Factorio Forums

Add the option to place blueprint(s) into a roboport which, upon a circuit/logistic condition are placed in a relative pre-defined position.

Factorio is a game all about automation. Why not allow blueprints to be placed for you? This could allow for astonishing levels of automation and possibly even truly self-replicating factories. I hope the exciting possibilities of having a blueprint projector in the blueprint being projected* are worth the considerable development cost to realise it.

*exciting idea, but should probably be read afterwards I believe it to be a natural addition to the roboport since robots build onto blueprints, here's how it could work:
In the roboport there are two boxes for blueprints to be stored in, each paired with a circuit/logistic network condition (similar to smart inserters).
There are also buttons to "set placement" of the blueprints, click them and the player is given the blueprint in hand to manually show where the blueprint should be placed, the blueprint projector remembers this position relative to itself.

Once set up, if the cirucit or logistic network condition is true the blueprint is placed. Robots would then try and build it the same as any other blueprint. This is the simplest form of the idea, I imagine a few toggleable options would be needed to further guide this behaviour (a start is shown below, but these are open to further suggestions and refinement).

Behaviour Options

• - Whether to "shift-click" place the blueprint, forcing placement even if not all entities are placeable
  - Whether new "blank" blueprint projectors in the blueprint should be overwritten as a copy of this blueprint projector
  - Whether or not to delete the projector itself after completion
  - Options to rotate blueprints?

Would love to hear people's ideas of what they would like to build using the projector, and what problems they imagine would arise using it!
Thanks for reading

Automated turret creep? YES PLEASE.

My only problem is I'd put a few down, forget about them, and end up with turrets slowly walking themselves across the map thousands of chunks away, slowly increasing my map size forever.

EDIT: Though I suppose that would be solved eventually by the creep machine encountering a rock or water.

I created an article and liked this in: viewtopic.php?f=80&t=27054 Self Replicating (with Blueprints)

Not much use until you add something so it's not one-shot placement, e.g. some offset. Might be good for paving entire base or covering some region with solar panels or covering ore patch with drills with condition of enough ingredients and not so many ghosts (due to timeout).