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[Edrin]

Just found out a grate could not hold another grate unconnected to actual floor or wall, for some reason. So I built a floor instead. Which caved-in the moment it was built.
Seems strange that this would not already have been reported, but I could not find any page including both the grate and cave-in words in google. Google was so much more powerful when it didn't try to guess what you meant and didn't propose pages where some of the words are missing… So, did someone ear about this bug?

[Loci]

Just found out a grate could not hold another grate unconnected to actual floor or wall, for some reason. So I built a floor instead. Which caved-in the moment it was built.

Like bridges, grates don't provide support for the surrounding tiles, so the cave-in is intended.

Seems strange that this would not already have been reported, but I could not find any page including both the grate and cave-in words in google.

A floor grate does NOT count as solid construction. It will not support any buildings or constructions. However, you can designate a construction to be built orthogonally to it with no other supports. This will cause the construction to cave-in immediately after being completed.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Grate

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Just to second what Loci said, this is well known and not a bug.

[Sutremaine]

One could argue that being allowed to build in a spot that will instantly collapse is itself a bug.

As for Google trying to be helpful by showing you results that omit the word you were primarily searching for, quote marks help a lot.

[Edrin]

quote marks help a lot.

Not enough, as it appears…
And to the other kind helpers, what I saw as a bug was not the fact that grate don't count as support, but the fact that it is possible to build as if grates where counted as support, which got my dwarf gravely injured.

[PatrikLundell]

quote marks help a lot.

Not enough, as it appears…
And to the other kind helpers, what I saw as a bug was not the fact that grate don't count as support, but the fact that it is possible to build as if grates where counted as support, which got my dwarf gravely injured.

As with most things in DF, it has been weaponized... Suspending building just before it's finished can allow you to fairly quickly cause a cave-in by unsuspend the building.

[Larix]

what I saw as a bug was not the fact that grate don't count as support, but the fact that it is possible to build as if grates where counted as support, which got my dwarf gravely injured.

That the game allows designation/building of constructions does not mean it suggests the result is supported; that's something the game simply doesn't care about before the building is finished and physics kick in. Work safety is the overseer's obligation, and it's entirely possible that a building unsupported at the time it was designated would be supported by other, earlier-finished buildings by the time it got done. The game just doesn't second-guess your designations and is a tad optimistic in the assumption that you know what you're doing

I find that the lack of pre-checking, while demanding more attention, provides tangible benefits: unchecked building means it's easier to designate/construct with scaffoldings (auxiliary buildings like bridges to allow getting to the worksite); it also means you can willfully cause cave-ins through construction; and toggling the "allow cave-ins" option in the init files causes no difference in builder behaviour.

In a nutshell: i think an argument in favour of pre-checking building designations should be filed in the suggestions forum, not as a bug report.
 

[h27kim]

This also makes dismantling buildings quite tricky when there are grates and bridges involved.  Often, you need to build quite a bit of additional structure for support when you are tearing down buildings around such things, or at least, plan out the order of demolition carefully, because dwarves have an uncanny habit of tearing down the only support for this or that while standing on the grate/bridge connected to it.

[Dunamisdeos]

This is a good thread.

Grate, even.