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Table of Contents
Building Types Reference
As covered in the Buildings & Interactions overview, most building types share common behaviours (standard UI for purchasing & selling items, regular production cycles on items defined in the building editor, etc). In most cases, the only effect of different types is to group buildings so they can be limited differently. (e.g. There's no intrinsic difference between a 'Retail' and a 'Store' building type, but you could have a setup that only allows 'Retail' buildings in one part of the world and 'Store' buildings in another).
There is a separate group of 'Scripted' building types that in general require you to write scripts to control their interaction behaviours. (As above, theres also no intrinsic difference between a 'Scripted' building and a 'Scripted_Retail' building - that just allows them to be identified and grouped differently).
Some building types do have specific behaviours, these are listed here:
Ornamental
The Ornamental building type is a frequently used one for background objects and decoration; Ornamental buildings can't be interacted with and don't run any of the usual production cycle updates.
Home
The Home building type is mostly relevant on worlds that have hunger, thirst and health decay settings. Home buildings don't run the usual production cycles and have a custom interface that allows the building owner to 'go home' and access an extended storage area that allows them to store any items from their inventory. If the player is in their home while offline, they will automatically eat and drink from the home stores as needed. The 'At rest' modifiers on the *settings → Life settings can be used to slow down the player's rate of health decay when they're at home.
Leisure
School
Fixed School
Gov Bank
Town Plinth
Farm
Storage
Flag Base
Coastal
Automated Turret
Starport
Trading Post
Port
Garage
Trigger
Skill Exchange
Item Source
New Bank
Level Exchange
Residential Block
Multi-Trade Post
Pickup
Weblink
Instead of the normal building display, the Weblink building type displays an HTML page downloaded from an url specified in the building. The HTML page is displayed within the frame of the usual building display and rendered using the very primitive in-game browser. This browser offers only very basic HTML tag support (Image, Table, basic formatting), and your page won't look anything like what it looks like in a proper browser, but displaying info from your web server could provide some interesting options. (e.g. Page updated with data from external sources..)
You set the URL you wish to display on the building screen by modifying the building message.. Server admins can do that using the console command .buildingmessage [URL] while accessing the building or you can set it from script using the sysBuildingSetMessage( [URL] ) function, within a building context event.
Billboard
Noticeboard
Workhouse
Exports
Warehouse
Portal
Scripted Building Types
Of the scripted building types, the only major distinction is between the 'Scripted-NoWindow' type and everything else. As you'd expect, the 'Scripted-NoWindow' type means that you're expected to script its interaction behaviour AND it does not bring up a 'Building' UI when the user interacts with the building. (This is therefore a useful type for doing little scripted behaviours for things like the tree that gives a coconut example given previously).
Worth noting that all the scripted building types still run the regular production cycles (so will still automatically produce and manufacture items if you've set them up to do so in the Buildings Editor) unless you specifically configure them not to.
'Advanced' Building Types
In the building editor displays you may notice the 'Advanced' building types. This is another grouping that has no intrinsic behavioural difference, but can be used to allow a range of different buildings to be constructable in particular locations in the world. (Primarily this is done through the Town Zones system.
Other types
The following building types are not currently supported or are under construction : Hotel, New Bank, Target, Command Centre