Hello! I've seen a lot of frustration expressed with the building system so in this guide I'm going to go over the basics of building, some FAQs, tips that have helped me, and a step by step construction of a short monorail system. If you see any mistakes or think of anything that could be added, please let me know in the comments.

In order to build items in the game you need the build tool that you get by finishing the tutorial. This will initially allow you to build radio towers that extend your range of operations. By continuing along the main missions you will unlock the ability to build more items with the build tool. Don't feel obligated to finish all of the side missions, they will constantly generate so you should never run out of them.

General rules:
An item must be built near your rover (approximately under .1 KM).


Placed items have 100% refund value. Just aim at the item with the laser that is coming out of your build tool and you should see the option to deconstruct.

Monorails are unlocked by progressing the main missions past umbrella, trophy, and beach ball. You should then get a transport explosive mission. After that mission you unlock the ability to mine resources and use them to build monorails.

The basic miner blueprint you're given:


What minerals look like:


In order to start building you need to mine some minerals and then change your selection on the build tool so it has the monorail selected. Hit A or D to cycle these objects while in the build menu.


After finishing the main mission associated with building a monorail, side missions will randomly generate telling you to connect two different points. You can build between stations without these missions. You can even do the mission then delete the whole line or part of the line if you so wish.

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In order to build the monorail you must be near a monorail station with the monorail build item selected. A monorail station is easily identified by the line coming off of a circle. Left clicking will then attempt to build a monorail from the closest connection point to where your cursor is positioned.

You can turn the monorail left/right by hitting the A/D buttons and curve the segment up/down by hitting the W/S buttons. These are typically used to maneuver around obstructions on the ground or position the rail to line up with where you want it to go.

In order to have better control, and make sure you're building off the correct item, I find it's best to get in the habit of just looking at the monorail connection I want to build from. Let's take a look at what a step by step process looks like using stations that aren't facing each other.

In this example I'm going to start at the Southern station and build towards the Northern station. The first issue I'm going to run into is that the exits aren't nicely lined up. To fix this I'm going to have to create a curve. In order to create my curve I'm going to move away from the station at a 45 degree angle and approximately .5 KM, this will allow me to create a nearly 90 degree turn.




I will then do the same thing with my new end and now have a 180 degree turn.





I will now go a distance away from my new line end and build it towards the direction of the next station. It doesn't matter if you make short or long segments as the cost of the segment scales based on distance, not the amount of segments you use.



Now that I have my rail close I need to build out from my other station because it's hard to connect an already built segment straight to the next node. To make it easier, first build out from that node and then connect to the new endpoint. Here I've already made a 180 degree turn like on my other station.


Now that I have my second section I want to sit close to my first section, build from the far section, and aim near the base of the section I'm sitting at. This should cause the blueprint to snap into place.

Once you've connected the two stations you can now ride the train from one station to the next. In order to board the train you need to ride the elevator to the top of the platform by hitting one of the red buttons while you are on the platform. If the platform is already raised then you'll need to lower it by hitting the only remaining button.



If the train isn't already at the station you can call it to you by hitting the summon train button. Any item you can deliver that was already on the train will remain on the train if you summon it.


If you don't want to summon it you can wait for the train to return. It takes 30 seconds for a train to load then depart so you can get a rough estimate for your travel time by subtracting out load time and then dividing by 2 (if the train just left).


Sometimes you might end up with the time saying service delayed.

This is typically caused by other build items getting in the way of your train. Your train will no longer go back and forth until your collision is cleared up.

To unlock the other items you can build, you just have to keep following the main missions. An interesting quirk of all build items is you can grapple off of them if need be. Along with that, pipes can be traveled along if you have the magnetic wheels unlocked. As with monorail, to make it easier on yourself, build out from a node to your existing line.

Below is roughly when you can unlock each of other the build items.

Water Pipes:
Biosphere main mission chain

Fuel Pipes:
Rocket main mission chain

Power Lines:
Fair (tornadoes) main mission chain

Roads:
Final stretch of main missions Space Elevator