1 mechanic in the game I just can't figure out.

[HuMaNgUtAn]

A recent post in the big suggestion thread got me thinking about this. It is a mechanic that affects foundations and walls but the example posted there reminded me how it affects walkways.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2572434708

So why is it that foundations and walkways will sometimes automatically rotate 90 degrees with every placement creating this kind of ugliness ? It a real problem for walkway crossings as you can't tell if it is rotated when placing it from above.

Often when I am making a large foundation floor I'll realise halfway through that seemingly random foundations are rotated 90 degrees which looks less clean and can create problems when placing buildings if you are using the lines on the foundations as a kind of grid.

Also with walls - the "rotated" side of the wall that faces you by default often seems to be picked at random - rather than being the same as the walls surrounding it.

This all seems like the same "mechanic" to me. So does anybody know what governs it ? It is a minor issue but I would like to understand it so that it doesn't seem to be constantly working against me.

EDIT - Solved.. in addition to the marked answer this is a key piece of information.

Originally posted by Warlord:

I believe that the reason it happens to walkways is that the rotation of ALL objects in the game use the same rotation count.

[Taco Cat]

Originally posted by HuMaNgUtAn:

Also with walls - the "rotated" side of the wall that faces you by default often seems to be picked at random - rather than being the same as the walls surrounding it.

When you place a wall nexte to another wall your mouse position determines which side will be Out/inside. If your mouse is in the upper half one side will be choosen and if you place it in the lower half the other side will be choosen. Atleast thats how i remember it.

[DrNewcenstein]

Originally posted by The ChickenGod:

Originally posted by HuMaNgUtAn:

Also with walls - the "rotated" side of the wall that faces you by default often seems to be picked at random - rather than being the same as the walls surrounding it.

When you place a wall nexte to another wall your mouse position determines which side will be Out/inside. If your mouse is in the upper half one side will be choosen and if you place it in the lower half the other side will be choosen. Atleast thats how i remember it.

Wall meshes are double-sided, it's not just the texture. Each side has its own set of connection nodes that tell attachments which way to rotate, and it is determined by proximity of the mouse to each side, not so much upper and lower section. It seems that way because of the view arc, where your cursor is closer to the front or back half depending on viewing angle.

As for foundations seeming to rotate alternately, there are two things to know:
1. OCD is not a virtue
2. Rotating them manually is not an issue.

[Warlord]

I know foundations have 4 rotations. It seems to me that based on the rotation of the foundation you build off of, the NEXT foundation snap point is based upon the face of the foundation you snap to. So basically a foundation has 4 faces: A, B, C, D. If you place it so A is dead north, then the next foundation you try to attach to the A face will have ITS OWN face that snaps to it. If that face is A, and you keep building like that going north, then you have a bunch of foundations in which A is north, then C is north, then A is north, etc etc.

Since A and C are identical in look, it's next to impossible to determine if you are doing this (more later), but at least visually the blocks will all have lines the same way. It's this reason that EVERY time I place a foundation, I make sure the lines go a particular way according to the compass direction. For me, the very first foundation is placed in line with due north, and all foundations I build must attach to that one foundation and must have the two lines point N-S.

If at any time you rotate a foundation and have B or D facing the A or C side, then suddenly the lines will be at 90 degrees from the last one. Then when you build off of that, it rotates AGAIN for the next placement. This can result in what seems to be random rotations for the foundations, but that's only because you don't notice if the foundation you attach it to is an A/C face or a B/D face.

Remember earlier I said it's near impossible to tell if you are using an A or B face? You CAN tell, by using a different piece that also snaps to foundations. In particular, the ramps (double ramps probably best). Double ramps ALSO have 4 faces, but it's much easier to tell which face is A or C or B or D by whether the ramp is going up or down when attached to a foundation, or is diagonal. If the foundations are all aligned [AC][AC][AC][AC], then any ramps attached to the sides of this row will always keep the same rotation when pointing at different foundations. This is handy when you want to take a long row of foundations and have a row of ramps go up or down from that row. Each ramp will snap to the foundation at the same rotation, so you don't have to build one ramp and then build more ramps off of that one ramp with the right rotation.

Similarly, I think walls snap based on this same mechanic. They only have two faces, but the face that is turned to you might change depending on the face of the FOUNDATION you attach it to. It's possible that the A face of a wall attaches to the A AND C faces of a foundation, while the B face of a wall attaches to the other two. Some experimenting may be needed. But if this is true, then making sure that at LEAST your base foundations are aligned the same A-C or C-A way should mean the walls will always be the right rotation. At the very least, walls should keep the proper rotation if you snap them to eachother. Place one wall on a foundation rotated the way you like, then build the rest of the walls based on that, and you should be fine.

Personally, I wish that foundations were not able to be rotated 4-ways. Either make one face and all foundations snapped to a foundation are also aligned the same way, or make them have a universal face and make the floor design 4-way symmetrical so it doesn't matter.

[G0emi]

Originally posted by DrNewcenstein:

1. OCD is not a virtue

Okay, I take that personally.
What this picture is about has nothing to do with the way the walkways are rotated, its simply about how their construction below the actual way is not connecting and at this point I can rotate it manually as much as I want, the part under the 4-way and the 3-way crossing will only ever match for one particular layout that has very limited use and won't work with the way it is intended to work in this picture, and the corner piece would be rotated in the wrong direction so you couldn't walk on it as intended when you "fit" together their lower patterns.

