Allow setting recipies on factories before research

Post by **Koub** » Wed Jan 16, 2019 10:30 am

[Koub] Merged into older topic with same suggestion.

SkiCarver · Post by **SkiCarver** » Tue Apr 30, 2019 7:02 am

Hi Devs, wonderful, beautify, glorious devs ..... and funny ... lets not forget funny ... I have a suggestion.

When placing a blueprint, the assemblers for which the recipe is not yet available show a 'not available' symbol in the blueprint,. but when the blueprint is placed, the assembler loses its' recipe. Can I ask that the recipe is retained on the assembler with the 'not available' strikethrough on the product?

If that is implemented, perhaps an option is the settings could be to allow us to choose to select recipes not yet available in manually placed assemblers.

Once the tech is research, the assembler activates and starts producing with no additional interaction required.

I suspect that all of us who have built mall blueprints who have to constantly update the mall by either manually selecting the correct product or repeatedly applying the same blueprint, would appreciate this update.

That is, unless someone can give me a better way!

Many thanks.

Post by **Koub** » Tue Apr 30, 2019 8:54 am

[Koub] Merged into older topic with same suggestion.
Also the devs' answer within this topic : viewtopic.php?p=276416#p276416

SkiCarver · Post by **SkiCarver** » Tue Apr 30, 2019 9:45 am

Koub wrote: ↑Tue Apr 30, 2019 8:54 am [Koub] Merged into older topic with same suggestion.
Also the devs' answer within this topic : viewtopic.php?p=276416#p276416

Thanks for merging Koub. I did search but didnt find ....

anyway, I don't understand the dev's answer on this. As others have pointed out, you can either prohibit an assembler being placed over a ghost with an unresearched item, or (my preference) have the machine set to produce the unavailable item with the machine deactivated and a visual indicator (the red circle with the diagonal line) that the reason the machine is not running is that the tech has not been researched.
Granted, I don't know how the assemblers have been coded internally, but my 'bodge it' solution would be to create an unavailable tech placeholder item for each real item. The machine can be set to produce "UnavalableTechPowerArmor2" that requires unobtanium in addition to it's normal ingredients, with the symbol for that item having the 'unavailable' symbol added to it. Even if we had to manually activate the machine it would be better as we would at least know what to set the machine to. If it is also possible to update the items to the real version when the tech is available, that would be better.

I guess I need to learn how to mod!!

factoriouzr · Post by **factoriouzr** » Mon Oct 21, 2019 6:45 pm

Please set unresearched blueprints on assembly machines and other factories so it's same as all other buildings.

Right now unresearched buildings are still placed as ghosts. Unresearched modules are also placed in placed buildings as blueprints. Requester chests have all their filters and limits set to unresearched entities. Filter and stack filter inserters have their filters set to unresearched entities.

Please make the game consistent and make factories have their recipes set to unresearched recipes as well.

Cribbit · Post by **Cribbit** » Mon Oct 21, 2019 7:39 pm

I would imagine the inability to set the recipe is the only thing actually stopping you from doing the production. It would mean having an external factor block the production, rather than the lack of recipe itself.

Post by **Koub** » Tue Oct 22, 2019 6:18 am

[Koub] Merged into older topic with same suggestion.
Also the devs' answer within this topic : viewtopic.php?p=276416#p276416

@factoriousr : it's the 3rd time you start a thread with the same suggestion. Why not revive the old topic instead ?

factoriouzr · Post by **factoriouzr** » Fri Oct 25, 2019 5:57 pm

Without this feature is also makes it hard to use many blueprints because if you research things in a different order then in previous games where you made the blueprint, then when you place the blueprint, some of the factories in a chain (eg. to produce a certain subset of products) will not have their recipes set and thus the setup won't work.

This is quite a common problem where your research order will rarely be exactly identical to that of when you created the blueprint in a previous game. This now requires the player to try and guess what recipes the factories were supposed to be set up for and then try and research them one by one. This is also made harder because you can't zoom in on the blueprint preview to see what the assembly machine was making. Even if you could easily determine this, you would still have to individually check all assembly machines (and other types of factories) one by one to see what they were producing and then queue up the research. Then you would have to wait for the research to finish before queuing more up (limit of 5 or so researches in the queue, BTW, why do you even have a limit on the research queue, make it unlimited).

Currently this just makes blueprints harder to use, less useful and adds more tedious (not fun) tasks for the player to do. place blueprint - check factory in blueprint somehow for a factory that didn't have it's recipe set -> determine what factory was making -> queue up research -> wait for research to finish -> place original blueprint on top of the location where you first placed it to set the recipes - > check if another factory was not set from the blueprint -> <REPEAT>

This also has the issue that you can't change the setup of the blueprint you placed down the first time because then you won't be able to place the same blueprint over the existing buildings.

Basically the way this works currently is just a nightmare and limits creativity. You can't incrementally change your designs because you have to wait till every research is done that is needed by each blueprint.

