Odd building supports

[Mythandros]

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to make the supports work, but no matter what I do, it seems my building just explodes. Roofing doesn't make sense and no matter what's done, it'll most likely fall apart. Even platforms with supports on all four corners will take random damage and act like they're barely being supported. Does being further away from the Workbench cause buildings to take damage over time or something?

[ⒿⒿ]

If wood is not protected by a roof it will take damage from the rain For stability make sure the poles are touching the ground and for bigger buildings if you odnt have stone you gonna need poles going from roof to bottom quite often :)

[Mythandros]

That's the thing, I've tossed in so many different supports that it doesn't make sense that my inside is being damaged or falling apart. I've used different angles and I can't get the roof to actually recognize the supports. Is it a single support that actually works and anything more just diminishes what's there?

[mcb0ny]

Screenshots of what you are trying to build would help to pinpoint the issue ;]

[hektor]

Originally posted by Nastro:

Is it a single support that actually works and anything more just diminishes what's there?

It should only take one. Most often the problem is the supports aren't quite reaching the ground. Does it blast away immediately or over time?

[ⒿⒿ]

Originally posted by Nastro:

That's the thing, I've tossed in so many different supports that it doesn't make sense that my inside is being damaged or falling apart. I've used different angles and I can't get the roof to actually recognize the supports. Is it a single support that actually works and anything more just diminishes what's there?

what i have noticed also is that sometimes i need to build the support from roof down to floor and not floor to roof. so making sure it is properly attached to the roof. But yes it can be a hell getting support right. And also it doesnt seem like horizontal beams add any support

[ICBM 16]

As you build further away from the ground the structural integrity goes down. Light blue highlight for full support, then green until red. So you might need a support beam (the longer or stronger the better) to the roof from the ground/floor.

If the building parts are taking damage they need a roof over them.

Longer/stronger support beams, like core wood or iron/wood beams allow for taller builds. Not to mention stone parts once you get a stonecutter table.

[Mythandros]

Originally posted by hektor:

Originally posted by Nastro:

Is it a single support that actually works and anything more just diminishes what's there?

It should only take one. Most often the problem is the supports aren't quite reaching the ground. Does it blast away immediately or over time?

This happens a little after placing it, but no matter how much support an area has, the roof turns red before breaking and I can't get the supports to work.

[Gromarch]

The structural support goes from light blue; foundation, anything that has contact to the ground. From there, each piece have a color that ranges from green, through yellow to red, all dependent on the material used and the numper of pieces its away from a foundation piece. Once it turn red, you'll have a collpase.
Its quite simple once you get the hang of it.

Here's a picture of a pre-Wood iron beam house that uses stone and core wood for support. The stoe acts as a "ground" for the wood pieces, so when building on top of stone, with wood you can go higher than when just using wood beams. Log beams increase the height you can go a bit as well. Wood iron beam being the current pinacle of structural support afaik.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2432251481

Pay attention to the colours when you have your hammer equipped. If you don't wish to spend more time on trial and error, do a YT search; there'sa ton of vids explaining everything you need to know.

[webmetalreese]

When you say the supports aren't touching the ground it makes me think that you are building from the top down rather than the bottom up.

First and foremost learn the hoe and pick and how to level out the terrain before attempting anything. If you don't have a solid foundation because you are relying solely on snapping gets it right every time, you will fail.

The higher you go the less reliable it gets. you can easily fix this by simply attaching small posts to outlying links.

And for me, wood was a pita - I switched to stone and life is easy street now.

[Gromarch]

Originally posted by webmetalreese:

First and foremost learn the hoe and pick and how to level out the terrain before attempting anything. If you don't have a solid foundation because you are relying solely on snapping gets it right every time, you will fail. ....

I disagree 100% with this part.
First, every time you swing that hoe, you create new instances fast, that contributes to the loading tie of the area, eventually increasing lag and decreasing fps. Known problem.
If you're going really big and won't adapt to the landscape, by all means terraform, but be aware of the consequence.
Secondly, we've successfully build plenty of medium size mansions thst works perfect without terraforming first, it can be done just fine.

[Dankirk]

The most common mistake is probably building the supports on floor boards which may or may not touch the ground, and thus might not actually support much of anything. Check that the supports on ground level are blue when looked at with a hammer in hand.

[Wridian]

Sometimes the structural integrity system just makes no sense. I did some significant stone building recently and keep finding random parts breaking. And I don't mean breaking in about a second or two of placing them or changing something, I mean they seem fine for in-game days, then out of nowhere I find random parts are gone and their materials are sitting in their place. I Fix those parts and then later other parts decide to break. Meanwhile most of the blocks behave perfectly normally.

[Weaver]

You know how to google? Maybe do so. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tScU0d5igLU

[sunToxx]

The component touching the ground or some natural part of the map, is your anchor. From this anchor, you can go a certain number of steps, depending on the material you use. So you can build horizontally without any supports for example, as long as its not too many steps from your anchor. But at the same time, if your building is too high, you cant place a roof, cause the roof tiles got too many steps to your anchor (blue). Try making a shortcut for your roof, for example with stone or hardwood.

[jonnin]

horizontal supports do work; its the only way to put rock floor tiles across on higher levels, but its weird. 1 ironwood bar supports 2 floor tiles each, up to some distance from whatever the beams are anchored to and somewhat depending on how high up that piece was.

Support has little to do with physics or architecture. Its a game mechanic that will seem very odd until you get a feel for how it works. A beam that in real life would indeed add support may do nothing at all in game, and a beam in game that adds support may actually cause instability in real life.