QoL request: Temporary Blueprint Lock Keybind

[Cronie]

TL;DR

Quality of life request: Please add keybind to temporarily lock the blueprint position to its current coordinates before it is placed.

What ?

2 closely related issues
When holding a blueprint and zooming in or out, the blueprint shifts position. That is, if you have grabbed a blueprint and you are getting ready to place it and the blue-green image is moveable with the cursor ... if you then zoom in/out, the blueprint will move in unpredictable directions, sometimes because the cursor changes position and sometimes because the mouse may shift slightly while using the mousewheel.

A related problem is that while holding a large blueprint, you can't zoom to the edge of the blueprint, only to the center of the blueprint. This is particularly challenging with large blueprints (like big factories, train stations) where the blueprint is larger than the viewable screen and this makes aligning the edges difficult when you can't zoom into the edge of the blueprint.

My suggestion would be to add a function (preferably a keybind) to temporarily lock the blueprint to its current coordinates and prevent it from moving due to zooming or accidental mouse movements. It might also be helpful to change the movement keys to "nudge mode" while the blueprint is locked. The movement keys would move the blueprint one block at a time, but the player would not move in this mode. This would make it possible to zoom in on a large blueprint and make fine adjustments to the position. Pressing the blueprint lock button again would return to normal movement and blueprint mode.

(Sorry, I couldn't find any images that would help depict this issue.)

Why ?

I believe this would help players with large blueprints, but it should also help older players and people with accessibility/disability issues by making blueprint placement less dependent on fine motor control

Thank you for considering this

[Qon]

Your idea isn't bad, and right click is unused while holding blueprints over land. So clicking to toggle follow behavior seems natural.
But for aligning blueprints what you probably want is Blueprint Extensions, which has hotkeys to put corners (and edges) of blueprints at your mouse, which makes it easy to see if it will fit in that corner. And almost always that's enough, because you can see on map if there's enough space. And if you want to fit something correctly on the other edges of the blueprints that are out of view then that will only happen when the space left for your blueprint exactly fits and so you only need to fit one corner to fit them all.
The mod also has hotkeys to nudge the blueprint center tile by tile.

With your suggestion you could freeze it in place and check each edge, but then you would have to zoom back out and in multiple times to check each edge. And when you unfreeze, do you get a new center for the blueprint or does the blueprint now jump to your cursor so you lost all your alignment work and have to start over?

Absolute alignment snapping on blueprints is one of my favorite features. Learn it, use it, love it.

[Illiander42]

A bunch of blueprint extensions should probably get ascended then.

But why would you unfreeze before placing it?

[Qon]

But why would you unfreeze before placing it?

If you freeze it in the wrong spot and single tile nudges isn't enough. Or if you change your mind and want do something different. A benefit to a freeze I would imagine is that you can switch to another blueprint or cancel blueprint placement and when you pick up the blueprint again it is still frozen at the same location as before. This means you can run around zoomed in and take a closer look at conflicts before actually stamping it down, and maybe remove some buildings in the way, and then resume positioning the ghost without having to mouse back to the exact same tile.

[Cronie]

But why would you unfreeze before placing it?

If you freeze it in the wrong spot and single tile nudges isn't enough. Or if you change your mind and want do something different. A benefit to a freeze I would imagine is that you can switch to another blueprint or cancel blueprint placement and when you pick up the blueprint again it is still frozen at the same location as before. This means you can run around zoomed in and take a closer look at conflicts before actually stamping it down, and maybe remove some buildings in the way, and then resume positioning the ghost without having to mouse back to the exact same tile.

exactly, it would just be a way to temporarily hold the blueprint in place so you can examine the surroundings

[Illiander42]

Sounds like what you actually want is a "planning mode" where you can place a blueprint down and make modifications to it (including moving it as a whole) before toggling the blueprint to real and letting the bots build it.

Some form of "construction paper" overlay.

[Qon]

Sounds like what you actually want is a "planning mode" where you can place a blueprint down and make modifications to it (including moving it as a whole) before toggling the blueprint to real and letting the bots build it.

Some form of "construction paper" overlay.

"Placing down" means collisions are already resolved. This suggestion is about what happens before that. The construction planner mod exists. But you can force place or super force place down a blueprint. But that means all entities are placed with the same policy. So that is not what I actually want from this feature suggestion.

[Cronie]

Sounds like what you actually want is a "planning mode" where you can place a blueprint down and make modifications to it (including moving it as a whole) before toggling the blueprint to real and letting the bots build it.

Some form of "construction paper" overlay.

No, this is not what I am suggesting. I would not be looking to make alterations to the blueprint itself, only to adjust its position