Cribbit · Post by **Cribbit** » Fri Oct 25, 2019 6:14 pm

I don't feel like blueprinting is intended to be used to the scale that this entails. Maybe I'm wrong.

However, a couple of fixes I could see making people happier:

1. Using blueprint to set recipes on existing buildings, where a construction bot goes and travels to set the recipe if player is out of range
2. Pre-ghosts that won't have bots place the structure yet, which become normal ghosts once the tech in its recipe is researched. This also helps massive blueprints not place buildings that aren't needed yet. This was alluded to earlier in the thread.

I feel like both of these may be better as mods than in the base game, but that goes back to what the devs' vision of blueprints is.

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Fri Oct 25, 2019 8:50 pm

factoriouzr wrote: ↑Fri Oct 25, 2019 5:57 pm Without this feature is also makes it hard to use many blueprints because if you research things in a different order then in previous games where you made the blueprint, then when you place the blueprint, some of the factories in a chain (eg. to produce a certain subset of products) will not have their recipes set and thus the setup won't work.

This is quite a common problem where your research order will rarely be exactly identical to that of when you created the blueprint in a previous game. This now requires the player to try and guess what recipes the factories were supposed to be set up for and then try and research them one by one. This is also made harder because you can't zoom in on the blueprint preview to see what the assembly machine was making. Even if you could easily determine this, you would still have to individually check all assembly machines (and other types of factories) one by one to see what they were producing and then queue up the research. Then you would have to wait for the research to finish before queuing more up (limit of 5 or so researches in the queue, BTW, why do you even have a limit on the research queue, make it unlimited).

Currently this just makes blueprints harder to use, less useful and adds more tedious (not fun) tasks for the player to do. place blueprint - check factory in blueprint somehow for a factory that didn't have it's recipe set -> determine what factory was making -> queue up research -> wait for research to finish -> place original blueprint on top of the location where you first placed it to set the recipes - > check if another factory was not set from the blueprint -> <REPEAT>

This also has the issue that you can't change the setup of the blueprint you placed down the first time because then you won't be able to place the same blueprint over the existing buildings.

Basically the way this works currently is just a nightmare and limits creativity. You can't incrementally change your designs because you have to wait till every research is done that is needed by each blueprint.

How about if you could drop the blueprint into a science lab and it would queue up the missing techs?

Post by **ssilk** » Sat Oct 26, 2019 4:51 pm

A queue that automatically research’s needed techs for a blueprint: genius idea!

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Mon Oct 28, 2019 11:12 am

ssilk wrote: ↑Sat Oct 26, 2019 4:51 pm A queue that automatically research’s needed techs for a blueprint: genius idea!

Yeah, now that I thought about I run into it while playing over the weekend 3 times. I wanted to place my old blueprint in a new game but some recipes where missing and I thought: Damn, if only I could just drop it on a science lab and have it queue up the right techs,..

I've got some time tonight to play. Maybe I will tackle that as a mod.

gth · Post by **gth** » Tue Dec 03, 2019 1:36 am

TL;DR

When laying down a complicated blueprint, any recipes not researched yet are missing from assemblers. Can this be enabled just for ghost assemblers? I am *not* suggesting built and active assemblers should be checking if their assigned recipe has been researched or not.

What ?

Similar to various other items in blueprints that don't "yet" exist in the game (e.g. fast inserters, stack inserters, filter inserters, and even items specified in filters), I'm hoping a tweak to allow recipes not yet researched to be included in 'ghost' assemblers. If you drop an assembler onto that ghost and the recipe has been researched - great! However if the receipe has not been researched, you just end up with a vanilla assembler with no assigned recipe.

Example:

: ghost receipes.png (434.43 KiB) Viewed 6167 times

(left assembler = active, no change to any of these)
(middle assembler = ghost, has a pre-defined recipe)
(right assembler = ghost, no recipe)
...the middle and right assemblers are what I'm discussing.

1. When the blueprint was laid down, red science is available from the tech tree (obviously), so the middle "ghost" assembler has a recipe pre-defined.
2. But the right assembler had yellow science (not yet researched), so when laid down from the blueprint it 'lost' its recipe. This is the behaviour I'd like to change.

Why ?

In complicated blueprints it may not be clear / or perhaps remembered by the user which assembler should have which recipe.

I have read suggestions to re-apply blueprints after new research is completed, however if a design is improved upon (iterative improvements are common, at least for me), doing a "repeat" blueprint click will somewhat ruin or at least confuse those improvements.

Related Search Results

viewtopic.php?t=65770 - "Set Recipes On Assemblers Even When Recipe Is Not Researched Yet"
I found this thread, but I didn't understand the argument as it seemed like 'active' assemblers were being discussed, which Iwas confusing. Hopefully I don't confuse my idea with that argument and we can have a disucssion on potential solutions (even maybe a mod-related flag of some kind, as a last resort?).

