I've read the guides, but I'm dense and still don't understand. Please help.

[Zalkenai]

Hi Everyone, I'm trying to build a lovely outdoor space like I've seen here, but I'm running into some issues. How do you build farther away from your base?  When I'm laying down surfaces with clipping off, I'm still constrained to the squares next to the room.  What am I doing wrong?  Screenshot for reference.

 

 

[Obsidius]

You basically need to build a huge room under wear the outside part will be, fill it, an put your lawn on top of it.

 

Whenever you see a "base" that's nothing but outside area, that's basically what's been done. Somebody gets the largest supported plot and puts the largest supported room in it. Then, they fill the room completely and start building on top of it.

[Zalkenai]

15 minutes ago, Obsidius said:

You basically need to build a huge room under wear the outside part will be, fill it, an put your lawn on top of it.

 

Whenever you see a "base" that's nothing but outside area, that's basically what's been done. Somebody gets the largest supported plot and puts the largest supported room in it. Then, they fill the room completely and start building on top of it.

 

Thank you, that makes so much more sense. That would mean that I'd have to start over, which I'm not willing to do (I don't think). So I'll have to content myself with whatever I can build indoors.

[Ventriloquist]

Honestly, there doesn't seem to be a ton in that base that would serve as a disincentive to restarting.  (i.e.:  It doesn't appear you have 1800 decorative objects, etc.)

 

But a lot of us can empathize with having an "oh boy, I have to start over again, don't I?" moment.

 

Generally, if you want free reign to do a comprehensive upstairs / downstairs layout, you go with a 24x28 plot in which you drop a 24x24 room.

 

Then you can repack that 24x24 space into however many rooms you want as depicted in the below example.  Bonus:  No more actual doorways with lighting issues, etc to deal with.  Penalty:  You can't use a bunch of different tilesets (Arcane vs Industrial vs. Tech vs. etc) if you build this way.

 

 

Edited August 16, 2019 by Ventriloquist

[ShardWarrior]

One important disadvantage to keep in mind doing the 1 room thing is that it becomes very tedious to find objects using the Current Room tab.  It can get away with using separate rooms, however it becomes tricky when editing as you'll fall through the grass floor when crossing over doorways and such.

Edited August 16, 2019 by ShardWarrior

[Obsidius]

8 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

One important disadvantage to keep in mind doing the 1 room thing is that it becomes very tedious to find objects using the Current Room tab.  It can get away with using separate rooms, however it becomes tricky when editing as you'll fall through the grass floor when crossing over doorways and such.

And if you use separate rooms and fall through the grass, your SG mates will do the same when they visit the base, so keep that in mind.

 

One bonus is that, with the big room idea, if you decide to do it, once you get your lawn, water, or tiles down on top of the base, you can hollow out the big room as mentioned above to use the actual in-base rooms for other space, and use the in-base teleporters to go between areas of the base.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Obsidius
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[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, Obsidius said:

And if you use separate rooms and fall through the grass, your SG mates will do the same when they visit the base, so keep that in mind. 

Only if they are in edit mode.  If not and you have a grass or some other surface plate covering the gaps between rooms, they will be fine. 

[Eva Destruction]

16 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

One important disadvantage to keep in mind doing the 1 room thing is that it becomes very tedious to find objects using the Current Room tab.  It can get away with using separate rooms, however it becomes tricky when editing as you'll fall through the grass floor when crossing over doorways and such.

Make a second build with hover.  It will make your base-building life so much easier.

[Zalkenai]

On 8/16/2019 at 4:45 PM, Ventriloquist said:

Honestly, there doesn't seem to be a ton in that base that would serve as a disincentive to restarting.  (i.e.:  It doesn't appear you have 1800 decorative objects, etc.)

 

But a lot of us can empathize with having an "oh boy, I have to start over again, don't I?" moment.

 

Generally, if you want free reign to do a comprehensive upstairs / downstairs layout, you go with a 24x28 plot in which you drop a 24x24 room.

 

Then you can repack that 24x24 space into however many rooms you want as depicted in the below example.  Bonus:  No more actual doorways with lighting issues, etc to deal with.  Penalty:  You can't use a bunch of different tilesets (Arcane vs Industrial vs. Tech vs. etc) if you build this way.

 



 

While I would agree, there are people using the base storage, and I'm not sure I want to try reorganizing. I don't know if I *could* delete their storage (I don't think so) but I wouldn't want to risk anything.

 

After some of the responses here, I was able to build on top of what I had already made, so it seems to be working out okay.

Thanks everyone!

[Ventriloquist]

It wouldn't have been necessary to delete any storage objects.  Assuming someone goes for a 24x28 plot with a 24x24 room, you use some of the unallocated space to make a 'holding' room where you transfer anything essential (entrance portal, storage objects, vendor NPCs, teleporters) so users of the base are able to function while you're remodeling the new space.

[Zalkenai]

3 minutes ago, Ventriloquist said:

It wouldn't have been necessary to delete any storage objects.  Assuming someone goes for a 24x28 plot with a 24x24 room, you use some of the unallocated space to make a 'holding' room where you transfer anything essential (entrance portal, storage objects, vendor NPCs, teleporters) so users of the base are able to function while you're remodeling the new space.

Thanks, I will keep that in mind. I may start over, but I seem to have a working method without doing so. My ego might get the better of me after seeing all the awesome bases here, however.

[Eva Destruction]

I have this same issue with people who want to actually use the base I tore down and am rebuilding.  What I did was move all the storage to the 10x2 rooms that fill in the top of the plot, plunk down the 24x24 room, filled it all in, then created a few "rooms"  in the 24x24 room and build an "it ain't pretty but everything works" functioning base there.  Then, once the above-the-base build is ready for use, I can just move the entry portal and storage up there.

Edited August 18, 2019 by Eva Destruction