Factorio Forums

This idea is to add a dozen or so machines which make all aspects of blueprints automatable.

1. A machine which scans the world for tiles and/or entities and/or ghosts which are blueprintable, and generates information on the circuit network it is connected to.
2. A machine which takes information from the circuit network, and generates in-world ghosts.
3. A machine which can cancel ghosts.
4. A machine reads from a blueprint item, and sends its contents to the circuit network.
5. A machine reads from the circuit network, and writes to a blueprint item.
6. A machines which takes a blueprint book, and crafts it into a blueprint item, and a blueprint book which is missing that page.
7. A machine which takes a blueprint item and a blueprint book, and crafts them together into a blueprint book which has that page added.
8. A machine which examines the world, and writes to the circuit network whether or not that location is marked for deconstruction.
9. A machine for creating deconstruction planner items from the circuit network.
10. A machine which can mark or unmark a particular x, y position (taken from the circuit network) for deconstruction, possibly using a deconstruction planner item as a filter.
11. A machine which scans the world for non-blueprintable-but-deconstructable entities and outputs what it sees to the circuit network. This means, trees, rocks, cliffs.
12. A machine for creating upgrade planner items from the circuit network.
13. A machine for applying an upgrade planner to the world, or cancelling planned upgrades.
14. A machine for reading from an upgrade planner item, to the circuit network.

This idea is inspired by recursive blueprints, but deliberately omits the specific things that mod can do. If you choose to have both in your world, the recursive blueprints machines should be at the end of the research chain which starts with the machines from this idea.

So, sounds like you want more or less a sequence of steps that go from "nothing" to "recursive blueprints", and expose all the bits that are implied (but probably not implemented) inside the logic of it, yes?

AAI Programmable Structures already provides some of the scanning and marking stuff, and is very close on other parts. Perhaps asking Erendal to add some of those features, if missing, would be the fast next step?

Not the blueprint book manipulation stuff, but the marking and scanning. Oh, and check out "ghost scanner", which is one of several mods that export data about ghosts in the local region to the circuit network.

3, 9, 10, and 13 can be done in Recursive Blueprints 0.17.