Bridge Building

[LoLotov]

Story first: I have only settled an island once, but found the several months of unwalkable ice and entire days spent carving out a path for my punt completely unacceptable. For a suggested settlement option on the wiki, this is a very important detail to leave out.

I am now about to try building a bridge across a strategically placed ford that would open about a quarter of the map, using about twenty rafts. My goal is to prove the feasibility of the project, but my questions are:

1. Has anyone else tried this and encountered problems?
2. If this is as necessary as it seems for settling islands, and actually a very common project, why is it mentioned nowhere?

[Silenia]

Never tried it. I frequently settle on islands, but have other ways of dealing with the issue.

I tend to most often choose a not overly small sea island with at least one adjacent tile of water non-freezing (not all sea water freezes) and a path through non-freezing sea tiles and land tiles that allows me to reach mainland (and/or several islander villages...mainland preferred, though) in some way and preferably also allows for some paths towards one or two other medium-sized nearby islands.

Generally such paths aren't very efficient compared to the usual rowing or icewalking* routes--sometimes even very inefficient--not seldomly am I required to travel 4x the number of tiles the most efficient icewalk or row routes take, plus the constant zoom in to reach shore, pick up punt, walk to the point I can zoom out, do so, drop punt, hit the water again, rinse and repeat every time my route requires me to hop over a minor island--but suffice well enough that I *can* reach civilization when necessary and I tend to mostly plan matters so that I do not require many trips back-and-forth during weak ice, either by having various on-home-island time and labour-intensive tasks to work on during those periods or by spending most of that time either on nearby islands or mainland.

*that is, if there is a direct icewalk-to-mainland route available, which isn't too common. Most of the winter months, even those with strong ice, require a mixture of overland (or overice) and water travel. The further off-shore, the more likely that becomes. Unless one happens to live in one of the Island territories smackdab next to an island with one or more islander villages on it. One of my current characters is lucky enough to have both an over-ice and fully-overseas route from island to mainland (so no island-hopping needed) available during winter, but that's pretty rare. Neither of those routes are anywhere near a straight line to mainland, though, and both land me on mainland about half a day travel from the nearest settlement even though the summer oversea route to nearest settlement is barely half a day in *total*.

Occasionally I settle on very large sea islands, though as I strongly prefer to settle on islands without NPC villages, those are somewhat rare. In those cases, I can--after acquiring all the necessities for self-sufficiency--easily go months in-game without requiring contact with civilization: plenty of large animals, foreign traders and njerps are generated on those to keep me from lacking things to do. The same goes for picking those islands as with the medium-sized ones: ensuring an existing, even if non-efficient, route to civilization.

For freshwater islands, strategical placement of rapids works but it can be somewhat difficult to find an appropriately-sized island that connects through rapids to either the lakeshore or through a chain of other islands eventually leading to lakeshore. Usually easiest when at least one side of the island is bordered by a river rather than a lake, but even in some large lakes you may find fitting islands. Just takes a lot more looking around.

[spamgoose]

I agree that it is a common problem but like Silenia, I find strategic ways to deal with it. I tend to start in spring and will mark or build a shelter at the location I plan on settling, usually near open water on an island.

I find that the bigger problem is when you settle near rivers. You may build next to rapids but often several rivers run in parallel and you will need strategically placed rafts on each crossable part of the river (if each one has it).. else you get cut off from large parts of the map for a few months a year.

I haven't tried to build a bridge of rafts though I have dreamed of it. Without a paddle they *may* work as a bridge... I am not sure. If you do it, let us know how well it worked. I've always been irrationally nervous of bugs if I accidentally drop a boat on another boat. Not sure why. It could happen accidentally quite easily if you forget you're carrying a paddle.

I've thought about how great it would be to build bridges in the game.. even just "floating bridges". You could use the same building blocks to build docks as well. I love infrastructure... if this game let you build roads, trails, and bridges I would never work again. My life would be building elaborate transportation networks connecting every village on the map, and patrolling them for ne'er-do-wells.

[LoLotov]

It takes two whole rafts to find it does not work, to my infinite disappointment. Spent all afternoon making cords and prepping for the trip, let's hope someone makes a mod of some sort, cause altering raft mechanics to allow pontoon bridges is likely a low priority. Perfect spot for it, couple little sandbars to lower the raft total and everything.

Edit: My character is also at the point in the year where it's about to start to freeze, so I don't really want to actually finish going where I wanted a permanent route, just heading home in disappointment.

[spamgoose]

What happens? Raft doesn't let you walk on it from the other raft?

Edit: I also had a thought. If you did it across areas that freeze it would consider the raft as sitting on the ice, which means you could possibly fall through.

[Plotinus]

it's a bit of a hack but you can build doors on water, then deconstruct them to get ground. You could build a thin path to the mainland this way if you wanted.

[LoLotov]

Plotinus you're my hero

[LoLotov]

Here's my successful door-bridge, shorter than expected once I scouted a new spot, and a view of the map. Hard to see, but I am in the southeastern corner of the visible area, and the bridge is built at the more southerly shelter nearby. This bridge goes over the only water crossing between my cabin and the cave I'm going to fix up as a hunting lodge in Kaumo. Should be about four days trip each way, though I know for a fact it's only three by boat. The important thing is that I don't need my cow to carry a punt now, and the several weeks of changing seasons when I couldn't use it anyway won't prevent me from quickly traveling between my homesteads.

[Plotinus]

I like that you didn't deconstruct the doors. It looks kind of like a bridge this way instead of an unnaturally straight path of land

[LoLotov]

It definitely looks cooler than just a strip of land. My practice-run bridge to nowhere by my cabin proved to me that you can only deconstruct doors if they're built in the shallowest shade of water (which fords are, but it indeed looks cool). You can keep building them forever, but only take then down close to shore... the whole thing feels pretty glitchy, but it's not my fault the vastly-more-realistic pontoons didn't work.

[koteko]

Can we build anything on water? :O

This really calls for a bridge mod

[LoLotov]

My new dream is to build a floating village connected to the mainland by a strip of doors, but I doubt you can place other building tiles on water... surely you can't... tomorrow is going to be wild; anyone with knowledge of this please keep it to yourself for at least 12 hours...

[Plotinus]

you can't, but after you deconstruct where the door was, you can build other things on that tile. it was news to me that you couldn't deconstruct the door if it was on deep water. did you try it with the door closed, too? it has been a few versions since i did this so something might have changed, but i know you can't deconstruct an open there.

when i was doing it, i noticed that the trick changed the water depth near that tile to be less deep.

[Plotinus]

I had a thread about it on the old forum






Once I made a house in the middle of a lake but i dont have a screenshot of it and the character is long dead.