Automatically landfill when placing blueprints/ghosts

[TheBloke]

Note that when you create blueprints there is a little check box to include tiles. No need to create landfill ghosts, including tiles will place landfill ghosts when you put down the blueprint.

Doesn't work with walkways, like stone, wood, asphalt though as they can't be placed on water and the landfill underneath the walkways isn't included in the blueprint.

Note: It would be nice to have an option to include tiles only where needed. I.e. only below entities.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing, ticking the tiles box. But this means the user really needs to blueprint their design when it's built on 100% landfill, because water can appear in any random place, different each time. So you need it to be on 100% landfill to ensure that every possible tile that might need landfill definitely has it.

And yes very good point regarding concrete-on-landfill. I noticed that with my rail blueprint, the first thing I wanted to capture on top of landfill. I have a concrete walkway down the middle of my two rails, and when blueprinted the game only records this as a concrete tile, not concrete on landfill. So for my rails I am forced to have two blueprints: one is only landfill, in the right shape and length to cover the whole rail segment; the second is the rails themselves.

[mrvn]

Note that when you create blueprints there is a little check box to include tiles. No need to create landfill ghosts, including tiles will place landfill ghosts when you put down the blueprint.

Doesn't work with walkways, like stone, wood, asphalt though as they can't be placed on water and the landfill underneath the walkways isn't included in the blueprint.

Note: It would be nice to have an option to include tiles only where needed. I.e. only below entities.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing, ticking the tiles box. But this means the user really needs to blueprint their design when it's built on 100% landfill, because water can appear in any random place, different each time. So you need it to be on 100% landfill to ensure that every possible tile that might need landfill definitely has it.

And yes very good point regarding concrete-on-landfill. I noticed that with my rail blueprint, the first thing I wanted to capture on top of landfill. I have a concrete walkway down the middle of my two rails, and when blueprinted the game only records this as a concrete tile, not concrete on landfill. So for my rails I am forced to have two blueprints: one is only landfill, in the right shape and length to cover the whole rail segment; the second is the rails themselves.

Although any water where your original has water too can be left. Didn't bother you before, why would it bother you in the copy?

I rather have the problem that I have to remove the water fill those original water tiles include in the blueprint. But I want water fill under pumps.

[TheBloke]

Although any water where your original has water too can be left. Didn't bother you before, why would it bother you in the copy?

Well yes of course. You only need landfill under the entities (and maybe a little way around to ensure walking around is easy.) I think we're saying the same thing.

As an example, here is a short rail segment blueprint that I have laid out on 100% landfill:


In order to get this BP I had to first create a stretch of 100% landfill, place my normal rail BP on top of it, then re-blueprint it. I couldn't take a blueprint of this segment that was entirely on normal land, or only had somelandfill under it, because then there might not be landfill everywhere it was needed in the future.

In this example, it would have been much easier for me if there was an option "Automatically place landfill under every entity". Then I would not need to create this special blueprint with 100% landfill, I could just use my normal rail segment BP and tick that option.

Although as you can see from the BP, I have also put a little more landfill around the edges, so I could run either side of the rails. An automatic option would not include that. But that's OK - if the user wanted extra landfill they would still have the option to create a BP that contains the landfill specifically, as I have done here.

I rather have the problem that I have to remove the water fill those original water tiles include in the blueprint. But I want water fill under pumps.

OK yes I understand - you don't want it to be the case that landfill is automatically added under every entity, because this would break pumps.

Meaning that if an option is added to add landfill under entities, it must definitely be optional. Landfill shouldn't always be placed like cliffs and trees are always removed. We need to be able to choose on a per-BP basis whether landfill should be added.

And in that special case, where we are placing BPs with pumps, we would probably have to do what I am doing now - first place the blueprint on a site that contains landfill everywhere (except under pumps) and then blueprint it so we have a blueprint containing landfill everywhere needed. And for this blueprint we would not turn on the option to "place landfill under every entity".

Like in this example blueprint of part of my nuclear reactor setup - I built this on a lake in 0.16 and just blueprinted it now in 0.17. It has landfill everywhere except under the pumps.

[mrvn]

Although any water where your original has water too can be left. Didn't bother you before, why would it bother you in the copy?

Well yes of course. You only need landfill under the entities (and maybe a little way around to ensure walking around is easy.) I think we're saying the same thing.

As an example, here is a short rail segment blueprint that I have laid out on 100% landfill:


In order to get this BP I had to first create a stretch of 100% landfill, place my normal rail BP on top of it, then re-blueprint it. I couldn't take a blueprint of this segment that was entirely on normal land, or only had somelandfill under it, because then there might not be landfill everywhere it was needed in the future.

In this example, it would have been much easier for me if there was an option "Automatically place landfill under every entity". Then I would not need to create this special blueprint with 100% landfill, I could just use my normal rail segment BP and tick that option.

