Buildings

What a colony builds, how it decides, where it puts things, how you place a building yourself, and a reference table of every building that ships with the mod.

For the pace of building and the part your materials play, see Construction. For the stages that gate the buildings, see Progression.

What gets built next#

Whenever a colony has nothing under construction it takes the first of these that applies:

1. A building you placed by hand with the Colony Planner, oldest first.
2. An upgrade of a building that already stands.
3. Its own choice: the most urgent blueprint it is eligible for, at the best site it can find.

One building is under construction at a time.

What the colony is eligible to choose#

For its own choice a blueprint has to pass every one of these:

Among the blueprints that pass, the lowest priority number goes first, ties broken by id. Priority is one order across every stage: a Growing-stage Longhouse (13) is more urgent than a Settled-stage Farm Plot (20) once the colony is Growing and short of beds.

The housing rule is what keeps a colony from covering its claim in houses. With the shipped content a newly Settled colony has four beds in the Founder's Lodge and two founders: two beds free, so no housing. It builds a farm plot, a depot shed and so on. When arrivals fill the lodge it builds a home, and the cycle repeats.

Finding a site#

Each cycle the colony takes the two most urgent eligible blueprints and tests up to eight candidate sites for each. Candidates are walked in rings outwards from the beacon, so a colony grows from its centre. When it has been all the way round without success it rests for ten cycles and starts again.

If neither of the two can be sited, nothing further down the list is tried. A colony that has no room for its two most urgent buildings reads Looking for flat, open ground in the claim even though a smaller building might fit. Clearing or levelling ground fixes it, and so does placing one of them by hand.

Where a colony may build#

The bottom layer rests on the lowest ground under the footprint, and bumps of up to two blocks are dug out as it builds.

Your blocks win. If you build on a site part way through, the colony skips those cells. It does not overwrite a block it is not allowed to clear, and it never demolishes anything it has built.

Which way it faces#

Every blueprint has a front: its south side, where the entrance is. A building the colony places for itself is turned so the front faces the beacon. Block states turn with it, so stairs and doors still point the right way. A blueprint can opt out with "rotate": false.

Land clearing#

With landClearingEnabled on (the default) a colony clears natural blocks out of its way. What it breaks goes into colony storage; anything that does not fit is dropped where it stood.

Three block tags decide what "natural" means, and a datapack can add to or replace any of them:

Beyond the tags, two things are never touched: any block with a block entity, and any block of another finished building.

A blueprint also marks the cells it wants empty — an interior, a doorway — and natural blocks in those cells are cleared too, working from the top of the blueprint down. Clearing stops at the blueprint's own edges: the crown of a tree taller than the building is left where it is.

Set landClearingEnabled to false and a colony builds only where the ground is already clear.

The entrance check#

When a building with an interior is finished, the colony checks that the inside can be walked into from the spot in front of it. If it cannot, a doorway one block wide and two high is opened in the wall nearest that spot. The blocks removed go to colony storage.

That spot is the building's access spot: a place to stand just outside the footprint, at the middle of the front where possible. It is where the builder stands, where anyone in the way of a build is moved to, and where a tradesperson working at that building goes.

The Colony Planner#

The Colony Planner is an item for the colony's owner and its Chiefs. It places a building of your choice at a spot of your choice. It is crafted, shapeless, from a paper, a compass and a copper ingot.

1. Stand inside the claim and use it in the air. Each use selects the next building the colony can plan and shows its name and footprint above the hotbar.
2. Sneak-use it to turn the selected building a quarter turn clockwise. It starts with its front facing south.
3. Use it on the ground. The footprint is drawn in particles, centred on the block you clicked: green sparkles if the building fits there, flames if it does not.
4. Use it on the same spot again within 30 seconds to confirm. The plan joins the queue.

What can be planned is nearly the same list the colony chooses from: first-level buildings, at or below the colony's stage, with their research unlocked, inside the server's size limits and not yet at their max counting what is queued. The differences are the point of the tool:

• the housing rule does not apply, so you can add homes before the colony feels short;
• the structure cap does not apply;
• while the colony is Founding you can plan the Starter Works, which lets you choose where they go.

A planned building is paid for and built exactly like any other. Planning does not make it free and does not skip the queue of blocks to place; it only decides what and where.

Things to know:

• The queue holds maxConcurrentPlans plans (default 4). When it is full, wait for a building to start.
• A site is checked when you preview it and again when its turn comes. If something has been built there in the meantime the plan is dropped, without taking any materials.
• Which building you have selected is remembered only in memory, per player, and is forgotten when you log out.
• Anybody who is not the owner or a Chief is told they may not, and nothing happens.

The Chief's Planning Table#

The Chief's Planning Table is a block that reads the plans back to you. Use it and it lists, in chat, the buildings the colony can plan with their footprints, then what is queued and in what order. It is crafted from three paper, four copper ingots and a crafting table, and the colony builds one for itself in its Planning Hall.

The same readout is available from anywhere with /nerocolonies colony plan list <colony>, and /nerocolonies colony plan cancel <colony> <n> removes queued plan number n. See Commands.

Upgrades#

A blueprint can name a successor with upgrade_to. Once a building stands, and the colony has reached the successor's stage and research, the building is upgraded in place: same corner, same facing, the next level's blocks laid over the old ones. The successor must have the same footprint.

• An upgrade is chosen ahead of any new building the colony would pick for itself, so a new Neran Cottage is taken up to level III before the colony moves on.
• It needs the successor's materials, and builds from scrap without them like anything else.
• Blocks that differ are swapped, and what comes out goes to colony storage. Protected blocks and blocks with a block entity are left alone.
• It replaces the building's record rather than adding one, so the structure count does not change.

The shipped chains are Neran Cottage → II → III and Watchtower → II → III.

What a finished building is#

When the last block is placed the colony records the building: which blueprint, where, which way it faces and its level. That record is what opens trades, marks meal spots and gathering places, keeps other buildings two blocks away and makes upgrades possible. A colony remembers up to 512 of them.

The record is not re-checked against the world. Breaking part of a finished building does not close the trade it opened, and the colony does not repair it.

Housing is the exception that reads the world: beds are counted by the housing sweep from the Habitat Pods actually standing in the claim, so breaking those does cost capacity. See Colony basics.

Shipped buildings#

Fifty-one blueprints ship with the mod. Within each stage they are listed most urgent first.

Reading the tables:

• Footprint is width × depth × height in blocks, before any turning.
• Max is how many one colony builds. upgrade only marks a level that is reached by upgrading.
• Housing for N is the capacity of the Habitat Pods the building contains.
• Trade means the building opens places in that trade — see Nerans and professions.
• Contains a … names a working block inside the building. A station or machine the colony builds for itself still needs power and inputs from you.

Founding: the Starter Works#

Settled#

Growing#

Thriving#

Metropolis#

Every design is original to this mod; see ../CREDITS.md. Blueprints are datapack content: the file format is on Content format.

Configuration#

See Config for ranges.

See also#

• Construction — build speed, supply and the needs list
• Progression — the stages that gate these buildings
• Nerans and professions — the trades buildings open
• Roles and defence — who may plan, and what the defence buildings do
• Content format — writing your own blueprints