Building Strategies

The purpose of this page is to give a player help and or tips and to show the best way for building bases.

Base Structures

 * The base walls must not stop the monsters (or they will just break them), they must make them come by one or two entrances. And you protect those entrances with a lot of turrets.
 * Try to build the base (in part at least) underground so your structure can be supported by the natural background and do not risk collapse when attacked.
 * Use the natural rocks to protect some sides of your base

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Here is an example of a T2 base, that works very well in brutal - player don't have to help defend almost at all (maybe a very little, as in brutal turrets die very, very fast!)
 * To be the most efficient, place your turrets so they shoot all at the same time against incoming enemies, from the further away as possible, in order to kill monsters before they can even shoot back at turrets.

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 * To build a water-proof base:
 * Be sure to make a roof that will protect from the rain! If your roof is natural dirt, there will be water that trickles in through it.
 * To protect the entrances from running water, build a concrete awning over it, and a step going down away from the entrance to force the water to flow away from inside of your base. The following picture demonstrates this concept, pay attention to the red lines to see how the entrances are protected from water.
 * Do not build your base in areas that are flooded when it rains, like the large flat plains and the bottoms of hills.



Bridge Structures

 * Use the strongest material you have (such as reinforced concrete or composite walls) for the base of the bridge, and the lightest ones (such as normal concrete, wood, or composite light walls) for the top
 * When finishing a bridge, only use a single line of blocks to keep the weight down. The farther away from ground attach points the block is, the more force (torque) is applied (leverage effect).
 * You can add a wood/steel platform at the end of the bridge, as it has no weight.
 * When you cannot go further, use the recoil of your guns to reach the other side. And then build the second part of the bridge from the other side.

Tower Structures

 * Use the strongest material you have for the bottom of the tower - same as for the bridge.
 * Do not build a very large pyramidal structure, as it would be too heavy and would collapse on its own weight.
 * Always finish the tower by a single-row of blocks (the bottom ones being reinforced concrete as they are the ones supporting the most weight, see below example-image)
 * When you notice a block shaking or crumbling, try replacing it with a more resistant block (just place it over it, it will be replaced), or try reinforcing the block by light blocks around it
 * When you cannot go higher, use the recoil of your gun to jump higher. And try to attach some blocks to the floating island you wish to reach. And once you connect the tower to the floating island, it will relieve most of the weight.
 * Build Eiffel glasses early on, to see the forces that are applied to each block
 * Build on plane ground, if possible
 * Most importantly: Save often!



An interesting forum discussion here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/315460/discussions/0/2828702373013198428/

Other
Here you can see a visual debug of the forces. The length & direction of each red line represent the force that "flows" through each blocks. When it is longer than a specified length (this "length" is different for each block), the block breaks (and automatically the forces will try to take another path, therefore having a chance to cause a chain reaction).



Note: The Eiffel Glasses item will show the same effect