Although as you can see from the BP, I have also put a little more landfill around the edges, so I could run either side of the rails. An automatic option would not include that. But that's OK - if the user wanted extra landfill they would still have the option to create a BP that contains the landfill specifically, as I have done here.

I rather have the problem that I have to remove the water fill those original water tiles include in the blueprint. But I want water fill under pumps.

OK yes I understand - you don't want it to be the case that landfill is automatically added under every entity, because this would break pumps.

Meaning that if an option is added to add landfill under entities, it must definitely be optional. Landfill shouldn't always be placed like cliffs and trees are always removed. We need to be able to choose on a per-BP basis whether landfill should be added.

And in that special case, where we are placing BPs with pumps, we would probably have to do what I am doing now - first place the blueprint on a site that contains landfill everywhere (except under pumps) and then blueprint it so we have a blueprint containing landfill everywhere needed. And for this blueprint we would not turn on the option to "place landfill under every entity".

Like in this example blueprint of part of my nuclear reactor setup - I built this on a lake in 0.16 and just blueprinted it now in 0.17. It has landfill everywhere except under the pumps.

Except I still don't see your need to first create a stretch of 100% landfill. The original stretch of rail lines already has land everywhere it needs to be. So you blueprint that again with tiles enabled. Done. Ok, not here because of your stone walkway. You need a blueprint with all the stone walkway removed but tiles enabled and then a final one with the stone walkways.

[TheBloke]

Except I still don't see your need to first create a stretch of 100% landfill. The original stretch of rail lines already has land everywhere it needs to be. So you blueprint that again with tiles enabled. Done. Ok, not here because of your stone walkway. You need a blueprint with all the stone walkway removed but tiles enabled and then a final one with the stone walkways.

But it would only have the landfill everywhere it needs to be, if I first blueprinted it when it was on landfill! And not just any landfill, it must have landfill under every entity - because the water will be different in each place.

I have lots of existing BPs that do not have any landfill in them at all. For example my rail segments, mining outpost, artillery outpost, etc. I created them in 0.16 so of course there could not be any landfill in the BP already.

Any one of these I would like to be able to place on areas that have water. Before I can do that I must first re-blueprint them all on top of landfill, such that there is landfill under every entity. I can then use that new blueprint in future on water or on land (if I shift-click it.)

As I said in my OP, this is a one time process per blueprint. But it's still a process I have to do unless we get an option like we discussed, "Automatically add landfill".

And it doesn't only effect BPs created in 0.16. Any future BP can still have to be created twice.

Imagine the following process,in 0.17:

• In a new map I work on a new small artillery outpost design, in the best place to defend my base
• Once the design is perfected, I blueprint it so I can copy it to more places
• But, the original place I built the outpost is all on land tiles (let's say, desert)
• So I can't use this blueprint to place anywhere on water because there's 0 landfill in the BP.
• So now I must: find an area that contains only landfill (or build such an area on a lake); plop down my new artillery outpost onto the landfill; re-blueprint it, now including the landfill.
• Now I can place the new BP with landfill anywhere, including on water. And I can probably delete my original BP, and just use the one with landfill

Do you see what I am saying? Unless you happen to build your design first time already on landfill, it always requires that you later re-blueprint it on landfill so that you get a BP with landfill under every entity, so you can place this on water.

That is why it would be a huge time saver to have an option to place any blueprint on water, and it automatically adds the landfill for you.

I just learned today that there is a mod that does just that - at least it did in 0.16, not yet updated: Blueprint Footprint mod for 0.16. Once this mod works in 0.17 I am going to try it out, and this could well solve this problem for me.

But I still think it should be in the vanilla game eventually. And this mod doesn't solve the main thing I was posting about - the fact that ghost entities cannot exist on top of landfill, meaning we must wait for landfill to be completely built before we can plop the BP back down to build the entities. And of course the fact that landfill can't currently exist alongside concrete and other tiles.

[mrvn]

Still no need to place anything on landfill.

- Start a Sandbox game, ideally turn off all the water.
- Place old blueprint anywhere (except where the starting area lake is)
- Make new blueprint with the "tiles" option checked
- Optionally edit out tiles you don't need to be landfilled
- Done

Why do you want to add any landfill manually? The tiles option already does that automatically.

[TheBloke]

Still no need to place anything on landfill.

- Start a Sandbox game, ideally turn off all the water.
- Place old blueprint anywhere (except where the starting area lake is)
- Make new blueprint with the "tiles" option checked
- Optionally edit out tiles you don't need to be landfilled
- Done

Why do you want to add any landfill manually? The tiles option already does that automatically.

I'm really confused as to what you mean. Blueprinting an entity that was not placed on landfill does not give any tiles in the blueprint!

Look, a really trivial example:


I built these rails on land. I blueprint them. There is no 'tiles' option because the rails were not placed on tiles, they were placed on land. So the resulting BP has no landfill.

