Autoplacing of blueprints

[ssilk]

This is an idea for the very far future and I post it here, that it is not forgotten. It's about how to enable continuous growing of the factory just with some very simple rules.

I come from here:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=2198
and
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 252#p19252

I try to explain the parts needed, to enable that.

1. Blueprints. This is it as it is now plus some storing/loading.

2. "Role of blueprints". This is a set of blueprints, which is needed to create

3. "Construction plans". This is, how a set of blueprints must be placed and in which order, to become a greater thing. In other words: Let the blueprints be letters, then construction plans are words.
This is also well described in the first link above.

4. When we come to "endless construction plans", we are in the wide mathematic field of mosaics, ornaments and so on. The beauteousness of such constructions is in my eyes without any question there and there is also much sense in enabling such twisted things.

5. "Changing plans" is the next step. Under some circumstances the construction plan changes.

6. "Automatic supply": There is an instance, which know, how many items are needed at which place and requests that to that point.

7. "Moveable building platform". No better name for that. This is needed to reduce complications by including roboports into the blueprints.

[ssilk]

Sorry for double post, but some things came into my mind.

There is a second possibility, because the steps 6 and 7 must not take place in the target area. I explain:

The building of a blueprint is much easier, if you built all on big plates at special construction places and then fly the whole plate to the destination. This is theoretically much faster, because the whole logistic must not be established every time. Only the transport from the construction place to the destination is a problem. But for a game I think this is - solvable.
Perhaps the whole plate is then fired to the destination with rockets? Or cutter into handy pieces and taken by long range construction bots. Or we beam it to the destination?

[The idea came from the Miniature Wonderland (Hamburg), they build every scenario on plates in the workshop and include that later in the showroom.]

[Sir Nick]

Maybe have a "flatbed truck"-type vehicle for this kind of platform? And maybe a train wagon along the same lines. Though I'd imagine there would be a need for a "crane" building or vehicle that would unload these two.

[ssilk]

Currently I thought more for airships...
https://www.google.de/search?q=airship&tbm=isch


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EDIT:
There is a third case: When the object, which should be built is a kind of transport medium.

Let's think for railway. In that case, the railway is used for the built-up logistics. It's also possible with belts, if you are allowed to built circles, or any other vehicle, which can transport items.

Lets play it through: You want to built a track from A to B. You plan the track and place the blueprints in the right order. Then from side A (ideally from both sides) a builder-train comes into play. We need to place this engine on an existing track at the beginning and fill it with the material and the train drives with increasing built to B and places the items as the blueprint tells. To fill the train with new material we need to move a normal train as near as possible to the builder-train and have some kind of logistic bots, which fill the stuff into the builder.

[Sir Nick]

Yeah, an airship is most definitely a possibility! Although it may be a bit view-obstructing.

To edit:
Yep, I had exactly this in mind. I believe I had it posted in another thread though...