Guide to fences

A guide to the construction of fences and how to get the best looking shapes.

Welcome to the ultimate guide in fence construction

Hello there rancher.
Are you looking for a guide on how to build incredible fences to help make your ranch stand out?
Well look no further. Let me present to you my humble guide to fences.
I am sure many of you have spent countless hours trying to get that last fence piece to line up perfectly, but never quite getting them to match. The frustration of planning, placing and removing blue prints over and over. Well, I hope that this guide will help alleviate some of that frustration and leave your ranch looking beautiful with all your perfectly placed fences.

Below, I will go through the angles which you can use, common shapes which can be easily made, and a starter course in making more complex shapes or patterns.
There is some level of mathematics ahead, but I shall try to keep things simple.

Angles, Angles and more Angles

Angles, it is all about the angles. By the end of this, you'll probably never want to read about angles ever again. Sadly these are key to forming your fences and making wonderful looking pens for your animals.

In short, you have 72 points of rotation, breaking down to 5 degrees each to form 360 degrees of rotation.
You have key points and angles you can work with to make lovely shapes.
But it is always best to keep to rotational points which are factors of 72 (Numbers 72 can be divided by and the result being a whole number)

Here is a table of all the suggested rotation points for best effects

Rotation #	Angle degree
1	5°
2	10°
3	15°
4	20°
6	30°
8	40°
9	45°
12	60°
18	90°
24	120°

Basic Shapes

Now you have an understanding of the best angles you can achieve with fences.
Lets talk about what shapes you can make with these angles.

Image	Name	Sides	Angles	Rotational #
	Triangle	3	120°	24
	Square	4	90°	18
	Hexagon	6	60°	12
	Octagon	8	45°	9
	Nonagon	9	40°	8
	Dodecagon	12	30°	6

Advanced Shapes

Sometimes your basic polyhedral shape won't cut it. Who wants a plain old square or octagon when you have so much more you can do.

There are some very simple, but slightly more advance shapes you can make which can have a dramatic effect on how your ranch looks.

Ellipses

Ellipses, or more affectionately known as "squashed circles," are a fantastic way to easily add a bit of individuality to your pens. Stretching out a circle to encompass more space in a single axis/direction.

Simple rules to follow
- Make sure you have symmetry in opposite sides.
- Make sure each quarter turn adds up to 90°/18 rotational points for perpendicular ends (At right angles to the other side)
- If you want an angled end, make sure the entire half ellipse adds up to 180° or 36 rotational points (see example 1)

Examples

Example 1 - Medium Ellipses with angled ends

This is an example of a smaller elliptical pen, the ends are not perpendicular to the sides.
To make this all connect, each quarter should still equal to 18, you can do this by halving the center angle on the sides.
For this example the rotational points used are 2,4,4,6 / 4 / 6,4,4,2.
This represents one entire side, where / 4 / represent the point at the center of the curve.

Example 2 - Small Ellipses with straight ends
Here is an example of a very small ellipses with perpendicular ends. Each quarter adds up to 18 rotational points and is symmetrical in 2 ways.
Each quarter uses the following rotational points - 4,6,8

Example 3 - Large Ellipses with straight ends
Here is an example of quite a large ellipses with perpendicular ends. Each quarter again adds up to 18 rotational points and has 2 way symmetry.
Each quarter uses the following rotation points - 0,1,1,2,2,3,4,5

Rounded Polygons

Rounded polygons can be as simple as a square but with rounded corners. Giving a little extra flare to your pens, without making it too complex. There are some very simple rules to follow to make sure everything lines up.

Here you can see all corners have been rounded off, this is a very simple technique using 3x6 rotational points (adding up to 18 for a 90° curve) This can be very simple and effective, and as long as all corners are the same, everything should line up.

You can also only round out 2 corners, creating this weird shape. Again, make sure the opposing corners follow the same rotational pattern.

Equilateral polygons

Sometimes you may be limited by space, or want a more unusual fence shape. An Equilateral polygon can most certainly help you here. Mixing and matching angles can make for fantastic shapes, but can be hard to master. Especially when lining up fences.

