An entire massive structure collapsed for no reason.

[Andykay]

I built a massive hatchery. It took a full day. I accidentally placed a single wooden pillar in the middle of the floor. It was supporting nothing. It was the last thing I built. The building existed fine without it.

 

The moment I destroyed it, it led to a chain reaction that destroyed half my building. The whole thing is effictively ruined. I didn't destroy the wrong thing. There were no other wooden pillars in the entire structure, so I didn't accidentally destroy an important wooden pillar instead. Somehow this pillar I literally just placed and that had nothing on it somehow became load bearing to a structure that existed before it did?

 

How on earth can that happen? How the hell am I supposed to build in this game if that can happen at any moment. My desire to play the game has just plummeted.

[MMaas]

Welcome to ARK.

I have learned myself to build first in creative mode on solo and test my buildings for alterations as well before building huge projects for real, to prevent these kinds of dissasters. Lessons learned the hard way unfortunately, and still running into surprises.
One of the things I try to do is having the chain of snapped supporting parts (foundations/pillars) going more than just 1 way and add a few extra supports after completion on strategical points. Still every now and then it goes south.
 

Just hope you don't give up too soon, buildings are the easiest to replace of all things in the game. But yes, feces happens.

[wizard03]

6 hours ago, Andykay said:

I built a massive hatchery. It took a full day. I accidentally placed a single wooden pillar in the middle of the floor. It was supporting nothing. It was the last thing I built. The building existed fine without it. The moment I destroyed it, it led to a chain reaction that destroyed half my building. The whole thing is effictively ruined. I didn't destroy the wrong thing. There were no other wooden pillars in the entire structure, so I didn't accidentally destroy an important wooden pillar instead. Somehow this pillar I literally just placed and that had nothing on it somehow became load bearing to a structure that existed before it did? How on earth can that happen? How the hell am I supposed to build in this game if that can happen at any moment. My desire to play the game has just plummeted.

Yeah, this will happen. Anytime you place pillars anywhere, the game will accept it as a foundation or such, or you might have accidentally clicked on the foundation it was in, and whenever you remove it, it will see that you removed something that was holding all the spaghetti together. 

Best advice I got to when it comes to buildings, the simpler the better. Allways have foundations under everything, keep the complexities seperate from the rest of everything else, allways build in thatch or wood first, then upgrade to stone or metal later.

Trust me, you can do it again, and you can make it awesome. 👍

[SunsetErosion]

15 hours ago, Andykay said:

How on earth can that happen? How the hell am I supposed to build in this game if that can happen at any moment. My desire to play the game has just plummeted.

Ive seen this happen a LOT of times. It has to do with some sort of "check" that is done everytime you DESTROY a piece of that particular building-construction. Never alter constructions that have "false" support from later removed foundation support, or those that are linked to the original foundation support that is "base-free-standing" With that I mean like: You place a foundation, then link a row of pillars next to it. The foundation is the "base-free-standing" foundation. All pillars are linked to it. If you would demolish the foundation, the pillars are already "secondary". Thats the way I always look at it.
Its kind off complicated but you gotta know these kind of things...

[nworlds]

Foundation support OFF

 

*laughs in dedicated server modded*

[Pipinghot]

On 1/3/2022 at 1:24 AM, Andykay said:

I built a massive hatchery. It took a full day. I accidentally placed a single wooden pillar in the middle of the floor. It was supporting nothing. It was the last thing I built. The building existed fine without it.

Unfortunately this is one of ARK's oldest problems that they've never been able to fix. Many people have experienced mystery problems when removing pillars that have no logical explanation. There is something in the way they have coded the support system that causes ceilings, walls, or sometimes entire buildings like yours, to act as though they are supported by a single, critical pillar even though that pillar has absolutely nothing to do with supporting that structure.

I don't know if they just don't care because it happens only intermittently, or if the fact that it happens only intermittently is the reason that they can't figure out what's causing this to happen, but it's an old problem and they've never been able to fix it.

The best (and really only) solution for players is to be very careful about the order that they place foundations & pillars. You might still lose part of a wall or ceiling, but if you plan out your building to that as much as possible is connected to foundations before you add pillars you can reduce how often this happens and how severe it will be. Mind you, it's not a guarantee, I've seen examples where someone added a pillar to a building that was already supported by foundations, then picked up the pillar, and part of the building collapsed. Being careful to use foundations first and pillars afterward isn't a guarantee, but it will make this happen less often and it will usually be less severe when it does happen.

[GrumpyBear]

On 1/2/2022 at 10:24 PM, Andykay said:

I built a massive hatchery. It took a full day. I accidentally placed a single wooden pillar in the middle of the floor. It was supporting nothing. It was the last thing I built. The building existed fine without it.

 

The moment I destroyed it, it led to a chain reaction that destroyed half my building. The whole thing is effictively ruined. I didn't destroy the wrong thing. There were no other wooden pillars in the entire structure, so I didn't accidentally destroy an important wooden pillar instead. Somehow this pillar I literally just placed and that had nothing on it somehow became load bearing to a structure that existed before it did?

 

How on earth can that happen? How the hell am I supposed to build in this game if that can happen at any moment. My desire to play the game has just plummeted.

One pro recommendation I have after building across a lakebed floor in order to float a base above the lake - start at the lowest point.  Or if you don't , start where you need it to finish. Work to the lowest point, then erase what you laid out to get down to the lowest spot. Start fresh from the lowest spot after that.

 

Lay out a grid w/ 3 tiles space in between each row, I border the entire outside w/ pillars and each row I leave all in place.  BY starting at the lowest point, you can work each direction you need to uphill.  You might have to start and stop in different areas and ignore the perfect rows concept, but follow that general idea.  SOlid row of pillars w/ 3 empty spaces in between supports everything very well with minimal extra pillars and keeps pillars from sticking out of your floor.  As you pillar uphill, it will turn red on you.  Simply snap a pillar above the last good snap, this will give the higher elevation a new snap point to base on.   IF it's very very steep, it can use more than 1 pillar above the last good snap to continue.   ONce you have your grid, you pick the highest point of your pillars and start the floor from there.

 

The pillar out, then use ceiling tiles to extend, then pillar down - introduces all sorts of problems.   It also doesn't guarantee that a floor floated in the air above it is considered connected and supports it fully.  Building from lowest point, using only pillars to run up hill will vastly cut down on floors dropping from redoing a spot here and there.

In the picture below, i started this right in the middle run , this side of building.  THe row you see going up the middle by the left of the kangaroo, that's the starting row, i then went out in each direction from that lowest point, then ran everything as u see ahead.  There was one section where i couldn't approach it normally w/out celing out/pillar down, i did that and it didn't think that area was connected, wouldn't let me put a floor above.  I instead went back to a reasonable point then used the half pillar stepping method to lower the snap points , which allowed me to continue pillar rows in that area w/out ceilng out/ pillar down.  IT then treated that area as connected, I just have to not remove any pillars from that pathway i used, or that would disconnect the area.  * this half-step method only works on light slopes, if it pitches down too much you can't make it work.

 

I learned this all from building

I had 1/3 of this floor laid out when it all fell one day while i broke a stone ceiling with a metal one...  That's when I relearned how to grid the floor.