5 Post Fence - Template

Gameplay
1

On a suggestion about adding fences to the building editor I casually mentioned a workaround that used to work.

I was immediately questioned by a nonbeliever.

As the Stonehearth Engineer I pride myself on being, I had to turn to some very advanced science to set up an experiment to prove myself right or wrong once and for all.

It works; here’s a [hopefully] very useful template: template.zip (171.8 KB)

Now, it’s true that it’s quite hard to select fences after placing them in a template and erasing the floor. [Which is why I also saved the version with the floor for myself, “fences on rails”, just in case/] Whenever you click on one, the game thinks you want to move it out of the building and get it immediately placed in the real world. I lost a lot of my fences this way, but somehow I ended up with a nice round number - 5 fences left, and they were selected! I immediately saved it as a template and built it.

I went back to place a template. My template was there, but with a blank picture:

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[I’ve fixed that by hand before uploading the template.]

However, it did load correctly:

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It turns out templates automatically get selected when placed, making this fence template much easier to build than the original building:

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You just click the build button. Almost no time is spent planning. If auto-queue is on, your carpenter will start working on fence-posts immediately. A few Hearthlings will carry a fence-post apiece, building the whole line in one or two goes. The entire template takes no more space than the fences, so they place in a row or on corners nicely. Is five too many? Simply click on the edge piece once it’s built and undeploy it!

I was super happy with the result so I spent the next few minutes having way too much fun building fences.

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4 Likes
2

if you want there are also 10post fences in the endpieces mod :wink:

3

I don’t know if the “non believer” refers to me, but the problem I mentioned isn’t exactly gameplay - the method could be introducing non-selectable buildings into the game engine, which cannot even be destroyed using console/debug. something that I am not sure:

  • whether it has a problem if there is a large number of it
  • whether it has a problem in the future as the game engine changes.

It could just be because I am a programmer myself. I’ll admit it: it bothers me even if it has no observable problems :wink: I do use similar methods myself, but I always leave behind one structure (usually a slab) has a “handle”. (“proof” on the revived fan built site by BrunoSupremo: Free Web Hosting - Your Website need to be migrated )

4

Who needs mods when you can exploit things in the base game :wink:

Also, it’s cool to see a fence get placed one post at a time. It looks more like how everything else is built.

More practically, it’s very easy to just take out one or two posts with this. With the endpieces mod, you’d have to remove the section entirely and use smaller fences.

I don’t know how the endpieces mod does collisions, but fence templates can be placed so that the fence beams go into walls, unlike placing fences from the Place Item menu

@sphr: There probably is an invisible mess I’m leaving here. I’ll have to check with debug tools later and see if I can tell if anything’s messed up.

It seems like you can build where fences are removed just fine, but the mere entry of a building might make saves a little bigger.

Since I believe you can’t currently deconstruct buildings and there’s not much else that you need to select a building to do, I’m not too worried about it for any other reason but perhaps a hit to performance.

I’ve now been putting fences everywhere, even stupid spots like stacked on fences and on top of roofs, and, wow, the AI really doesn’t like it anymore. Probably a pathfinding [and user error] problem and not related to all the empty buildings, but then again it might be.

2 Likes
5

for the collision i have maked them 0,5 smaller then the entities so you can add them also to walls and other fences :wink: but i know what you mean xD

6

Of course, you could try just using the console to delete those empty building references if you’ve moved all the fences out. Not sure if that will delete the fences (they may still be considered a part of the building), but if it doesn’t, it’s an easy work-around. It may be tedious, but only 1/5 as much as placing and removing the fences individually :stuck_out_tongue:

Now, if only we had a “mass un-deploy” command – then we could un-deploy the fences easily and re-place them again using the same template.