Improving your Builds with Heavy Pipes

This small guide will give you tips and tricks on how to improve your builds with the rather useless Heavy Pipe block.

Getting Started

To let you all know, I'm not trying to teach you one exact technique that can be only done one way. I try to give you a few methods and tips on what possibilites there are, and to inspire you to make your own.

Where to Place

Pipes can look good on any building, may it be an old, comfy cottage or a futuristic space factory. It's like putting a cherry on ice cream.

But how you place those pipes clearly depends on the location you have or are going for. If it's a crammed, industrial area you do want to place these pipes in every corner and if it's just your small, wooden house you only want to put one or two in.



On stuff like spas, restaurants or houses it's better to keep those heavy pipes a bit more hidden, like keeping them in the corner of a corridor. That way those pipes maybe go unnoticed, but makes the overall building look more detailled.

How to Place (and Extras)

Theres something magical about those pipes. For the most part, I'll use them to make my builds look more detailled and logical, wich makes them one of my favorie blocks in starbound.

The best way to place them is to keep them at the end/sides of the room, going vertically down, maybe make it split into two pipes near the floor or ceiling. And of course, keep them on the background, unless you want to make some kind of complex pipe system or simply to block a path.



I want you to take a good look at the screenshots above, they give a better example of what I am trying to explain. If you want to go full-logic mode, you cam make them connected between some rooms with their individual colors. It's best to have only a few types of colors for your different pipes, so it doesn't look too chaotic there. You can also even give each color their own use, like one for oxygen, the other one for water (...) Of course, they do not really have a use outside of aesthetics, unless you use mods but it's still a pretty cool thing to have.


Some more methods you can do is to just make pipes to turn a small corner, like the white pipe in the last screenshot above. You can also see a small room with pipes above, stuff like this can even be see on the normal outpost. It's not just eye candy, but can be pretty practical to replace walls or make your room smaller. It has a more logical use too, to make these pipes look connected and have an actual system. I recommend you use techniques such as this one on more industrial builds, maybe even laboratories.

Conclusion

So yes, it's always useful to have a few spare Heavy Pipes while building your house. I hope I've helped you somehow, maybe even inspired you with my more or less - clumsy guide. I plan to improve and do more of these in the future, why not give me some ideas on what kind of block or topic you want to see a guide of.

Thank you very much for your attention!

[Pinkie Badger Honey Pie]

I just started doing this and it has been quite addicting adding plumbing to my buildings.

[boberta plums]

I made a lil bit of a novakid train byos ship and used pipes in places on the external because sloped pipes + sloped hull panels go well together, and you can make the hull wrap around the pipe in nice ways. That might be a nice addition to this.

[elliott.kraig]

maybe a guide on using earth and rocky materials for like asteroid ships using b.y.o.s. mod or stuff like that

[immortal ♡]

This guide is really cool. Just my own suggestion that may fall on deaf ears but I think it would be really cool to have an examples section where you post different creations using pipes in cool ways.

[Jeb T. Firefly]

I will definitely start using this block more in my builds... Thanks so much!
Now I just have to remember the crafting recipe...

[dmn]

@MyDiamondXboxisCool Thank you very much! I feel like the guide looks outdated for the progress after made after writing it, it's heartwarming to see people still appreciate it one year later.

[Chronos "Salty" Pliskin]

I like to see a guide on how to use wood and what not to do when using wood.

[VintageDegenerate]

I rewarded ya, Keep up the work

[Dezmeeno]

wish i was good at building lol

[Faba]

A guide on background wall compositon would be nice! (e.g what materials to use to get certain effects)