Can you snap belts and pipes to a grid?

[Malidictus]

I've seen a lot of videos of this game, and most of them show building belts and pipes as free-form and grid-less. They curve at any angle and place anywhere with centimeter precision. Personally like to build things on a grid, using ideally only straight lines and right angles. Is this an option? I realise this feels like a dumb question, but it's important to me. Any help on the matter would be appreciated.

[phillip_lynx]

You can

[VuDjuBuh]

On concrete flooring you can basically get things on a grid if you feel like it

[Evilsod]

The thing that annoys me about the grid for pipes/conveyors/tubes on foundations is that it heavily restricts the direction you can orientate the pipes too.

[Arucard]

Isn't that what a grid is supposed to do?

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Evilsod:

The thing that annoys me about the grid for pipes/conveyors/tubes on foundations is that it heavily restricts the direction you can orientate the pipes too.

Heavily restricting orientation is what I'm after, though. I don't have much of a background in these kinds of building games. I used to play Transport Tycoon, Locomotion, Factorio most recently. All of these games are tile-based, with belts, lines, roads, etc. sticking to grid tiles. Then I tried playing the likes of Railway Empire, and got turned off almost immediately. Getting two lines to run in parallel was an exercise in frustration since the rails are freeform. Similarly, Subnautica has a mix of both. Some items like Habitat pieces snap together in rigid ways, but other things like planer and fabricators and lockers are free-form and thus almost impossible to line up with each other. For personal reasons, that bothers me.

Originally posted by VuDjuBuh:

On concrete flooring you can basically get things on a grid if you feel like it

So grids require concrete flooring? Am I to understand that you can't align things to a grid on grass, but you can if you pave the ground? Does the concrete flooring itself conform to a grid of some kind? I'm not arguing, more just asking because this is interesting to me. I'm actually looking to buy the game, is why I'm curious :)

[Evilsod]

I'm referring more to the direction of the conveyor, not the position of the pole/support. Running stuff parallel is trivial on foundation, but if you're attempting to run them at an angle, the support will snap itself to a very limited direction and stick a curve in the belt for no reason.

Its more just aesthetically annoying.

[War Wizard Grymzst]

OP, please contact me. I will answer all of your questions in one simple conversation.

[VuDjuBuh]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

So grids require concrete flooring? Am I to understand that you can't align things to a grid on grass, but you can if you pave the ground? Does the concrete flooring itself conform to a grid of some kind? I'm not arguing, more just asking because this is interesting to me. I'm actually looking to buy the game, is why I'm curious :)

Basically You put concrete flooring down anywhere on the grass (the grass has no grid and concrete flooring doesn't have to be in a specific location as long as it's on horizontal land) and the concrete flooring creates the grid itself, you can attach more flooring the first (as it just snaps to the one next to it) to expand your flooring. Then you have your building grid to place your machinery / belts / pipes on.
Since concrete is basically the cheapest thing in the game it's really easy to make floors.

Edit:
A pic of my W.I.P. factory so you can see it's all pretty nicely alligned.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2139442922

Only things that don't seem to want to allign are the spiltters/mergers you put on belts when they're higher (probably lower too) then where you try to get the actual materials.
But as long as it's placed directly on the concrete flooring it will snap to the grid.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

So grids require concrete flooring? Am I to understand that you can't align things to a grid on grass, but you can if you pave the ground? Does the concrete flooring itself conform to a grid of some kind? I'm not arguing, more just asking because this is interesting to me. I'm actually looking to buy the game, is why I'm curious :)

You CAN align things on the grass, but it will never be a pixel perfect alignment. Unless you are a god at judging alignment.

Foundations do not correspond to any grid, they are placed like any other building, but anything built on top of them can only be built according to an invisible grid. Why does it work like that. Simple answer: because foundations provide level ground. It's much easier to provide a well working grid that allows you to align everything pixel perfectly if you have a level ground where that grid can be placed on. At least that's what I think the methodology was when the devs undoubtedly encountered the same issue.

So yes, you can make a restrictive grid that's easy to work with and align everything in a line in an absolutely perfect fashion. You just need to build things on foundations.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by DaBa:

So yes, you can make a restrictive grid that's easy to work with and align everything in a line in an absolutely perfect fashion. You just need to build things on foundations.

That's all I needed to hear :) Thank you, this solves my issue. Build foundations and everything else snaps. That's good enough, I think.