A few basic rules
- All angles should add up to 360° (72 rotational points)
- Keep to simple patterns which multiply up to 72 rotational points
- Keep opposing sides of the same length (Easier with smaller patterns)

A simple rombus can be an effective way to fill a gap.
You can vary the length of the opposing sides, or change the angles slightly. In the above example the angles used were 12 and 24 rotational points (60°+ 120°)

Another more complex example is this dodecagon (12 sided shape) although the sides are the same length, it uses a 4 - 8 pattern.

This is the same 4-8 pattern, but the lengths also alternate (1 then 3)

Freeform shapes

Feeling a little spicy? Want to go entirely freeform but still have your fences line up. In most cases experimenting is the best way to go. Keeping to factorial angles is often best, but doesn't always guarantee the ends will meet.
Try using regular shapes as described before as a base, plan out your build using these shapes and work around them
This particular example used some basic shapes connected together and then removing the inner fences. Looks a mess but everything still connects.

Disclaimer and further support

Disclaimer

Because I work with the publisher of the game, I have tools which allow me to take aerial shots and move the camera freely. These tools are not generally available to the public.
All fences in this guide can be built without the use of cheats or hacks.
The guide may be edited for completeness at a later stage, or become out of date with future updates. At this point, we will endeavour to update it with correct information where possible.

Support

Although we will do our best to answer questions about fences in the comments below and update the guide further where possible. Support requests which are unrelated to this guide will be mostly ignored and should be posted in the relevant spaces. Alternatively you can contact our support team at [e-mail]

If you have any feedback or recommendations for this guide, please feel free to leave a comment, or contact us at the aforementioned email address.

[NomadEntity]

Yeah I agree with Kiyanna. A grid system would be absolutely awesome. Or at least, like somebody else said, hold down shift to snap to 45 degrees, and a little text on the screen shows the rotation degree. But for everything, not only fence. I myself used foundations to try and create an artificial grid but didn't really work very well because can't place fence through foundation, need to remove foundation 1 by 1 when placing down the fences.

[Kiyanna]

Just a thought, maybe being able to pull up a grid overlay on the property and using it as a fence guide in addition to the current methods. Honestly, a grid overlay of the entire property perimeters would be very useful for placing buildings and fencing. Like laying a sheet of grid paper on the land to line stuff up.

[Kiyanna]

Property lines would be really helpful. If we knew where we could and couldn't build it would be easier to figure out where we could put fencing but with the way it is right now, you have to guess where to start and just hope that further down the line you want to put fencing at, there isn't a spot that you can't build in that line and having to guess which direction and how far away from you original plan you are going to have to go. It sucks getting half way down the length of the property setting up fence blue prints just to have to go back and knock it all down and start over because your fence line went through an area that can't be built on.

[truckin_up333]

This may be the most helpful post I've ever seen on Steam. Thank you!

[Cindy Carosa]

WOW!!!! Thank you so much!! this made fence building so much easier for me. THANK YOU AGAIN!!

[lilkitkatbrat]

THANK YOU holy cow. They really need to fix this either so that it shows the angle when you’re rotating it, or holding Shift while rotating snaps it to maybe 45 degree angles. I places and deleted and placed and deleted a fence blueprint for 20 minutes and was getting soooo frustrated. Knowing how to count the rotations helps immensely but I still wish it were easier so I didn’t have to slowly rotate it going “one, two, three, four, five…” at every corner.

[MMM]

Fence building sucks so hard that it made me rage quit the game until a new system is implemented

[CrazedPop]

What about a possible alternative build mode? I don't know how much of a challenge it would be the development/coding side.... I think a start/stop point would be nice. Place your first post, then have the visual indicator show the fence, and place your next post to finish that section. Would make for much easier fence placement. Maybe have an indicator of the resource cost after placing the start post. Cost being based on length. So, up to the length of the original fence would have the same cost. Then once you pass that, it would be the cost of two fence lengths. I know that part seems obvious,

That's my idea for the fence issue. A lot of people seem to have complaints about it.

[Tiki]

I agree with @Thanaton1982, the snap feature would be awesome, especially someone like me w/a intense needs for things to be aligned.

[Thanaton1982]

A feature to snap to existing buildings would be great as I like to build symmetrically