Factorio Forums

TL;DR
Blueprints in a book should always stay there
Slightly Longer
Blueprint Books are useful, however I rarely scroll though them, instead I open them, and just select what I need. This ends up however with the blueprints ending up in my inventory, instead of back in the book.
I'd like to change it that blueprints return to their book when you cancel them/are finished with them. The only way blueprints should end up in your inventory is if you drag/drop them there.

+1

+1

ditto

yes please

+1

+1

This was one of the things that keeps bugging me, but when I am about to make a suggestion here I keep forgetting all of those small things. Thanks for reminding me!

+1

It's bugging me, great suggestion.

whitecold wrote:Blueprint Books are useful, however I rarely scroll though them, instead I open them, and just select what I need.

Simply put: you're using the book wrong. You're meant to scroll through them. Opening the book is the way of adding or removing blueprints from the book and is not the normal way you select a blueprint to use.

You are of course right that we might be using the books wrong, but even as experienced player, it regulary happens to me, that a couple of blueprints end up alone in the inventory - Making the removal require pressing a button or something like that would make the use much more consistant - especially as most of the blueprints you organise in books are usually meant to be kept for later use, while those that you use temporary rarely make it into a book.

+1 would like a way to select the blueprint in the book without scrolling. It's super awkward with large books or if one is using a touchpad.

+1 Scrolling through a book is way slower than opening it and picking the bp.

Optera wrote:+1 Scrolling through a book is way slower than opening it and picking the bp.

For me, I open the book, find the bp I want, then scroll to it - usually scrolling the wrong way, then either I forget than I'm in the book and just select the bp or close the book and pick it up to use the bp I found. it's really slow, annoying, cumbersome...

Rseding91 wrote:

whitecold wrote:Blueprint Books are useful, however I rarely scroll though them, instead I open them, and just select what I need.

Simply put: you're using the book wrong. You're meant to scroll through them. Opening the book is the way of adding or removing blueprints from the book and is not the normal way you select a blueprint to use.

I've been playing Factorio on and off since 2014, and the working of Blueprints and books is pretty much a mystery to me, sure I've never sat down at length to try and learn how exactly it works, BUT it says something when I can grasp Factorio game play through just doing it, but can't Blueprint books, the current design is counter intuitive and could be fixed just by switching default behaviours and adding a couple of buttons to make certain actions explicitly selectable.

Rseding91 wrote:

whitecold wrote:Blueprint Books are useful, however I rarely scroll though them, instead I open them, and just select what I need.

Simply put: you're using the book wrong. You're meant to scroll through them. Opening the book is the way of adding or removing blueprints from the book and is not the normal way you select a blueprint to use.

I never use the scrolling, it is always awkward and slow. Last to note is that in .14 I also always used books like this, and there blueprints seemed to return to the book.

Integrate Books with the inventory:
If Player have Book in the inventory, new tab appear above regular items. One tab for each book.

Book can be used as nów, with scrolling, but user can also select the tab, and pick BP manually. After use, BP returns to inventory, to the correct tab.

whitecold wrote:I never use the scrolling, it is always awkward and slow.

I also never use the scrolling (shift+mouse wheel?). It's a really awkward, slow way to get through a blueprint book. It takes a 2D grid of items, and turns it into a 1D list of items. i.e. The time spent navigating through your items is literally squared. IMO the scrolling behaviour of blueprint books should be removed from the game, and that key combination can be used for something more useful.

I have never considered using a page from a blueprint book to quickly get to my wanted blueprint because I knew it would no longer be in the slot of the book that I originally had it. It would take time to put it back in the same spot. This would make 30 page books a possibility for me, as it takes often far to long to scroll to the page that I want.

tl;dr +1

AileTheAlien wrote:

whitecold wrote:I never use the scrolling, it is always awkward and slow.

I also never use the scrolling (shift+mouse wheel?). It's a really awkward, slow way to get through a blueprint book. It takes a 2D grid of items, and turns it into a 1D list of items. i.e. The time spent navigating through your items is literally squared. IMO the scrolling behaviour of blueprint books should be removed from the game, and that key combination can be used for something more useful.

Thank you for pointing that out.

+1

How to select a blueprint from a large book: (I use this technique from a balancer book I downloaded).

1) Open book. Scroll the book window to find the blueprint you want (you are looking through the 2D grid)
2) Use the scroll wheel to quickly scroll through the book. Eventually you will see the yellow square moving through the page of the book, so you know you are close.
3) Now slow down the scrolling and select the actual blueprint you want.
4) Close the book and pick it up to place the blueprint.

Obviously, this design flow is... suboptimal.

As an aside - once the major flaws in blueprint management are fixed, maybe introduce a blueprint folder structure concept? So I can open, e.g.:
Trains/4-lane trains/stations/loading stations/dual ore loading station
Or, perhaps:
Balancers/Blue belt/8 inputs/8:6 balancer