Originally posted by DaBa:

Foundations do not correspond to any grid, they are placed like any other building, but anything built on top of them can only be built according to an invisible grid. Why does it work like that. Simple answer: because foundations provide level ground. It's much easier to provide a well working grid that allows you to align everything pixel perfectly if you have a level ground where that grid can be placed on. At least that's what I think the methodology was when the devs undoubtedly encountered the same issue.

So in other words, foundations don't snap to anything, but everything built on them snaps to the foundation. This seems consistent with something like Space Engineers, where the first block placed down determines the orientation of the "station" grid, but different ships and stations can have grids in arbitrary orientation relative to each other. Roger.

Originally posted by GreenBeret63Echo:

OP, please contact me. I will answer all of your questions in one simple conversation.

That's OK, I got the information I was looking for. I'm preoccupied with other things at the moment so I won't be jumping into Satisfactory directly. I'll post on the forums again if I have questions.

[cswiger]

Note that you can keep foundation blocks aligned for distant sites.

Just face a consistent direction (like due North) when placing the first one, and you'll find that your alignment will be good if you join them via a skybridge or whatever.

[Gorby]

Originally posted by cswiger:

Note that you can keep foundation blocks aligned for distant sites.

Just face a consistent direction (like due North) when placing the first one, and you'll find that your alignment will be good if you join them via a skybridge or whatever.

That's what I like about it - the rotations of the foundations (and everything you can build on the grass/dirt) is the same no matter which direction you're facing. That and the fact that you can place foundations just about anywhere.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by cswiger:

Note that you can keep foundation blocks aligned for distant sites.

Just face a consistent direction (like due North) when placing the first one, and you'll find that your alignment will be good if you join them via a skybridge or whatever.

Except that won't work.

- Even a slight difference, literally a single degree of rotational difference will cause massive discrepancies over large distances. So, unless you are lucky and you manage to align them absolutely pixel perfectly without any guidelines, using only a hud element, things will never connect over large distances by doing this.

- Even if you somehow manage to accomplish the above, that still will only make the rotation align. Width and Length will still not be aligned. And you can't do anything about that without connecting the two spots with foundations.

The only other option is using the save editor to ensure the rotation of both is absolutely perfect, and the distance between them is perfectly spaced, so the foundations would connect perfectly if you extended both.

Edit: Oh yeah, forgot about the height. That's also a major issue. Won't work either. That method literally doesn't work my dude.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by cswiger:

Note that you can keep foundation blocks aligned for distant sites. Just face a consistent direction (like due North) when placing the first one, and you'll find that your alignment will be good if you join them via a skybridge or whatever.

By "good" I assume you mean "close enough?" The reason I specifically asked about a grid was because I tend to not be very good at aligning things manually if those things can be moved and rotated free-form. I've noticed that walkways, belts and pipes in this game will morph to assume any arbitary angle, so I don't expect there to be an issue with CONNECTING individual installtions, as long as I don't want them to BE the same installation.

Again, Space Engineers had the same issue, to the point of possessing a "merge block" able to merge two individual entities (ships in that case) into a single unified grid.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Originally posted by cswiger:

Note that you can keep foundation blocks aligned for distant sites. Just face a consistent direction (like due North) when placing the first one, and you'll find that your alignment will be good if you join them via a skybridge or whatever.

By "good" I assume you mean "close enough?" The reason I specifically asked about a grid was because I tend to not be very good at aligning things manually if those things can be moved and rotated free-form. I've noticed that walkways, belts and pipes in this game will morph to assume any arbitary angle, so I don't expect there to be an issue with CONNECTING individual installtions, as long as I don't want them to BE the same installation.

Again, Space Engineers had the same issue, to the point of possessing a "merge block" able to merge two individual entities (ships in that case) into a single unified grid.

Yeah, they wouldn't actually align. That method does not work. As I said in my own comment, either keep building foundations from a single origin point to maintain the consistency of rotation, length and height (after which you can delete the ones that are not necessary anymore), or use some tools to help you with that. For example:

- Edit the world in an interactive map and make sure the foundations will align over long distances by adjusting their position.

- Use a mod that allows you to build things in bulk to create a very long, makeshit foundation bridge to the area you want to build in, then use it as a point of origin for your new base. Much faster than doing it by hand, trust me. Been there, done that. After that you can just delete the rest and problem solved.