Prevent bots placing ghosts with unlearned recipes

[Engimage]

I watched several streams and I have met this issue myself.

If you prepare some blueprints ahead of time to plan your base layout and place them while they contain yet not researched recipes the bots will place assemblers with cleared recipes and without productivity modules which can't apply to an assembler with cleared recipe.

I propose to stop bots from placing such ghosts at all ultil the recipe is actually researched.

Current bot behaviour forces you to kinda delete the assemblers and replace the blueprint when you are done researching which is not very convenient imo.

[Klonan]

I watched several streams and I have met this issue myself.

If you prepare some blueprints ahead of time to plan your base layout and place them while they contain yet not researched recipes the bots will place assemblers with cleared recipes and without productivity modules which can't apply to an assembler with cleared recipe.

I propose to stop bots from placing such ghosts at all ultil the recipe is actually researched.

Current bot behaviour forces you to kinda delete the assemblers and replace the blueprint when you are done researching which is not very convenient imo.

Or just set the recipe by hand, copy paste from one to all the others

[ratchetfreak]

Or just set the recipe by hand, copy paste from one to all the others

Not as easy in a "mall" setup (where this would be the most handy). Then every assembler has a different recipe and you will need to manually adjust the mall every time you finished a research. Setting manually is error prone because if it's large you can't peek at the blueprint and you probably don't know off the top of your head what exactly each is producing.

doing a destroy and replace causes any inserters feeding the idle assemblers to pick possibly wrong materials and put them on the ground before you can place down the correct ghost.

[Klonan]

Or just set the recipe by hand, copy paste from one to all the others

Not as easy in a "mall" setup (where this would be the most handy). Then every assembler has a different recipe and you will need to manually adjust the mall every time you finished a research. Setting manually is error prone because if it's large you can't peek at the blueprint and you probably don't know off the top of your head what exactly each is producing.

doing a destroy and replace causes any inserters feeding the idle assemblers to pick possibly wrong materials and put them on the ground before you can place down the correct ghost.

It is better than the alternative, and seems like a very specific case

[Engimage]

It is better than the alternative, and seems like a very specific case

I'll give you another example
I have several science layouts I have prepared in my test lab
Then I start a new base I am planning space ahead and place these layouts even before those science packs are available
Then kind bots just deploy them.

Not like this is hard to work around but still it would be far more convenient if bots would not try to deploy them as they are.

And yes, the mall is the worst case scenario.

[Engimage]

I also just recalled you proposing a competition of pre-blueprinted factories.
I would really like to see a base expanding itself following greater blueprint as technologies get unlocked and materials are getting fed.
But sadly this would be impossible with current behaviour.
Maybe such machines would still remember the recipe but could not produce it? With possibly some additional blinking sign about this? Something like they currently have when there are modules in a blueprint but robots can't insert them? Or maybe like we see it in a blueprint with red strikethrough circle on the recipe?

[Klonan]

I also just recalled you proposing a competition of pre-blueprinted factories.
I would really like to see a base expanding itself following greater blueprint as technologies get unlocked and materials are getting fed.
But sadly this would be impossible with current behaviour.
Maybe such machines would still remember the recipe but could not produce it? With possibly some additional blinking sign about this? Something like they currently have when there are modules in a blueprint but robots can't insert them? Or maybe like we see it in a blueprint with red strikethrough circle on the recipe?

With your suggestion they would not even place the assembling machines, which would slow progress a lot more

[Engimage]

With your suggestion they would not even place the assembling machines, which would slow progress a lot more

I meant they would place it once the recipe is researched. This was my initial suggestion.
The other option was in my last post - to set the recipe but assembler would not work until the recipe becomes available. Before that there would be a stop sign over it in Alt mode so you can understand why it is not working.

[JohnyDL]

a way to mark blueprints as layout plans rather than build plans could work it allows you to dump a whole bunch of stuff on the map and activate it for building as and when you need it, (a green print maybe) you could then tell bots to build the infrastructure up to a point and not bother with assemblers or you could plan out huge solar arrays and activate them for building in more controlled fashion than just letting the robots construct almost randomly (or even a priority layer 0 never gets done upto 255 with top priority (like Oxygen not Included) and you could use the tool to create gradients of what to build in what order or which requester chests are more important in an when some have the same items