PC towers randomly breaking.

[zztong]

are those points that caused it to fall down at the bottom of the tower? or closer to the top of the tower? cus again the tower breaking happens right at the 22:00 mark when the blood moon starts.

Question: When you took over that tower there are some vultures and a zombie that can spawn at the base of that third platform. Is there any chance one of them had an opportunity and motive to weaken the truss block and ladder up there? Or, if you went up there and had to fight one of them, is there any chance you damaged the truss block and ladder? If so, maybe when the horde started there was a vulture spitting acid at you that maybe finishes off those two blocks?

I'm grasping here.

 

[theFlu]

A blocks is as equally supported as the block below them, vertically. Or, if there is air below them, then their support is slightly weaker than the strongest block beside them. That horizontal support weakens the farther out you go horizontally without any vertical support.

It also "weakens" with vertical distance, just less so than with horizontal (given no bedrock connection).

The "show stability" seems to ignore that, but here's a quick test I did:





The point here is, the left and the right pillar will collapse if you add one more (all 8 side-attached blocks drop + the added one). The middle one obviously doesn't - didn't test yet how many it would actually require to collapse that.

And the "show stability" shows NO difference. It's .. not all that reliable  

EDIT: Went on to test it .. adding wood to the side of the middle pillar caused all the wood to collapse after 7 more blocks. But it also collapsed on a way shorter tower on a re-try, after the same 7 side-attached wood blocks. The actual SI is weird (prolly stacking wood on top of iron/steel is going past the calc distance for SI, and it just assumes there's bedrock below beyond some point, or something to that effect, I haf no actual clue..)

 

[Riamus]

It also "weakens" with vertical distance, just less so than with horizontal (given no bedrock connection).

The "show stability" seems to ignore that, but here's a quick test I did:

View attachment 30701

View attachment 30702

The point here is, the left and the right pillar will collapse if you add one more (all 8 side-attached blocks drop + the added one). The middle one obviously doesn't - didn't test yet how many it would actually require to collapse that.

And the "show stability" shows NO difference. It's .. not all that reliable  

EDIT: Went on to test it .. adding wood to the side of the middle pillar caused all the wood to collapse after 7 more blocks. But it also collapsed on a way shorter tower on a re-try, after the same 7 side-attached wood blocks. The actual SI is weird (prolly stacking wood on top of iron/steel is going past the calc distance for SI, and it just assumes there's bedrock below beyond some point, or something to that effect, I haf no actual clue..)

It does get worse with vertical distance if there is air under it, which is what you're showing.  A "nerd pole" being a stack of single blocks with no air under them will have full stability all the way to the top.  Maybe you weren't referring to what was said about that before?  But yes, air under will reduce stability.

 

[OmegaFerret]

I would like to thank those in this thread for explaining  things to me about this. I was really curious. Also how do you get the stability colors to show up?

Im thinking of trying to build a cell tower like structure and want to kinda make it so the zombies can climb up it like i do and make it so it wont break down easily.

 

[zztong]

And the "show stability" shows NO difference. It's .. not all that reliable

Interesting. I'll have to try that. Show stability had worked pretty well for me, admittedly I'm usually building with a plan for support.

Okay, now I've tried it and I stand corrected. Thank you for that.

With some experimentation, it only appeared to became "infinitely stable" when it had four supports. (See picture.)

EDIT: And that only appeared to be infinite because I gave up. Later playing with the tower suggests it isn't infinite. Thanks @theFlu for opening my eyes here.

 

[theFlu]

It does get worse with vertical distance if there is air under it, which is what you're showing. 

My image with "show stability" on, how does it show any difference in the vertical? The middle pillar, which can still take blocks, is the exact same color as the side pillars that will collapse with one additional block. All the way to the top. The only color change in all of those is with the horizontal hang, while the SI will cause a fall by adding vertical weight.

Maybe you weren't referring to what was said about that before?

My original reply was to what looked like a claim of "a nerdpole will collapse under its own weight if high enough", and then I went on to show that the "show stability" isn't really telling much about the "physics" involved. If you see green, you're prolly actually supported, but the yellows are bad at predicting functional stability. Trying to Place-a-block works better, the placement color gives a warning and a more reasonable color progression; but that seems to give plenty of faulty predictions in the other direction, showing some blocks as always pink even if they're actually stable etc.

But yes, air under will reduce stability.

I would think of it as "an air block Activates stability", things with a bedrock connection aren't essentially in the SI calcs at all (other than as support faces ofc).

 

[zztong]

I would like to thank those in this thread for explaining  things to me about this. I was really curious. Also how do you get the stability colors to show up?

1. Hit F1 to bring up the console.
   
2. Type "dm" to enter Debug Mode.
   
3. Hit F1 to close the console.
   
4. Hit ESC and look for the menu on the right.
   
5. Find there are two stability functions: Show Stability and Recalc Stability.
   
6. Enable Show Stability.
   
7. Force a Recalc after you make changes.
   

But the last 2 i had in my gen world crashed down as soon as the blood moon started  causing me to drop from the top down lower.  I dont know what causes this or why.

Okay, I now know. I fired up the game, found the POI, started a horde night. The cell tower stood. After the horde finished, I went below and looked. They hadn't touched the POI, so I thought I'd beat it up... All it takes to make the upper third of the cell tower collapse is to remove one block of the ladder near the ground, so a mere 500 hit points of damage and the top of the tower will collapse.



... leads to...

 

[Riamus]

My image with "show stability" on, how does it show any difference in the vertical? The middle pillar, which can still take blocks, is the exact same color as the side pillars that will collapse with one additional block. All the way to the top. The only color change in all of those is with the horizontal hang, while the SI will cause a fall by adding vertical weight.

What I meant was not that the stability indication shows the difference but that you were showing an example with a tower that has air under it.  Sorry for the confusion.

 

[theFlu]

Sorry for the confusion.

No worries, while we might be confused, at least zztong seems to have gotten my point (per his edit of the last post on the first page). I'm happy with that; but if you think I'm wrong about something, please reiterate - I like being correct, so I also like being corrected.

 

[OmegaFerret]

Okay, I now know. I fired up the game, found the POI, started a horde night. The cell tower stood. After the horde finished, I went below and looked. They hadn't touched the POI, so I thought I'd beat it up... All it takes to make the upper third of the cell tower collapse is to remove one block of the ladder near the ground, so a mere 500 hit points of damage and the top of the tower will collapse.

Now is this suppose to happen or some kind of bug or stability problem?

 

[theFlu]

Now is this suppose to happen or some kind of bug or stability problem?

It's, well, it's not a bug as such. The POI is designed relying on the support given by the ladder. While no real world buildings would be built like that, in 7dtd physics, it's a-ok.

We can discuss if we like the design or not, but I wouldn't call it a bug, just a design exploit.

 

[zztong]

Now is this suppose to happen or some kind of bug or stability problem?

I wouldn't consider it a bug in the game's code. It might be weaker than the designer hoped and is ultimately best thought of as an artistic trade-off.

This isn't real-world building so the designer is at a disadvantage. Steel in-game is no where as strong as it is in real life. The game gives no credit to the structure for all of the cross posts. I'm not suggesting it should. We don't want the game to be spending all its time in Matlab simulations; we want it to throw zombies at us.