Recursive use of Blueprint

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libik
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Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by libik »

Hi,
we all know that the blue print is coming and it will be huge :). So what about to make it even more huge? I love how we can automate almost everything in factorio, so what about to automate building production a bit too?

For those who does not know, what recursion is - it is function that call itself. In our conditions, it will be blueprint with itself :). For example imagine, that you want to build well guarded railway network faaar to the south and you dont want to spend a lot time (even with blueprints) to manually and peridoically placing the same design again and again.

So now you will do this :
recurse-used.jpg
recurse-used.jpg (164.45 KiB) Viewed 8737 times
In the yellow rectangle you select what you want to your blue print (just what the creators shown us), but you can also place there two items : "blueprint start" (green square) and "blueprint next" (red square). When you place it somewhere the construction drones first place blueprint on green square and then start building the blueprint. After they build all, they take blueprint from green square to the red square.

When it is placed to the red square, the whole blueprint is built once again considering red square of the previous step as green square in the current step. So until robots can build and you dont stop this, they will recursively build this concept to the south.

The interesting thing can happen, if you place multiple red squares to recursively desing your concept in more directions. Something like this :
quatro-used.jpg
quatro-used.jpg (208.52 KiB) Viewed 8737 times
After robots finishes the design, they copy blueprint to the 4 red squares and there they start buildling it once again. Like before, the position, where the blueprint is placed is considered as "green square" position in the concept.

This one will create fortress in all directions creating a huge complex after some time (could be interesting to get far into enemy teritory and start building this)

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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by kovarex »

In this topic, you can see the link to buildcraft forums, where I talk about my fantasies of making auto replicating factory.
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =27&t=1393

The lack of possibilities in these mods and the lack of minecraft engine capabilities was one of the first impulses to make this game in the first place.
I made Factorio with the hope of creating self replicating Factories from the start, so yes, this will be the top part of the pyramid, and it should be possible finally to do things like that, your way seems to be interesting, but we will certainly consider also other ways.

Anyway, this is not certainly going to be in 0.9 :)

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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by libik »

kovarex wrote:In this topic, you can see the link to buildcraft forums, where I talk about my fantasies of making auto replicating factory.
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =27&t=1393

The lack of possibilities in these mods and the lack of minecraft engine capabilities was one of the first impulses to make this game in the first place.
I made Factorio with the hope of creating self replicating Factories from the start, so yes, this will be the top part of the pyramid, and it should be possible finally to do things like that, your way seems to be interesting, but we will certainly consider also other ways.

Anyway, this is not certainly going to be in 0.9 :)
Good to know :).

I am looking forward for capablity of creating skynet, consuming all life and resources :D.

"29.7. 2017, the self-instructed factorio alghoritm found its own existence. Two days later, it reached the borders of factorio game and infected first computer." (well... we know the rest)

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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by ssilk »

One important thing to add: in factorio blueprints might not be rotateable and/or mirrorable. They must be converted somehow. Best example: the gun tower is 1x2 tiles. You cannot rotate a blueprint, when there is a gun turret in it. Those problems can get quite complicated.

And to libik: I would call it "programming", because I would like to have more than one blueprint. So a blueprint can contain other blueprints (including itself) and a "receipt", how these blueprints are copied.
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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by kovarex »

ssilk wrote:One important thing to add: in factorio blueprints might not be rotateable and/or mirrorable. They must be converted somehow. Best example: the gun tower is 1x2 tiles. You cannot rotate a blueprint, when there is a gun turret in it. Those problems can get quite complicated.

And to libik: I would call it "programming", because I would like to have more than one blueprint. So a blueprint can contain other blueprints (including itself) and a "receipt", how these blueprints are copied.
To be honest, I forget about the gun turret, but apart that, blueprints are rotatable.

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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by n9103 »

Sounds like yet another reason to revert the change to 2x1 basic turrets, this time from within the game itself. ;)
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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by Deathmage »

Hmmm I am only thinking wouldn't you need to place robo ports, and if so could they be place by robots?

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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by ssilk »

Why not, it's an item as any other.

They will have problems to place things, which are not items. But currently everything can be converted into an item.
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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by kovarex »

Roboports can be placed by construction robots already so it is not an issue.

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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by Deathmage »

I more meant my statement in a balancing way, so you couldn't (no matter how cool) make a endless railway. But i still want to copy my factory.

