Construction Exclusion for base planning

[usafphoenix]

So my idea is fairly simple and straightforward in terms of its appeal, but depending on how the game has been programmed so far, may either be impossible, or cost-prohibitive to implement (not sure).

The Longer a person plays factorio, the more bases they build, the more times they restart, the less they enjoy some of the tedium of trying to figure out how to layout a base. So blueprints are a huge improvement to the game. But, in some playthroughs, either due to early bots, or due to large areas being planned out WAY before the player WANTS them actually built, once BOTS DO get made, and the player does have a personal roboport....things can kinda become either hilarious or a nightmare. Random furnaces being placed down in a huge array when you'd rather just build one section at a time (logically)....so my suggestion is this: The ability to place down a blueprint, but to label it such that robots will NOT place items on it YET. (this may/should/must) require the player to use a NEW type of blueprint that, say, places down a ghost image in a different color, and user must either RE-PLACE the blueprint in the standard blueprint placer to enable robot construction, or have a way to tell construction robots either A) don't build anything right now, to use selection tools to enable/disable specific areas of large-blueprinted areas that are READY/WANTING to be built.

the solution i've been using to the problem of out-of control early bots when i want to plan out a base with 300 furnaces for huge smelting columns and (if allowed to) robots would randomly place down the tiles in random order, requiring i have ALL the ingredients for the entire blueprint....so if i play with nanobots or just plan out a huge section of a base and rush the personal roboport technology....i end up having to box up my construction robots and delete the blueprints i've placed i don't yet want built but are in range, then pick up my robots again, have them build the single smelting column i want, box them back up, replace the blueprints, and carry on..... this.....kinda sucks. so, an ability to place a blueprint down for base planning, but without having to deal with silly robots going crazy when approaching a huge area of planned (but not ready to build quite yet) area of a base......i just think a lot of people would like an improvement on this.

and before anyone mentions the "Disable Entity" mod, that's not exactly what i'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting necessarily a way to turn off robots in my person, although that could be one simple-enough-way to give players a way to plan a base , have robots, but not have craziness and headaches the combination can sometimes cause.... my suggestion is to have a new way in which ghosts can be treated by the game engine itself----that it sees it as just a ghost image, that the player does not want anything built on... So "no, robot, you take those assemblers and belts back, this construction site is not ready for you!".

[eradicator]

+1 Ability to place inactive ghosts for planning

[Aeternus]

I vaguely recall there's a mod that gives a player "nanobots" which are toggle-able, allowing the player to determine wether or not to use personal construction automation, or not.

[usafphoenix]

I vaguely recall there's a mod that gives a player "nanobots" which are toggle-able, allowing the player to determine wether or not to use personal construction automation, or not.

there is. there's also a dozen mods that give the player 50 construction bots and a handful of belts at the start too. and yeah, those can be thrown into a chest when you don't want them going crazy, but the idea behind this is the ability to setup a wall of smelting columns spaced out (say 16 columns of 32 furnaces and belts and inserters) for steel or other smelting. you dont' want bots (nano bots have this problem too) to use their basic AI to randomly place entities; this idea would enable controling which sections of a blueprinted setup are allowed to be constructed at a certain time. So say, a blueprint placed down will be red in color and transparent, and then using a selection-tool, you can change it from inactive, to "ready to build".

[_Attila_]

I think this feature would be very nice and should not be difficult to implement.

1. Place blueprint while holding a modifier key, say ALT. Display ghost in say yellow. Bots ignore yellow blueprint ghosts.
2. Select a yellow blueprint ghost area, press a key, change items in area to regular blueprint ghost. Bots start to build blueprint as normal.

There must already be some data associated with a blueprint ghost, it just needs (1) bit to show that the ghost is enabled/disabled.

[Sad_Brother]

Gray ghost image as inactive?