Super Structures Ascended (SSA) Mod Guide

Super Structures Ascended, or SSA, is the ARK: Survival Ascended version of the Super Structures building and quality-of-life mod, made by Legendarsreign (CurseForge ID 940003). It is being released in stages. The author lists three releases as out so far: a resource pull system, a set of utility tools and a first batch of quality-of-life structures. More structure batches follow, with the core building pieces planned last. Our database lists 439 items and 371 engrams found in the mod's files, 359 of the items being structures, and no creatures. That list also holds building pieces and machines from later stages of the plan, so check in game which ones your version actually offers.

Before you start

• What is out: the pull system, the utility tools, and the SSA Animal Tender, SSA Domesticated Bee Hive, SSA Gardener, Farmer, SSA Item Collector, SSA Mutator and SSA Nanny.
• What comes next: the batch in development includes the Auto Crafter, Cloning Chamber, Converter, Crystal Cracker, Dedicated Storage and its Intake, Egg Incubator, Hatchery, Tek Teleporter, Tek Shield Generator, Transmitter and turrets.
• Tools cost nothing: the utility tools are not crafted. Hold N to pick one from a wheel. Only the SSA Personal Teleporter is crafted, in the replicator.
• Languages: there is partial support for German, French, Russian, Finnish, Czech, Spanish, Italian, Simplified Chinese and Dutch.
• Help: bug reports and suggestions go to the author's Discord server.

Pulling resources

SSA builds resource pulling into the normal ARK inventory screen, so it works on your own inventory, on creatures and on every structure with an inventory. You get three buttons and a number box:

1. Repair: select a damaged item to pull what its repair needs.
2. Craft: select an engram or blueprint, type a number, and enough materials for that many are pulled. Select a weapon or tool that takes ammo and it pulls ammo instead. Below 10, select the 1 and type over it. With a controller's virtual cursor, a keypad opens.
3. Pull: select an item or engram first, then pick a resource from the list. You see which nearby inventories hold it, choose how much, pull, and press done.

Two smaller buttons in the top left open the tool wheel settings and hide the pull buttons. A few rules worth knowing:

• The Pull button always tries nearby Tek dedicated storages first.
• Pulling skips stations that are crafting, and respects the tribe's activation rank.
• Add an asterisk (*) to a structure's or creature's name to keep it out.
• There is a 1-second wait between pulls by default, and the list of resources you can pull is the server's to change.

The utility tools

On PC, hold N, point at a tool and let go to equip it. On a controller, hold LB or L1 and pick with the left stick. The wheel takes half a second to appear: let go before that to switch straight back to the last tool. The tools are free, fit on your hotbar and can be destroyed, but not dropped. The wheel's own settings change the PC key, the highlight outline, the buff icon and the controller binding, and your choices carry over between servers.

The Transfer Tool and the Inventory Assistant each keep up to 100 named presets, in 10 groups of 10. Presets are stored on your own computer, not on the server, so they follow you from server to server and into single player. The Inventory Assistant can also drop weapons, armor and saddles below a quality you choose, and only act while you ride, while you walk, or both. Once switched on it stays on, even after you put it away, until you turn it off.

The SSA Personal Teleporter opens a map of the teleporters you can reach. It can also drop a beacon that lasts 5 minutes by default and brings you back to that spot. A new beacon removes the old one, and only you travel.

The quality-of-life structures

• SSA Animal Tender: collects produce from the inventories of Achatinas, Basilosaurus, Tusoteuthis, Dung Beetles, Giant Turtles and Sheep, and hands Owl Pellets to nearby Gachas. It absorbs the old Sheep Herder. It runs on a Tek Generator or any Kibble, one per 6 hours.
• SSA Domesticated Bee Hive: a crafted hive that turns Rare Flowers into honey and waters nearby crop plots. It burns one fuel per hour.
• SSA Gardener, Farmer: one engram, two structures: choose which to place when you craft it. The Gardener collects crops from nearby plots, on a Tek Generator or one Beer Jar per 6 hours. Put an item in its inventory to blacklist it, and seed collection can be switched off. The Farmer takes fertilizer from compost bins and Dung Beetles and spreads it over plots, on a Tek Generator or one Calien Soup per 3 hours. Both need the Large Crop Plot engram first.
• SSA Item Collector: picks up dropped items such as dung and unfertilized eggs, takes dung to compost bins and Dung Beetles, feeds raw metal to forges, best forge first, and sends finished ingots back to dedicated storage.
• SSA Nanny: feeds babies under 15% maturation and imprints creatures that are not yet adult, unless you or the server turn that off. It also pets cats, which may cough up a furball. It runs on a Tek Generator or Honey, one per 6 hours, and Preserving Salt can go in its inventory.

