And yes this is a problem. I find many posts about this with no real solution.
So I fought with this for a long time, trying to figure out how my settlement is bridging anything. I was not getting footfall all that time because I have roads? Why on Earth would you break a settlement because it has roads? People make roads! People spend plots on the roads so how are they not part of the settlement??? I use my cubits to make roads so make them part of my settlement. That was so frustrating. I did like the map tool on the debug menu, I would have never known if that wasn’t there but that doesn’t make the issue go away. I had to spend 10 additional plots next to my roads to fix my settlement but my ash farm that required the road is not part of the settlement, because you don’t count roads as settlement. If that’s the case quit making me spend plots on roads.
Please fix this and please add a “Join Settlement” button so people have a choice to join or not instead of getting absorbed when you do/don’t want to be.
And the exact rule for roads seems to be <5 adjacent plots, diagonally and vertically so in a 3x3 plot cube the middle one is a road if less than 5 of those surrounding plots are plotted.
I have seen a couple weird cases where 4 was enough, but I’m not sure why that happened.
The devs have posted the rule for this, and it’s currently 6 plots in adjacent plot columns.
This is related to adjacent plots you aren’t considering when you look at your “Road” most likely. If you can’t sort out what’s up on your other planet it might be worth reporting. I’d help look. If you got this sorted before Empires, it’s because the rules were different then, and involved server chunks which don’t affect this any more.
The bridging multiple settlements error is a bad message, and you can achieve this with only one settlement.
This will happen if you have beaconed in such a way that two or more areas of your settlement meet the requirement and resolve into “settlement” status but you have one or more single plot wide section of the same beacon that can’t carry the status between sections.
If the road here is the only narrow section of the build and this error comes from it hitting your farm then stacking two high or two wide should handle it as both meet the 6 plots in adjacent columns rule now in force.
However this will merge your farm into your main settlement. If you don’t want that, you need to beacon the settlement, the road, and the farm separately. leave the road in a "bridging " condition, and forgo footfall from it.This will allow you to have a connected road between two unmerged settlements.
This is maybe spending plots to expand your settlement, or maybe wasting them on nothing. That part is a matter of opinion, and game balance lol.