Factorio Forums

I don't really know how to explain this one concisely and it might even have been fixed in 1.1.x Experimental.

So I had this really old blueprint book made 4 years ago? The only copy of it I have now is located here but it won't import into the current version of the game. I'll probably need to go through some version migration hell to get it back. lol

Fast forward to last night. I'm messing around with my blueprint library cleaning out useless blueprints and updating others to use the new grid system. So I come across this blueprint with no icons (none at all. Not even the "?") but with entities in it. Strange. After thinking and messing around with it I realize this blueprint used to have the old "alien artifact" icon. OK whatever I'll give it a new icon. So I do that. Click save blueprint and....no icon. What? Checking the blueprint again and it is empty now.

Sadly I don't have a working backup of the blueprint. Just that one blueprint string from 4 years ago. To me it seems like if you try to edit a blueprint that has an vanilla icon that is no longer present your blueprint will get cleared, when you edit it for any reason. So long as you don't edit the blueprint it will continue to work just fine. Soon as you edit it though it will get cleared even if you do give it a new icon.

I tried replicating this with icons from mods but those correctly get the "?" icon when the mod is missing and you can't edit them.

Well how about that!? I found a backup of my blueprint-storage.dat from Sept 2020.

It was 17MB but I deleted every blueprint except for the meiosis blueprint book which is the book containing the problematic blueprints. There are three different blueprints in that book that are missing icons. Back before some vanilla icons were removed they did have icons. As they are now the blueprints without icons work just fine but as soon as you edit them in anyway you will just end up with a blank blueprint.

I would give you the blueprint string but importing works and the game gives the imported blueprints without icons random ones (based on entities in the bp). Which at least gives me a workaround but I still think this should get fixed. I'd have been screwed if i didn't luck out and find a backup.

Unsure about all this, but you might try to create a test world (if necessary) and place the blueprint... then create a whole new blueprint from the ghosts that are placed. This _might_ give you some more positive results.

Since you found a way to restore the blueprint, than I would prefer to close this without doing any changes.
This is basically a one time migration issue related to the old times before all the smart logic of adding "?" and keeping blueprints functional when things get removed. And honestly, I don't think that it is worth the trouble.