Post by **Koub** » Tue Dec 03, 2019 6:57 am

[Koub] Merged into (another) topic with same or similar suggestion

gth wrote: ↑Tue Dec 03, 2019 1:36 am
Related Search Results
viewtopic.php?t=65770 - "Set Recipes On Assemblers Even When Recipe Is Not Researched Yet"
I found this thread, but I didn't understand the argument as it seemed like 'active' assemblers were being discussed, which Iwas confusing. Hopefully I don't confuse my idea with that argument and we can have a disucssion on potential solutions (even maybe a mod-related flag of some kind, as a last resort?).

Note : The ability to set a recipe in a factory or a ghost before the according tech is researched has been requested in many forms many times before. The devs have always answered no because it would add overhead (several dev answers in this thread)

gth · Post by **gth** » Tue Dec 03, 2019 9:19 pm

Okay, my bad for not finding the various idea posts. Thanks for the polite merge.

For the benefit of others seeking some kind of solution, two work-arounds I've found are either:
(a) paste your blueprint into this offline viewer to view all recipies -- http://fbpviewer.trakos.pl/
(b) create a dummy filter-inserter next to your assembler, with the relevant recipe as the filter item

Taking the dev's word as final that the game isn't going to change in this area (and it obviously is final, given how many times they've said no), is it worth pondering if there's a way a mod can provide similar functionality to what's being requested - maybe even just a mouseover hint or something?

Mr_SeBo · Post by **Mr_SeBo** » Sat Dec 07, 2019 11:16 pm

Great Idea! Would allow people to have a headstart. Very smart!

cyberdude · Post by **cyberdude** » Thu Dec 17, 2020 11:55 pm

TL;DR

Blueprinting buildings (refinery, checmical plant, assmbling machines) with a recipe not yet researched should "ghost" the recipe, basically elimating the need for "restamping" blueprints over and over again.

What ?

When pasting a blueprint where contruction buildings is set to a recipe not yet researched in the tech tree currently is set to no recipe.

The ideas is that the buildings in this case should somehow contain a ghosted recipe, just like anything else can be ghosted. The recipe should then be set when unlocked by the research/tech tree.
This idea has been suggested several times before and earlier has been shut down by devs.
Now that you are working on lots of QoL improvements I think this would be a good time to rethink this suggestion.
Earlier attempts at this suggestion has been shut down with reasons such as "resource waste to check all buildings for all tech every tick".
However I feel this seems to be a wrong approach. Ghosted recipes only needs to be checked whenever a research has finished, anytime else would be of no value, correct me if I'm wrong.
Compared to all the other thousands/millions of checks being performed every tick, this on the surface seems to have very minimal impact.
If the current implementation allows for it, ghosted recipes could be a mix of a ghosted entity with the recipe transparent like ghost, but the rest of the entity (if built) showing normally.
These ghosted recipes could be stored/cached somewhere/somehow so whenver a tech is researched event fires for each of the techs/recipes unlocked.
This checks the "ghost recipe" memory for buildings waiting for the specific recipe and enables the recipes on these buildings.
I know this would be very welcomed by many seeing it has already been requested before.

This could be a very welcomed QoL improvement.

Example:

: ghostedrecipe.png (27.21 KiB) Viewed 5333 times

Why ?

Because restamping blueprints over and over again seems counterproductive and very much against the whole notion of "Automate everything" tagline.
It is possible to paste blueprints containing buildings that have not been researched yet, these will stay as ghosts until they are available, this also counts for filters set on Splitters and Smart inserters, these retain their filter even for entities not yet researched. Everything retains their blueprinted settings except recipes on buildings.
Why not also recipes?

Post by **Koub** » Fri Dec 18, 2020 6:23 am

[Koub] Merged into older topic with same or similar suggestion. Also the devs already said "No".

cyberdude · Post by **cyberdude** » Sat Dec 26, 2020 10:15 pm

Koub wrote: ↑Fri Dec 18, 2020 6:23 am [Koub] Merged into older topic with same or similar suggestion. Also the devs already said "No".

Koub:
I don't find it very constructive of you to continue pointing at the fact the devs answered this 3½ - 4 YEARS ago. Maybe times have changes, there have been plenty of updates in Factorio since that might even alliviate the problems. Many and many performance updates have been made, and at the time many other things of concern. But times have changed, we are now almost a half decade later. Maybe looking at the amount of times this has been requested it could be that this could be looked at with fresh devs eyes.
In the span of these past 4 years, there have been many other suggestions impemented that have formerly been answered with "No" and will not implement.

@Rsedings answers are from 2016 and early 2017. We are now nearing end of 2020. The games has changed drastically since then, maybe it would be time to revisit this suggestion.

Post by **Loewchen** » Sun Dec 27, 2020 12:03 am

cyberdude wrote: ↑Sat Dec 26, 2020 10:15 pm I don't find it very constructive of you to continue pointing at the fact the devs answered this 3½ - 4 YEARS ago. Maybe times have changes ...

If times have indeed changed in a way that makes the suggestion viable again, then having it in the original topic would show context and reason for its original dismissal and also when that reason is no longer valid.

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