Then of course I can't place this BP over water, because there is no landfill in it:


This is what I mean when I say I have to then make some landfill, put the BP down on it, then blueprint it again over landfill so I can click the Tiles box and now have landfill in my BP.

If you still disagree, can you please show me a screenshot showing what you mean? Because I really don't follow when you say you can get landfill tiles on any blueprint. Unless it was actually built on landfill, like I described earlier.

[TheBloke]

OK I think maybe I finally understand what you're seeing!

A bug was raised in 0.17 saying that Grass-1 tiles show up as landfill in a BP. But the devs marked it 'not a bug'.

So yes, if you can place your original design down on an area that contains only grass-1 tiles, you could blueprint it there and get all the necessary landfill. But this is literally only one tile. The chances of you placing your original design in an area that contains 100% grass-1 and no other kind of tile is.. really small, I would say.

In practice you are still almost certainly going to have to place the BP down again on an area that either contains 100% grass-1, or else contains 100% landfill (or some combination of both) in order to be able to blueprint it with landfill under every tile. So what I said still applies - there's an extra step required for every blueprint.

In your previous reply you talked about going into a Sandbox world. Maybe we could adjust MapGen to give us 100% grass-1? That might be quicker than having to place it on landfill specifically. But then we're talking about a process that involves quitting the game, reloading into a special world, placing the BP, re-blueprinting it, quitting the special world, then going back into the normal game. That's hardly a quick and easy process. Or those with the standalone game could run two copies - but still, this is a lot of extra tedium for every single blueprint.

So this is why I believe we need some way to place any BP down on water, and the game automatically adds the landfill for us. As I mentioned earlier there is already a mod that does this, though not yet updated for 0.17. But I still believe it should be in vanilla, as without it the ability to blueprint and place landfill is not nearly as useful as it could be.

[mrvn]

Tis might be something from mods. Landfill paintings most likely as it adds the landfill types for non-grass terrains. I always get the tiles option and any existing tiles are converted into the coresponding landfill type.

[TheBloke]

Tis might be something from mods. Landfill paintings most likely as it adds the landfill types for non-grass terrains. I always get the tiles option and any existing tiles are converted into the coresponding landfill type.

Yeah I think you must be using a mod. This is definitely not the case in vanilla - except with grass-1 tiles as discussed.

I'll check out the landfill painting mod, sounds useful.

[Hadramal]

I actually made a mod today to solve this: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LandfillEverything - it puts a landfill tile under every entity in a blueprint, making it possible to stamp it on water.

As TheBloke has said, to get landfill tiles in your existing blueprint you need to
1) stamp it on grass-1, nowhere else
2) enable tiles
3) remove unwanted landfill with right-click
4) save it again and update your library

My mod solves this by modifying the BP in your hand and putting tiles under every entity, so you can immediately shift-click your BP in the middle of a lake and the bots will, given available landfill, fill it out for you. A huge time saver, especially when doing nuclear setups. No more save reloads because a misplaced landfill tile blocks your offshore pump!

[adam_bise]

Note that when you create blueprints there is a little check box to include tiles. No need to create landfill ghosts, including tiles will place landfill ghosts when you put down the blueprint.

Doesn't work with walkways, like stone, wood, asphalt though as they can't be placed on water and the landfill underneath the walkways isn't included in the blueprint.

Note: It would be nice to have an option to include tiles only where needed. I.e. only below entities.

Whoa! How did I miss this? thanks!!

[mrvn]

Note that when you create blueprints there is a little check box to include tiles. No need to create landfill ghosts, including tiles will place landfill ghosts when you put down the blueprint.

Doesn't work with walkways, like stone, wood, asphalt though as they can't be placed on water and the landfill underneath the walkways isn't included in the blueprint.

Note: It would be nice to have an option to include tiles only where needed. I.e. only below entities.

Whoa! How did I miss this? thanks!!

Note that this seems to be pretty limited in vanilla and LandfillPainting extends this to all tiles.

[IceTDrinker]

Just came here to say I +1 the suggestion of The-Bloke, maybe it's not easy to do code side but it sure would be a nice QoL improvement

[Sad_Brother]

I support it.
Well thought and explained.

[lordsith]

Yes, it really is a pain to build on water without fullying water with landfill...

I spent 3 hours trying to create a landfill template to match my power station... didn't suceed and had to accept a bastard form .

[colonelclick]

+1

If I hold shift with a blueprint over water, it should selectively add landfill as needed to complete the blueprint, same as with trees and rocks being selectively removed to complete a blue print.

This seems controversial, so perhaps it could also be enabled/disabled in options, to please people who don't want it.

It would be a great QoL enhancement for making mega bases with my giant modular blueprints!

[tehfreek]

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LandfillEverything

[mrvn]

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LandfillEverything

Does that add landfill below/instead of other tiles? E.g. below stone paths.

[tehfreek]

Like the front page says, it nukes tiles. Blame the game, not the mod.