It can be really tempting to go ham the moment you dig down into the earth in Steamworld Build. You know, just drag that pick, highlight everything underground, and let your workers just hollow out the world. However, doing so can cause cave-ins. So, how do you prevent cave-ins?
Cave-ins happen when you create a large enough area of un-reinforced space in a mine. It’s hard to nail down exactly how much space is needed before you risk cave-ins because there are variables like ravines and reinforced walls.
The easiest way to tell if an area is at risk of a cave-in is to go into the infrastructure tab in your build bar and select “pillar.” This will show any weak spots in the mine as a translucent blue-striped tile.
Without selecting the pillar option, you can tell when an area is about to cave in because you will hear rumbling and see rocks and debris falling from the ceiling. Your final warning will be a red tab that appears above your mini-map with a cave-in symbol. Conveniently, you can click on the tab, and it will take you to where the cave-in is happening. At that point you can choose the pillar option and see where the weak points are.
How to stop cave-ins
There are two ways to deal with cave-ins, and they’re both quick and easy.
The first has already been alluded to earlier: pillars. When you drag one of these onto the map, you’ll see a square highlighted around them, which is how much ceiling they can hold up. Placing these on a weak spot (the blue-striped tiles that we talked about) will support that area. If you want to be very fastidious, you can place pillars with a four-tile gap from each other to get the perfect amount of coverage with no overlap.
The second way to prevent cave-ins is to allow your miners time to reinforce the walls. They will do this automatically when they are idle. This creates a roughly two to three tile safe-zone away from the wall. For big open expanses, however, you’re going to need a pillar.
Note that pillars will not block rooms or doorways. However, you cannot build things over them, and that includes conveyer belts. You can move pillars using the move command without issue, so if one is where you need to place something, you can simply move it out of the way.
If you’re unable to stop a cave-in and some debris falls from the roof, you can remove it easily by using the pick to mark it to be cleared by your miners. Note, however, that falling debris can sometimes crush your miners or damage your facilities or equipment. Finally, in the lower depths, enemies will sometimes destroy you pillars, so watch for weak spots whenever there’s a large battle.
