Building: frames, walls, windows, floors, grid

A base consists of two kinds of parts: large pieces that form the room and small devices that work inside it. Each has its own grid. Once you understand that, you build airtight, save material and no longer wonder about devices that disappear into the wall.

Two grids#

Grid	Cell size	what sits on it
large grid	2 m	frames, walls, windows, floors, doors, stairs
small grid	0.5 m	devices, pipes, cables, sensors, lamps

On top of that comes the kind of placement:

• Grid – the part fills a whole cell, for example a Steel Frame or the Stairs.
• Face – the part sits on one face of a large cell: walls, windows, doors, the Ladder. Floors and ceilings are rotated walls.
• FaceMount – small devices on a wall, floor or ceiling, in the 0.5 m grid.

A cube cell of 2 × 2 × 2 m has six faces. A closed room of one cell therefore needs six wall pieces: four walls, a floor and a ceiling.

Frames#

Frames are the scaffolding. They stand in the large grid and carry walls, lines and devices.

Frame	Kit	upgrade stages
Iron Frame	Iron Frames	2 iron sheets, each with the welding torch
Steel Frame	Steel Frames	2 steel sheets with the welding torch, then 1 plastic sheet with the screwdriver

Both kits come from the Autolathe. The steel frames also build side and corner frames. When deconstructing you remove the stages one after another. The bare frame comes off last, with the angle grinder.

Walls and windows#

Part	holds a pressure difference of	Kit
Iron Wall (Type 1)	200 kPa	Kit (Iron Wall) + 1 iron sheet
Composite Wall (Type 1)	300 kPa	Kit (Wall) + 2 plastic sheets
Composite Window	200 kPa	Kit (Wall) + plastic sheet + glass sheet
Reinforced Window (Composite)	8,000 kPa	Kit (Reinforced Walls) + plastic sheet + stellite glass
Reinforced Wall	10,000 kPa	Kit (Reinforced Windows) + astroloy sheet + steel sheet

Besides four forms of composite wall, the Kit (Wall) also builds the composite window; the Kit (Iron Wall) builds four iron walls and the iron window. The reinforced parts need astroloy and stellite, both superalloys from the Advanced Furnace.

From 80 % of its limit a part counts as stressed. What matters is the weakest part of an outer shell – a single glass door with 200 kPa limits the whole wall.

Floors, ladders, stairs#

• Composite Floor Grating – a floor grating from the Kit (Floor Gratings). The same kit builds open and rotated forms. The grating is not airtight: according to the game data it lets air and light through. It works for walkways and mezzanines inside, not as the floor or ceiling of a pressurised room.
• Ladder – 2 m high, sits on a wall face. The Kit (Ladder) also builds the ladder end.
• Stairs – takes two large cells in a row, so it is 4 m long. According to the game data it needs no frame. The same kit also builds stairs with rails.

Worked example: a small room#

A room of two cells in a row (4 × 2 × 2 m) has ten outer faces: four long wall pieces, two end faces, two floor pieces and two ceiling pieces. With composite walls you therefore need

• 10 × Kit (Wall),
• 10 × 2 = 20 plastic sheets.

On the Moon there is vacuum outside. At 101 kPa inside, the composite wall carries 101 of 300 kPa, about 34 %. An iron wall would be at about 51 %. A storage room at 500 kPa would be too much for both – that needs the reinforced wall with 10,000 kPa.

Heat on Venus#

Walls can burn. According to the game data the iron wall ignites on its own from 573 K, the composite and reinforced walls only from 873 K. The air on Venus is at 737 K – more than enough for iron. That the iron wall does not burn at once there is down to a second condition in the game code: auto-ignition also needs more than 10 MJ of heat energy in the cell, and the Venus air is just below that at about 6.9 MJ. A little waste heat already lifts it over. So build the outside with composite there.

Program: watching the wall load#

One sensor measures inside, one outside. An LED display shows what percentage of the weakest part's limit is currently applied, in red from 80 %.

# Wall load: pressure difference as percent of the limit
define SENSOR -1252983604      # Gas Sensor (StructureGasSensor)
define LED -815193061          # LED Display (Small) (StructureConsoleLED5)
define NINSIDE HASH("Storage Sensor")   # sensor in the room
define NOUTSIDE HASH("Outside Sensor")  # sensor outside
define NDISPLAY HASH("Wall Load Display")
define LIMIT 200               # kPa, weakest part of the shell
define WARNING 80              # percent, stressed from here
define HUNDRED 100             # conversion to percent
define MISSING -1              # shown when a sensor is missing
define GREEN Color.Green
define RED Color.Red
alias inside r0
alias outside r1
alias load r2
alias colour r3
alias tmp r4

start:
yield
lbn inside SENSOR NINSIDE Pressure 0
bnan inside nosensor
lbn outside SENSOR NOUTSIDE Pressure 0
bnan outside nosensor
sub load inside outside
abs load load                  # direction does not matter
div load load LIMIT
mul load load HUNDRED          # percent of the limit
sgt tmp load WARNING
select colour tmp RED GREEN
sbn LED NDISPLAY Color colour
sbn LED NDISPLAY Setting load
j start

nosensor:
sbn LED NDISPLAY Color RED
sbn LED NDISPLAY Setting MISSING
j start

With 101 kPa inside and vacuum outside the chip calculates 101 ÷ 200 × 100 = 50.5. If the inside pressure rises to 170 kPa, 85 appears in red. If you later build with composite, you only change LIMIT to 300.

Typical mistakes#

• The room does not hold pressure: a face is missing, usually floor or ceiling. Each of a cell's six faces needs a part.
• A window fails first: the weakest part sets the limit of the whole shell.
• The device is gone after finishing the wall: it was mounted on the unfinished wall and now sits inside it.

Next steps#

• Controlling doors, gates and airlock doors – doors and their pressure limits
• Light and alarm: lamps, flashing light, klaxon – lamps and warnings
• Atmosphere and pressure – what the pressure in a room means
• Overviews: Build cost calculator, Planets