Scrap Mechanic – Inside Farming / Roof Farming – Placing Soil Elsewhere

A short guide how to permit placing soil on roofs, inside prefab buildings, on metal, in the starter crashed ship, etc.!

What Does This Do?

Note: Credit goes to Cyllin

You may be like me, that likes building on top of things. You know, piston-elevator and safely camp on top of a roof of an existing building. The survival mode has one major limitation in this: soil spots can only be placed on ‘original’ ground level areas. This prohibits planting inside, or on top of a (metal) roof, or… anywhere that’s not the ground really.

I find this a bit limiting! I want to build a huge house on top of the workshop. It’s a beautiful flat, large area. Why wouldn’t I be able to grow crops there if I bring the soil myself?

This fix will allow you to place your soil in a lot more places, meaning rooftop farming becomes possible.

Want to make your starter farm on top of your spaceship? Sure.

Want to use the workshop roof as a nice farming area? Go ahead.

Want to build a huge farm on top of a warehouse? Why not.

Be warned: rooftop farming may inbalance the game because the Farmbots can’t reach you.

How Does this Fix Affect my Game?

• This fix will ONLY apply to your game. If you play multiplayer, other players that want to place soil elsewhere will each have to go through these steps.
• This fix will allow you to place soil on ‘forbidden’ areas, including: generated structures like barns, your starting crashed spaceship, the workshop where you make craftbots, on the roof of virtually any building.
• This fix DOES NOT allow you to place soil on player-made buildings or vehicles. While it is possible to enable this, it is buggy and does not result in plantable soil.

Applying the Fix

How To:

• Access your local folder of Scrap Mechanic. Usually:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Scrap Mechanic\

• Acces the following subfolder: Survival > Scripts > game > tools

\Survival\Scripts\game\tools

• Back up the file “SoilBag.lua”! If anything goes wrong, you can use this to restore.
• Open the file “SoilBag.lua” with Notepad or Notepad++
• Look for the line (LINE 172) if result.type == “terrainSurface” then.
• Replace with if result.type == “terrainSurface” or result.type == “terrainAsset” then.
• Save the file, start the game.
• You can now place soil on steel structures!