Decay Confusion - Rust - Facepunch Forum

After reading/searching the forum I thought I understood at least the basics of decay. Wood buildings on foundations start decaying 24 hours after the last time a door is opened/furnance lit et. Same with metal buildings but the delay is 4 days. I've read that foundations NOT attached to the main base used to protect the base start decaying after 3 days of not connecting to the game. You can imagine my surprise when I logged in last night (less than 24 hours since the last time I was in-game) to find my pillers on those foundations either completely gone or down to a piller or two (from 5 high). I can't swear to it but I THINK they were all there the last time I was in the game. What am I missing here?

How would the game determine if the foundation is part of an outer defensive unit and not the 'main base'? I'm not really following your logic here. From what I can tell, a foundation is ALWAYS considered to be part of a 'base' whether it has doors on it or not. In other words, decay is the same for any structure built on foundations.

Sorry I wasn't more clear. I've got 4 foundations in use for base defense. A couple of the them are not touching to the main base set of foundations. I placed them there so someone esle couldn't place a foundation and then build up from there and blow an upper story wall. Those are the foundations that lost most, if not all pillers. I can see why they would decay faster because there are no doors etc. to open I also have a couple other foundations that ARE touching the main base foundations and even those lost some of the upper pillers. LOL, as I said, I'm confused.

Any wooden structure (including single foundations with pillars) fall under the 24h timer. Opening doors resets the timer, I'm not sure about furnaces or boxes etc. If the timer runs down decay starts at the top of the structure, walls and staircases will be the first to go, followed by ceilings and pillars in that order if all are present. Larger structures take much longer to completely decay. The pillars on separate foundations will of course start to decay 24 hours after being placed, you could experiment with putting a campfire on them and lighting it each day, heard that will reset the timer but haven't tried it myself. Alternatively, putting a wooden doorway + wood door on each foundation and opening daily would definitely reset the timers. By touching I take it you mean attached to the house foundations? If so these should not be decaying unless the rest of the house is decaying too...

The strange thing about the 24 hours is, I was on the night before at roughly the same time so I don't know how the 24 hour time would have kicked in to begin with. ?? I'll try the build a wall with a wooden door option. Is there a need to "repair" these things? Thanks!

[QUOTE=JaxPar;44451271]Wood buildings on foundations start decaying 24 hours after the last time a door is opened/furnance lit et.[/QUOTE] You answered your own confusion. My guess is you didn't have a door on the foundations surrounding the base. I find it is better to have a row of attached foundations surrounding the entire house with pillars placed at least 3 high on every possible place one can be put. Also building on a incline will mean one side generally doesn't need foundations as people cannot attach foundations uphill.

[QUOTE=JaxPar;44452062]The strange thing about the 24 hours is, I was on the night before at roughly the same time so I don't know how the 24 hour time would have kicked in to begin with. ??[/QUOTE] The 24 hours applies to individual buildings you use (opening doors etc), not all the buildings you have built. The foundations not attached to your main house count as different buildings and are not being used so they decay.

Oh okay sorry, were you playing on a custom server or official? Custom player owned servers can have decay multipliers set to increase or decrease decay time. Some increase decay so they need to wipe the server less.

Thanks all. I think I got it now. My base is on a hill so I couldn't place foundations surrounding the base. I just placed a few in spots I was allowed to build where they would be close enough to potentially reach my base with barracades. So now my original question has been answered, the solution raises another question. Currently I have a piller in all 9 spots of each foundation. If I get rid of one, in order to place a door, couldn't someone come along, destroy the door and doorway with a pick ax and then place a piller and build up? Sorry if these seem like stupid questions.

They would need c4 to do it but yes it is possible to destroy the wall/doorway and build stairs up in an offset position. This was one of the weaknesses with the earlier raid-proof base design. If they wanted to get to the top they would need to destroy the wall for each level they wanted to go up.

Ah, I thought they could do it without C4. I discovered someone had try to build some barracades on one set of pillers and I was able to destroy them with a pick ax. I should have realized a wall is not the same as a barracade. Thanks again all for the enlightenment.