The Animal Tender, Gardener, Farmer, Item Collector and Nanny all take Tek Generator power and only burn their own fuel when there is no power.

How the Mutator works

The SSA Mutator sends pulses that affect creatures around it. By default each pulse costs 10 Element and puts the Mutator on a 5-minute cooldown. The server can change both, per pulse.

• Mutation: gives nearby creatures an Irradiated buff that sets their mutation chance to 100%, with one mutation in one stat. Each pulse adds 2 points, and by default the buff stacks twice, so 4 points at most. Irradiated creatures cannot move.
• Gender Swap: swaps the gender of nearby creatures, then protects them from another swap for 6 hours. It skips creatures on mating cooldown.
• Gender Assign: gives genderless creatures a random gender for 6 hours. Meks are not affected.
• Allow Breeding: lets creatures breed that normally cannot. The offspring always comes by gestation. Meks and corrupted creatures are excluded.
• Age Freeze: stops nearby babies from growing, and they eat almost nothing meanwhile. Pulse again to undo it.
• Corrupting and Aberrant: convert one nearby normal creature to its corrupted or aberrant form, if it has one. Everything in its inventory is lost.

The settings also name Imprint, Growth and Normal pulses, and server owners can add their own conversion pulses, for example to turn creatures into those of another creature mod. One catch with the Mutation pulse: if a parent has 20 or more mutations, the chance falls to 50%, because the stat may be inherited from that parent.

When the structures unlock

Server settings

SSA reads its options from a [SuperStructures] section of the server's ini settings. A few worth knowing:

• ResourcePullRangeInFoundations: pull range, 25 by default, from 1 to 100. ResourceTransferCooldown sets the wait between pulls, and DisableResourcePulling turns the system off.
• PullResourceAdditions and PullResourceRemovals: edit the pull list, which the Inventory Assistant uses too.
• RadialToolBlacklist: removes chosen tools from the wheel, or all of them with RemoveAllTools. RadialToolLevelRequirements sets a player level for each tool, for example TransferTool:20.
• DemoGunStructureBlacklist and TransferToolStructureBlacklist: keep chosen structures away from those tools.
• PersonalTeleporterBeaconLifespanInSeconds: beacon lifetime, 300 by default. DisablePersonalTeleporterBeacon removes beacons.
• MutatorPulseCost and MutatorPulseCooldowns: ten comma-separated values each, one per pulse, and all ten must be given. MutatorModeBlacklist disables pulses and MutatorBuffMaxStackCount raises the mutation cap.
• NannyMaxImprint, NannyRangeInFoundations (default 10) and DisableNannyImprinting: tune the Nanny.
• RemoveModAlternates=Farmer: removes the Farmer but keeps the Gardener.
• RaidTimerLimitMultiplier: more time for raid bosses. A value of 2 gives 30 minutes instead of 15 against the Broodmother.

Other mods can tag a structure PreventPulling, PreventPickup or PreventDemolish to keep it out of the pull system or away from the Demo Gun. Custom compost bins and forges can join the Item Collector with tags such as SPlusCollect and AllowItemCollectorToDistributeMetal.

Tips

• Try the Inventory Assistant on Drop before you set it to Destroy, and remember it stays on until you switch it off.
• Keep breeding pairs under 20 mutations if you want the full effect of the Mutation pulse.
• On PvP servers, think twice before relying on the Repair Gun: it skips the repair timer.
• If you forget your tool key, the small settings button on the inventory screen opens the wheel settings.

Every structure, tool and engram of the mod is listed on its mod page, with spawn commands.