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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by Plop and run »

What about recursive deconstruction as well? Robots construct the front end of rails while deconstructing the back end! (along with roboports and chests on their way). Most efficient way to transport!
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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by ssilk »

Dunno how it can be used, but sounds, as it could be worth playing around with. :)
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Automating Blueprint Placement

Post by SoRaC »

*Edit*TL;DR "Making your self-replicating factory shold be the endgame goal of factorio, ideas on how to make it a thing."

Hello guys, so, pretty standart late game issue, you got as much of everything as you need and dont know what to do with your game.
Perfect example this reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... h=ddd8d90c

So yeah, launching the rocket its a pretty arbitrary win condition, and the only thing left to do is to launch more rockets, thats when usually we start a new save or get a mod or something, and expanding your rocket launching can be pretty tedious, and theres no way to automate the construction process.

The possibility of automating Blueprint placement, adds a last, late-game objective, to prepare a circuit network capable of deciding how to expand your factory, theres alot of ways to do it and so theres a lot of room to improve your self-expanding design many times, Also interesting people in the circuit network (witch sould have a tutorial on its own btw...)

So, how can the mechanics of this work?

Blueprint Placement Building Thingy- You fed it blueprints, it places it on X,Y Coordinates relative to itself, Blueprints are numbered, so a signal can easily choose witch blueprint to place, Same for X,Y Coordinates, probably should "take" the blueprint from one of the corners so people dont have to measure wheres the middle of the blueprint. also, descontructing everything on the way of putting the blueprint

Radars (or preferrably, a satellite radar) - Could output the location of resources (and also probably enemy bases), making the biggest square it can on the ore field, and outputting its location relative to it. (Example, 30*30 Coal Square, 40-X 60-y, could output 30 Coal signal, 40 X signal, 60 Y signal).

Signal Value table + building for it - It stores... signals with values! you could click it with an item and its recipe would be saved as value, the building could have different outputs for each one (outputting only the signals from a single table) , and could edit the values (again, they being numbered, it getting a signal for wich table to edit and then what to put in there.) ---- I was gonna save this for a circuit network suggestion, but it would be important to have here so you can keep track of how much resourses you need for each new factory part ---

i was already thinking on how could you make the circuit network for it, its doable, very complex, but then, thats what makes it good, the entire game its just teaching you how to do more complex things to offload work onto machines, so, your last most complex project is offloading the work of offloading the work onto machines, So your factory can spread like a cancer trought the world.
How could you build it
I hope you guys like it, i'd really love to see this in the game, i also dont know how to end a post, so yeah, bye :D

*Edit* Just now looking up the frequent suggestions, shoulda seen it coming, happy to know however it will sometime get implemented, i hope at least it could give insight into how to make it? can we discuss here on how could it work?

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Re: Automating Blueprint Placement

Post by Yoyobuae »


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Re: Automating Blueprint Placement

Post by SoRaC »

Yoyobuae wrote:There's a mod for that:
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/justaran ... blueprints
thanks thats amazing, ill be checking it out soon.

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Re: Automating Blueprint Placement

Post by ssilk »

Added to
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=27054 Self Replicating (e. g. with Blueprints)
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Self expanding factory

Post by kosi275 »

Would you ever consider to implement such feature in Factorio. I think this would be the best thing ever. Where you could create bluprints have some scanner and based on values scanned a blueprint would be placed and factory would grow by itselfe?

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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by Koub »

[Koub] Merged into an older thread with the same suggestion.
This has been something that has been requested in many forms and declinations along the years.
See also : https://mods.factorio.com/mod/recursive-blueprints
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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by Illiander42 »

kovarex wrote:
Tue Feb 04, 2014 3:06 pm
I made Factorio with the hope of creating self replicating Factories from the start, so yes, this will be the top part of the pyramid, and it should be possible finally to do things like that
Recursive Blueprints coming to 2.0?

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Re: Recursive use of Blueprint

Post by Koub »

Illiander42 wrote:
Sat Apr 27, 2024 4:35 pm
kovarex wrote:
Tue Feb 04, 2014 3:06 pm
I made Factorio with the hope of creating self replicating Factories from the start, so yes, this will be the top part of the pyramid, and it should be possible finally to do things like that
Recursive Blueprints coming to 2.0?
That was the initial plan, at least :roll:
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