This would be such a useful quality of life improvement for the game.
If I complete a building then realize I forgot to put in a door I have to delete the entire building and try the whole process again.
7 Likes
This is definitely a must. I noticed that when I played it for the first time and didn’t know what I was doing (and there was no in-game tutorial for the new building editor feature). Buildings should always be eligible for remodeling, even after they’ve been built.
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I really wish we could do this, but the building editor just cannot guarantee success at a 99% or even 90% rate, so we figured we would just not offer something that would make you really mad 1-10% of the time.
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Could it be possible to make it where we could tell our hearthlings to mine a part of the building with the mining tool, because there have been countless multiple story buildings that I have constructed, where I forgot to put holes for ladders to go through. And then after I finish the building I have to destroy it and restart. One time it was a storage facility and my hearthlings placed a chest on the second floor and then placed the blacksmith hammer to in it and then they finished the building. Later when I went to make a hearthling a blacksmith nothing happened and I had no clue why, because my town inventory said I had a hammer, yet nothing was happening. I had to ask on the discourse for help from the team to figure that one out.
1 Like
This is a must
2 Likes
I had been really looking forward to this feature.
I would just like to write a quote here, it has been said a while ago on a stream led by Chris: “We don’t want to punish the player for a mistake made while designing a building.”
Credit goes to a member of our community, I don’t remember who it was.
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That was me! 
And yeah I’ve had several of those mistakes in the past week, where I kicked myself for hitting the build button and wished I could go back to edit.
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@sdee just a little question but: the game calcs a building in advance before it builds right? Why not just take the amounts of blocks difference between both designs, act like the previous building was never made and only have the hearthlings build the leftover percentage?
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The easiest way would be probably to have changes just be done without requiring Hearthlings to actually process the command step by step, voxel by voxel. Maybe raise the resource cost so it can’t be abused too easily. Would that at least be moddable?
Edit: Or isn’t it possible to give Hearthlings a longer reach temporarily? Maybe you already thought of every possible solution, but I’m still kind of at the bargaining stage of grief it seems.
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Renovation could work even without reach, just to have that feature for all I care. I mean, hearthlings could just build some scaffolding and something like a work table and just fiddle with the workstation. Then, boom! The thing is done. It won’t be as satisfying, I know, but I personally don’t need a show just to place a missing window.
(Just to clarify, I originally wanted to abuse the hell out of renovation. I planned on building one giant single building and just keep on adding to it as time goes on, something like an unveiling monastery of sorts. Anything that could help me chase this wish would be a godsend.)
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i would love the a feature of building while i play. example: i want to build a huge tree house as the play continues. so i could tell my hearthlings “build this level” and then do a little farming and fishing and then “build this level”. really wanting an edit feature. it would be a game changer for me.
everyone would like it but… the functionality really isnt there. i mean we have some mad scientist modders but not this level mad 
You kind-of can – simply build it as separate buildings, adding each new level atop the last one as you need to.
There’s even a work-around to let you build a “temporary roof foliage” so that you’re not left with a half-finished trunk while the tree is “growing” – simply create a template for the bushy part at the top of the tree and build it as a separate building on top of the trunk, and then when you want to “grow” the tree just delete the top part and add a new trunk section (including any branches) before re-building the “canopy” on top of the extension. The one thing you will need to be aware of is that the game builds a single large “box” outline for every building rather than matching the building’s area tightly to the actual walls; so if you have e.g. a trunk section with branches that curve up then you need to make sure the trunk extends to at least level with the top of those branches so that you can build the next section on top of that trunk and avoid any gaps. One good trick when building any tall tower from multiple sections though: build the “supports” for an overhanging section into the top of the lower section. This will a) help disguise the join between the two sections, and b) give the hearthlings somewhere solid to build any platforms or walls off of so they’re not trying to build out into space (which would require a massive ladder to the ground, and this can sometimes cause really tall buildings to fail in planning mode since the game can’t figure out pathfinding for such a tall ladder.)
If you’re building a large structure like a fortress, cathedral, or Yggdrasil tree then it’s a good idea to split it up into sections rather than have one massive building that the game has to keep track of “all at once.” It’s like counting coins – much easier to count stacks of 10 coins and then add up the stacks, than trying to could up thousands of coins at once.
2 Likes