[kchou94]

Hi,

I'm curious as to whether metal walls, doorways, and ceilings can be placed on wooden foundations and pillars. I haven't found or researched any metal foundations/pillars yet, and don't want to start hacking at my walls until I know for certain I can replace them immediately with metal ones.

[Cragbones]

Metal needs metal parts as wood needs wood parts. It's material-specific.

Also, walls cannot be destroyed by tools, you must use explosives (i.e. Explosive Charge or Grenades.)

[kchou94]

Yikes. So if I wanted to replace my walls & ceiling with metal I'd have to C4 the house? And even if I do that I'd still have to acquire metal foundation & pillars first?

[bwortButch]

You can't destroy ceilings, pillars and foundations, so there is no point in C4'ing your wooden house. You'll have to find a new spot to build your new metal house.

[Maximum Over]

IMHO, metal houses are nice to own, but offer minimal protection over wood. The walls are more robust than wood walls, but they'll probably just go through the doors. If I remember correctly metal walls take 4 C4 to blow. That's great, but metal doors only take 2-3. So if you're raiding a metal house, you'll go through the doors and conserve your C4.

Here's the neat thing: you can put metal doors in a wood doorframe. Since doors are the easiest penetration path, they're likely going to ignore your walls and push straight through your doors. That means it doesn't really matter what your surrounding walls are made of.

[bwortButch]

Maximum Over posted:

IMHO, metal houses are nice to own, but offer minimal protection over wood.

If I remember correctly (and the numbers haven't changed recently), wooden houses start decaying 24 hours after the last player activity inside them (opening doors/chests, lighting camp fires). After 24h of inactivity, they will start decaying from top to bottom, 3h(?) per layer. Metal won't start decaying until 48h have passed, and once it has started decaying, each layer(story) will last 12h.

So with a wooden structure, you better log in daily, or you might be missing your penthouse. :)


Edit: Just found Helk's post. It's from November, so I'm not sure if it's still accurate:

Helk posted:

If you so much as open a box or a door, or a campfire or furnace is on, or there is any activity in a house at all it will not decay ( by you or anyone else )

Wood
-Decay 'grace period' 24 hours
-Each 'level' of the house (top to bottom) ~3 hours to decay

Metal
-Decay 'grace period' 48 hours
-Each 'level' of the house (top to bottom) ~12 hours to decay


This means a 3 story wood house from the moment there is no activity would take approx. 36 hours for it to completely disappear (including foundations) but as long as you did anything within a 24 hour period it wouldn't need repairs at all.

A metal house of the same dimensions would take approx. 96 hours ( 4 days ) to decay


Please suggest some alternate timings if you wish

[kchou94]

Thanks for all the replies!

[Pargeo]

There was also other part of the question I'm interested in, which hasn't been answered. As far as I know, on a metal foundation you can only build metal pillars/walls/stairs (or a ceiling, that basically works as foundation on higher floors), and on wooden foundation only wooden stuff. Can I get the verification for that please?

[kchou94]

Pargeo posted:

There was also other part of the question I'm interested in, which hasn't been answered. As far as I know, on a metal foundation you can only build metal pillars/walls/stairs (or a ceiling, that basically works as foundation on higher floors), and on wooden foundation only wooden stuff. Can I get the verification for that please?

It would help if someone else can verify this, but I think that's what Cragbones meant when he said they were "material specific." In-game, I found a decaying wood foundation and pillar and attached another wood pillar. When I tried to place a metal wall there, it stayed red. So, I assume you need all-metal parts.

[Kurogo]

Yes, you can only put wood pillars, etc on wood foundations/ceilings, and metal pillars, etc on metal foundations. Doors and window bars are an exception to this rule. Further, it seems that while you can put Wooden Barricades on metal and wood structures; Spiked Walls and Large Spiked Walls may only be placed on wood structures. I'd like to see this change, or a metal variant get added so that we can have some added defense to our metal bases.

[Terminus Est]

Maximum Over posted:

IMHO, metal houses are nice to own, but offer minimal protection over wood. The walls are more robust than wood walls, but they'll probably just go through the doors. If I remember correctly metal walls take 4 C4 to blow. That's great, but metal doors only take 2-3. So if you're raiding a metal house, you'll go through the doors and conserve your C4.

Here's the neat thing: you can put metal doors in a wood doorframe. Since doors are the easiest penetration path, they're likely going to ignore your walls and push straight through your doors. That means it doesn't really matter what your surrounding walls are made of.

While this is true, if you have even a 3x3 flat base, you can have doors that dont go one layer "deeper" immediately. E.G. Open outside door, then turn left and open 2 doors in that direction, then turn right and you're at the center of your base. As long as you don't have 2 doors in the same linear path (think of a cross meeting at the center of the base) then you're only losing a defense effectiveness of 2 c4 compared to having only walls. Picture included for reference.

[ShorterName]

Terminus Est posted:

While this is true, if you have even a 3x3 flat base, you can have doors that dont go one layer "deeper" immediately. E.G. Open outside door, then turn left and open 2 doors in that direction, then turn right and you're at the center of your base. As long as you don't have 2 doors in the same linear path (think of a cross meeting at the center of the base) then you're only losing a defense effectiveness of 2 c4 compared to having only walls. Picture included for reference.

It's also a good idea to make doors that don't go anywhere but might make people think that they do. This will help waste more of their C4. Also, make sure the entrance to your house is on such a terrain that another foundation cannot be placed in front of it. This will help to prevent people from walling you in after you've pissed them off with your maze of a house.

[Kurogo]

TBH, it is possible to destroy a wooden wall with one C4 if placed carefully, making your 6 C4 defense really 3 C4 defense. Build bigger than 3x3 whenever possible, and use lots of false doors to help mask your true entrance path.

[Terminus Est]

Kurogo posted:

TBH, it is possible to destroy a wooden wall with one C4 if placed carefully, making your 6 C4 defense really 3 C4 defense. Build bigger than 3x3 whenever possible, and use lots of false doors to help mask your true entrance path.

This is values assumed the building was constructed with metal.

[Kurogo]

Ah, my mistake then.