[MOD REQUEST] Auto-Paving BP Placer Machine

[Peter34]

A fairly simple idea, I believe:

A craftable machine that, when plonked down, starts placing single-tile blueprints surfacing (Brick, Concrete, Landfil, removal) around itself, out to a certain distance.

The player needs to be able to choose the speed, anywhere from 16 tiles per tick to 1 tile per 240 ticks. Precise control isn't needed; I'm thinking intervals of 16/tick, 4/tick, 1/tick, 1/4 ticks, 1/16 ticks, 1/60 ticks and 1/240 ticks, depending on the player's UPS and how many Construction Robots he has able to place the actual tiles. I think this needs to be tweakable after the machine has been placed down, so that for instance the player can start with 1/60 tick, to see how that goes, and then increase up the pace.

He also needs to be able to choose the radius (here it might be simpler to have several machines, with radius 20, 35, 50, 65, 80, 100 and 150), and of course choose what he wants placed: Brick, Concrete, Landfill (if possible), or removal of whatever surface is already present (i.e. if he wants to remove surface coverage) so that the ground becomes bare again (for aesthetics or pollution management). Hopefully the way it works is that if you place down a machine to tile with Concrete, it'll automatically flag-for-removal already-existing Brick tiles.

I think it might be valuable if the placable machine also fuctions as a Roboport, at least in terms of being able to charge Robots, but that might be too difficult to add to the mod (I don't know). Also super neat would be if the machine flagged itself for deconstruction once done with its entire radius.

I don't think support for additonal surface tilings added by mods is necessary, but if it's easy to implement then that would be neat.

I believe I know that there's already a mod that can auto-place various blueprints, but that's a general-purpose mod and seems fairly complex. I'm interested in seeing a much more task-focused mod, a mod that does one thing, and does it well.

I know it's possible for the player to spam large-area blueprints of surfacing, but then you'd do it all at once, placing blueprint on many hundreds of tiles, maybe thousands of tiles, quite likely overwhelming the Robot system, whereas the idea behind this mod is a few tiles at a time, so that the player simply plonks down one or a few such machines, set to BP out to a certain "square radius" gradually, and then while they slowly work, placing the BPs, the player can go elsewhere and do something interesting.

[aubergine18]

This sounds a bit like overkill to me. What if, instead, there was a custom selection tool where you drag over a bunch of tiles and then it places ghosts for concrete floor? This way you'd have precise control over where flooring is applied and be able to mark large patches for flooring/de-flooring quickly. (I have a hunch something like this already exists?)

[Peter34]

This sounds a bit like overkill to me. What if, instead, there was a custom selection tool where you drag over a bunch of tiles and then it places ghosts for concrete floor? This way you'd have precise control over where flooring is applied and be able to mark large patches for flooring/de-flooring quickly. (I have a hunch something like this already exists?)

No, I think my original idea is valid.

However, I can't force any modders to make it. I can only rely on somebody seeing the brilliance of my idea and voluntarily choosing to create it (as has happened before, with many of my other mod requests).

[Mooncat]

Yes, an entity for placing tile ghost rather than a selection tool is valid.

Using a selection tool to do that is easy, but it is limited by the screen size.
Say you want to pave an area that is beyond the screen, you will have to move to there.

I have an idea similar to the OP in my to-do mod list, but I have no schedule yet.

Meanwhile, I found this mod for 0.12: viewtopic.php?f=93&t=18932
Maybe someone can ask for permission and update it.

[Lemlin]

Meanwhile, I found this mod for 0.12: viewtopic.php?f=93&t=18932
Maybe someone can ask for permission and update it.

That mod was great, I really want something similar for 0.14.
The dev said in his last post that anyone is free to copy & update the mod.

[Peter34]

Yes, an entity for placing tile ghost rather than a selection tool is valid.

Using a selection tool to do that is easy, but it is limited by the screen size.
Say you want to pave an area that is beyond the screen, you will have to move to there.

Not just that. The core of my requested mod is that the blueprint tiles for concrete or Brick (or Landfill if possible) are placed over time, rather than all at once. If you plonk thousands of tiles worth of BP down all at once, that's going to occupy most if not all of the Construction Robots in your base. Furthermore, I believe I once read that if there are more than 600 build orders queued up, the system starts behaving strangely. And each tile would be a single build order, even if doing it the vanilla way, as far as I know.

My idea is that the BP tiles are placed a few at a time (a few per tick, or a few per minute, or anywhere in between, as the user prefers) , out to a specified square "radius", such as 50, 75, 100 or 150 tiles. That way, the Costruction Robots won't all become insta-busy nor will they necessarily all stay insta-busy for the next two hours.

[Nebelwolfi]

Hey there

maybe this could help you https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Mylon/Concreep

[cpeosphoros]

There is already Concreep which is very nice and lays concrete (not landfill, etc) reproducing the colored pattern below roboports to their construction radius, while also cutting trees.

I'm working on a modular mod that will be able to place other things, upgrade buildings, cut trees, etc, with a nice gui to configure it.