And to get back to the original topic.
As far as walkways are concerned, for me it seems the game remembers the direction of the last piece I placed.
An example: I have build a long straight way and then I decide to take a turn. The "straight" piece I want to place right after the turn will be "wrong", facing in the direction I was once going but now elected to abandon. I turn the straight tile once and the next item I will construct points now in the desired direction.
Probably a matter of not having a lot of snap points^^
For walls I also think this applies:
When you have a line of foundations you want to build walls around it always has the same side of the wall inside. Problems only arise when you want to build a wall between two foundations. At this point it matters where you point your mouse at as it was mentioned above.
For foundations, I have never noticed x'D

[Warlord]

I believe that the reason it happens to walkways is that the rotation of ALL objects in the game use the same rotation count. So if you have a straight walkway, and want to use a curve, you swap to the curve piece. It needs to be rotated once to fit, so rotate it, BUT DO NOT PLACE IT. If you then go back to the straight walkway piece, it should not be rotated once, to face the wrong way. This is because on another device, you rotated it once, which rotates ALL other possible place-able buildings by that same number.

So in the above example, since you rotated the curve piece by one, the next time you try to attach a walkway-STRAIGHT to this walkway end, its been rotated once. It's just coincidence that it LOOKS like it hadn't been rotated away from the old direction.

Another way of seeing this might be to place a corner piece, then hold a straight piece. If you rotate it so they align properly on one end of the corner, the OTHER direction one will also be aligned properly. So changing directions when placing a lot of walkways is nice, but not if you have to rotate the corner piece when placing it.

Again, this should just be fixed so that walkways can't be snapped to any nonsense face (like a straight piece connecting sideways to another straight).

[HuMaNgUtAn]

Thx everybody for the replies.

I've been doing some testing and can confirm a lot of the information posted by Warlord in particular - and it is exactly the type of info I was looking for. It will definitely ease some of my frustrations while building in the future.

[marcusaddamsson]

One of the consistently "wtf" moments I have in Satisfactory is this 'turning' thing. Like if I'm setting out a bunch of splitters for a bank of manufacturers... I place first one, and it's facing right directions. Now in 90% of the cases when I place the same splitter on top of the just placed one, I'd want it facing the exact same way. But no, I gotta rotate it twice. Now what's really odd is if you place another splitter on the second one, it'll be facing the 'right' way...

So clearly some Dev thinks this is the 'right way' to do this.. but I surely don't get it.

[Warlord]

Splitters have another odd quirk I haven't been able to figure out. It has to do again with this universal rotation bit, but them having a top and bottom face change things up a bit. Basically, as long as the universal rotation of objects (the stars align) and the bottom splitter is placed/rotated to be in specifically one of the 4 directions, then when you attempt to place the splitter on top of that one, it might align. In ANY of the other 3 directions, the splitter will be rotated 1, 2, or 3 times depending on the direction the first splitter was rotated.

This means that for certain bases that build all splitters in a particular direction, such as those that use the (manifold?) ingredient distribution system, all splitters will have the same odd quirk of having to be rotated a particular way in 75% of bases. In my favorite base over the northern canyon, I build westward, so all buildings stretch north or south from a central alley/bus. There, every top-splitter is always one rotation off, either right or left by one. A previous game last week though, I built in the north desert. There, the base stretched due north, and half of my machines built east off a central corridor. Those machines all had the magic bonus of all second-splitters aligning perfectly with the one below, but machines that went west of that corridor were rotated twice (rotate the bottom splitter twice to face west).

Off-note: Thankfully, machines and splitters and belts don't seem to care about the direction the foundations are pointed when it comes to their rotation. Only foundations and walls seem to care about and respect the rotation of foundations. Otherwise the quirk of them would drive ALL of us nuts as a building might change rotation seemingly randomly depending on what foundation its pointed at.

[HuMaNgUtAn]

Originally posted by marcusaddamsson:

...So clearly some Dev thinks this is the 'right way' to do this.. but I surely don't get it.

Coming from me this may be a statement of the obvious - but it certainly is not intuitive.

[G0emi]

Originally posted by Warlord:

Splitters have another odd quirk I haven't been able to figure out. It has to do again with this universal rotation bit, but them having a top and bottom face change things up a bit. Basically, as long as the universal rotation of objects (the stars align) and the bottom splitter is placed/rotated to be in specifically one of the 4 directions, then when you attempt to place the splitter on top of that one, it might align. In ANY of the other 3 directions, the splitter will be rotated 1, 2, or 3 times depending on the direction the first splitter was rotated.

This means that for certain bases that build all splitters in a particular direction, such as those that use the (manifold?) ingredient distribution system, all splitters will have the same odd quirk of having to be rotated a particular way in 75% of bases. In my favorite base over the northern canyon, I build westward, so all buildings stretch north or south from a central alley/bus. There, every top-splitter is always one rotation off, either right or left by one. A previous game last week though, I built in the north desert. There, the base stretched due north, and half of my machines built east off a central corridor. Those machines all had the magic bonus of all second-splitters aligning perfectly with the one below, but machines that went west of that corridor were rotated twice (rotate the bottom splitter twice to face west).

Off-note: Thankfully, machines and splitters and belts don't seem to care about the direction the foundations are pointed when it comes to their rotation. Only foundations and walls seem to care about and respect the rotation of foundations. Otherwise the quirk of them would drive ALL of us nuts as a building might change rotation seemingly randomly depending on what foundation its pointed at.

Ever noticed how the storage containers always turn around when you place one atop of another? That is probably because the plan is to connect them from top to bottom so you can extent the storage into the sky but still be able to grab your stuff while standing on the ground.
I'm inclined to believe that mechanic somehow operates with stacking spliters and mergers alike whether its is useful / intended or not.