FOUNDATION SYSTEMS
Construction rules requiring buildings to sit on prepared foundations — leveled platforms, pillars, deck grids — that mediate between irregular terrain and regular structures.
- SOLO-DEV COST MEDIUM
- TIMING REAL-TIME / TURN
- COMMON IN SURVIVAL · BASE-BUILDING · SANDBOX · AUTOMATION
Valheim's build system makes foundations a structural craft (everything needs support down to ground), Satisfactory's foundation slabs are so central that players floor over entire biomes to escape terrain, and survival builders like ARK and Rust gate wall placement on foundation pieces. Designers use foundations to solve the terrain problem honestly: rather than letting walls float or clip into hillsides, the foundation layer makes the player do the site preparation, which turns terrain choice into a real building decision — flat land is cheap, cliffside bases cost engineering. Foundations also give snapping systems a clean grid to hang off, taming free placement into alignable structures. Key decisions: whether foundations are required or optional (required is tidy but forbids organic builds), how much terrain conformance is allowed (stilts, ramps, terraforming), and structural support rules — does a foundation carry unlimited weight or propagate load limits upward. Pitfall: foundation grids that fight the terrain instead of engaging it — if the dominant strategy is paving a giant flat slab over everything, the landscape stops mattering and every base converges on the same parking lot.