found out the hard way that the drones were gonna be sneaky.

[TwitchyJ]

Originally posted by VulcanTourist:

The tunnel and stairs (now) where it's happening branches off that main structure and is separated from it by an airtight door.

Well, this is what we see.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570390767
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570390793


Without video or smaller blueprints there's no way we can help when we can't even see or interact with your structure. You need to build smaller until the devs fix bugs like this, stop building to or close to the limits. Yes, you may not like it, but you need to break your structures down into smaller parts (or just accept that no one will be able to help you because of the size you built at.)

If I follow correctly, the area you are having the problem branches off the bottom of that elevator shaft? If so then this is the wrong blueprint, we need the section that branches off.