Harkonnen wrote:factoriouzr
Sorry for late reply
On your other questions:
> 1) Combine logistics requests with auto trash on the same tab so that you can set two values, the minimum to keep (if you fall under, robots bring you more of the item), and a maximum, that if you go over, the excess gets auto trashed. Also have a checkbox that's checked by default that locks the two numbers and sliders and makes them the exact same value so you can easily say always keep 50 belts, etc
I personally like this idea. Makes things logical and frees UI space.
> 2) add more logistics request and auto trash slots (more tabs of them). See above item as well.
This is what I would avoid. Game is about automation, e.g. we discourage manual crafting in favour of automation. For same reason you are not supposed to carry many stuff around. Perfectly in Factorio spirit you should carry nearly nothing
> 3) Add ability to make blueprints from the map view and the ability to place blueprints from the map view...
Well - yes. There were ton of proposals like command-center, etc... I agree that this is natural extension, but it should be available only in late game when you start running building more and more outposts. Linkage to launching a rocket should be natural here. There is just one slight problem - you will have to run there anyway to build it or will be forced to link those outposts with roboports to your main logistic grid which is undesired. So there must be some way of deploying electricity/rails/initial-roboport towards that outposts without building a long line of roboports from your main base. I had idea once of orbital construction/logistic bots which are superslow, superexpensive, launched from a rocket but have that ability of ignoring roboports coverage area for the sake of initial outpost setup. Supply train later brings all other stuff including regular construction robots, then you can put your massive final blueprint for outpost with all walls, turrets and stuff.
kurtulmak
> you can just make it so that when the cursor is near a construction ghost it becomes a tinted 5x5 grid that constructs anything
Well, that's a good solution, but not when cursor near (would be jumpy UX when mouse is either on already built belt/inserter or on free space near ghost yet to be built). A solution could be for that 5x5 grid to appear once you click a ghost and keep holding mouse button. As for area - it can be adjusted with +- keys like it's implemeneted for paving/landfilling and adjusting map editor brush sizes. Initially this should probably be 1x1 or 3x3 so you have ability of selective ghost placement (just in case).
factoriouzr
Automatic placement all around yourself is bad option. Analogy with bots does not work completely here because they fly and collide with nothing. For example you will be unable to build grid of solar panels with substation in the middle - whatever side you approach, you will be immediately blocked by stuff placed in front of you and you will never reach the center. As for other buildings - even when game allows you to squeeze character between buildings, you must be close to edge anyway. Even more pain with pipes. My vision of this why I proposed rear hemisphere automatic placement - you builprint stuff, and then run in zig-zag snake pattern like 3-4 times along your smelting line (or another contraption). With automatic rear placement that would build everything, and you will get a feeling of progress like where you stopped in case your inventory runs out of items.
Also I want to note that early game blueprints are not for the sake of blueprinting huge stuff and semi-automating building process,
they are for the sake of easy copy-paste of repeating patterns. So you place like 2 furnaces surrounded by inserters, then copy-copy-copy this core in a row. Then you make a parallel smelting line by copying that entire row.
Thanks for the reply.
1) Great!
2) I'm sorry but you completely missed the point on this one. I don't carry stuff around so I can hand craft. I carry stuff around because I have/want to. Think laser turrets, walls, belts, underground, inserters (there are many types, and because you made so many special ones, the players need to carry more varieties on them), roboports, mining drills, etc. For eg. think making outposts, but by no means is this the only reason to carry stuff around. Also think mods. In particular big ones like Bob's mods that adds a lot more items, requiring the player to carry more things.
If you say, use trains to carry stuff or vehicles, then I say, what if the player doesn't want to, and even if they do, your system for logistics for trains isn't easy, and doesn't lend itself to this type of gameplay. You can't just park a train on passive provider tracks and construct an outpost for eg.
This isn't even my main reason for requesting more logistics slots. It's in fact for carrying less stuff around. Think trees, stone, various ore you can randomly pick up. Then think of the many many items added by Bob's mods for eg. that you can pick up easily when building, upgrading, deconstructing. I want many of these auto trashed. With the logistics request and auto trash slots being combined (or even if they are not), we should have more slots to play with.
Ultimately though, I don't see the harm in adding more slots. Tie it to infinite research so they players can add them 5 at a time and let the players play how they want
. The way I see it, this feature is already in the game, it's already upgradable, why limit it, especially in a game that is moddable. On top of that there are many well known and popular mods for this game that add many more items. A lot of these items the player will likely want to request and a lot of these the player will likely want to auto trash.
3) My suggestion is on the size of the blueprints being able to be placed or saved easily. Right now you are limited to how far out you can zoom in the main game. My suggestion is to allow saving and putting blueprints from the map view. It's still up to the player to make sure they have roboport coverage or whatever. I just thing that right from the beginning of the game you should not be limited by blueprint size. I hope you know what I mean. I had to break up my train outposts into two blueprints and put lights as a marker to line up the blueprints with each other because they take up soooo much space.
I love your idea about orbital construction. I would love it if that made it into the game as well. For orbital construction as you laid it out, I agree, that should be a late game tech. What I'm talking about is just to let us place and save the blueprints from the map view at any zoom level.
4) I see your point about larger builds. Not quite sure how well it will feel to zig-zag 3-4 times to build something. It might work, but I'm thinking maybe "painting" an area say 20 x 20 or something might be easier and you can do it zoomed out. Much quicker I think.
Your point about early blueprints not being for large stuff, seems a bit strange and contradictory to me. Why put an artificial limit on it? This completely contradicts what players wanted for a long time (and you implemented in 0.15), which is blueprint preservation. I have wanted this feature for a long time and I would be extremely annoyed if you limited the size of the blueprints you can use from the start of the game. I must have played about 50-100 new games of factorio by now. I want to place down my smelting blueprint of 20 furnaces (for one ore type) in one blueprint. I don't want to place a blueprint of 2 furnaces 10 times for each column. The same goes for other things like my green circuit factories etc.
All of my games for quite a while now, I always start myself (and even in multiplayer, other players) with blueprints, roboports, robots, and some other items to skip the early repetitive part of the game as all of us are so bored of this part of the game. It's fine the first 10 times, but after that we are tired of rebuilding the same optimized designs from memory over and over again. The early game is definitely a weak part of factorio due to lack of blueprints and automated construction primarily. This seems to be a very common belief by many factorio players based on what posts are on this forum and bug reports.