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Kyleshandra

Hi all, question about terraforming/leveling

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I'm fairly new to the massive dirt moving thing but I have fair digging skills, around 35 or so. I know that limits me to about a 100 slope.

I have been working on a deed where the mountain is close to the water and I am having issues when I try the landbridge method. Too often it says things like you cannot continue flattening. Sometimes when it tells me that I can flatten again and get one more dirt moved, sometimes not. I have checked the slopes and they don't appear to be close to my limit. This happens on water or land at times. Any suggestions what I might be doing wrong?

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Slope problems would give you a different error and message.  From the behavior you are describing I believe you are having a problem with the depth of the dirt layer.  Flattening only works if there is dirt to move if you get within 1 or so dirt left before stone on any corner what you are describing generally happens.  What you can do to overcome this, depending on slopes since dirt generally won't stack higher than 20 total slope before it slides, is make a dirt pile in one corner and add more dirt to the pile during the flattening process until you get the tile to the level you desire.


 


Thanks to Tich, and the Devs, we have a wonderful mechanism easier to use than flatten called Leveling.  It works wonderfully well as long as you have at least 1 level tile to start from and have dirt in your inventory.  I generally stand next to a wagon/crate of dirt and continually add it to my inventory during the process.


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Thank you so much! I never realized they were different commands. All this time I've been using the wrong one :)

I wondered why it would never pull dirt from my inventory like it said it would in the wiki!

I have already made progress in places it would have taken me forever to do the other way :)

You are awesome.

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What is this? 2013?


Use level. The land-bridge method using flatten is obsolete.


What you described can come from several different reasons:


1) You're flattening near a paved tile, a tree, bush, or a wall. You cannot flatten on those situations (or level for that matter).


2) Like Plowe said, you can be in a situation where a corner is too shallow, and would hit rock if you tried to dig, so it can't be lowered. This will happen often on mountains or slopes where you will find rock nearby (10-20 tiles away). But sometimes there's lumps on the rock layer that will seemingly come from nowhere. Like on my farm, at its edge there's a 20 steep rock layer where most tiles around it can be dug down to below water level.


3) The one more dirt message is simply that, it means that the corner you were flattening needs one more dirt to be flat, but you weren't holding enough. Its not really a error message or that something is wrong.


 


Flattening through the old method was complicated and takes some time to master, so don't worry about it much, use level.


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This is gonna make many of my projects so much easier :)

I do have one other question that relates...

I am trying ying to make a path kind of up and over a tunnel.

I have it up the one side to roughly over the tunnel. The other side is a little steeper and more rock than the first. What is the best approach to make a reasonable slope down along a cliff-face where there is limited dirt cover. I have a lot of sand available for fill as needed.

While I would for it to be level left/right as you travel it, I am mostly concerned with it being passable by cart/wagon.

If it matters, much of it is marsh tiles where it isn't rock.

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Try not to have any slopes over 20 dirts. If there is rock involved you'll need to surface mine in the corners of the tiles to whittle the rock down. But this can only be done if all the tiles in the immediate area have been dug down to the bedrock to start with.


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This is gonna make many of my projects so much easier :)

I do have one other question that relates...

I am trying ying to make a path kind of up and over a tunnel.

I have it up the one side to roughly over the tunnel. The other side is a little steeper and more rock than the first. What is the best approach to make a reasonable slope down along a cliff-face where there is limited dirt cover. I have a lot of sand available for fill as needed.

While I would for it to be level left/right as you travel it, I am mostly concerned with it being passable by cart/wagon.

If it matters, much of it is marsh tiles where it isn't rock.

Well, for a road you'll want to get 20 slope as maximum...

Its hard to say without checking the place, but you might have to do a mix of raising and surface mining (which is a pain to do, cause it won't lower with every action).

You can always try to mine inside the cave to try and lower it... (Which means you might have to collapse the entrance to make it lower.)

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the only think flatten is good for is starting off a leveling project. You start in a grassy rolling hill area and flatten a tile halfway up the hill and then level everything out from there. Flatten also comes in handy when returning a dug out pit to rolling hill again. flatten, stop it halfway flatten another tile halfway and so forth... helps contour the surrounding slopes to something more natural looking. (like when bulking on sand for mortar, helped return the dunes shape after digging a hole)


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I still use flat raising (flatten command) at times when terraforming on steep hillsides to initially move some dirt to start a level tile. Then also those below it so that there in not a great sideways slope to the next tile when using level after. Since level will use 2 dirt at a time I find it best not to have more than a 10-15 sideways slop,e since once one side is flat from leveling only 1 dirt will be used per level action for the remaining but with the same timer as using 2 dirts.


 


The thing is that since level was enabled not many players after that time have learned to use flat raising effectively to their benefit. Slowly becoming a lost art.


 


=Ayes=


Edited by Ayes

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