Blueprint changes.

[Shovinus]

Is there any plans to make changes to how blueprints work vis a vis locked tech?

I would love to see the case that if you had a blueprint with items on it that had missing tech you could place it, but it would, where possible, place the lower tech version.

For example:
Haven't got fast inserters? Let's place yellow.
Not got assembler mk3, will mk2 do (and does the recipe still work)?
No red belts, have some yellow for now (in the case of underground belts that won't stretch that far, then don't place these).
Etc etc.

Some logic could also be done to check whether there was any point placing some of the assemblers (i.e. if it's got a long inserter going into it, but you don't have those yet, then there isn't any point placing that assembler either (except if you planned to manually feed it I guess)

A second part to this would be if you subsequently get the tech, you can place the blueprint on top to upgrade the items, currently you have to force place BPs over items of a different version as far as I know and even then they don't upgrade (change the items).

This should likely be a force key option, or possibly a flag on the blueprint itself.

It would allow you to place a plan down for say a starter base, but then place it down again as you unlocked more.

Another addition that would be nice is the ability to design a blueprint with different layered versions that automatically unlock as you get the tech, so you only need 1 blueprint but as you unlock the tech that you previously specified was needed for the next layer it sets the blueprint as able to place that layer. The setup for this though would be a lot more work both for the game code wise and people designing BPs.

This is the part where you guys tell me you can already do this in game and its just press keybind (keybind here)

[aka13]

Sadly, you can not, but you can create the green upgraders, and stick them in the book with your lower-level contraption, configured as desired