Ability to use high tech reciepes in low tech situations

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AlienRaven
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Ability to use high tech reciepes in low tech situations

Post by AlienRaven »

TL;DR
Allow user, who made it to construction robots, but still has generally low tier technologies use the blueprints from high tier technology.
What ?
The game has several instances of items, that serve the same function, but have different quality (belts, underground belts, splitters, assembling machines, etc). When you are replaying the game from scratch it is sometimes pain, when you have researched and built construction robots and all your blueprints are for express belts, but you still are on the level when you only have yellow, that you can use. This basically makes you to place the blueprint and then manually put lower tier items over the ghost on the ground. While this is time consuming it also can be a challenge on certain terrain types, where you wont be able to clearly see all ghost parts on the ground because of contrast with background.

I suggest to make the checkbox inside the blueprint (the same as "Modules") that is disabled by default.

If disabled - robots will only use structures matched by tier in the blueprint from inventory or chests, the same way it works right now.
When enabled it will allow robots to use items from players inventory, even if tier of the item is not the same.

Example 1: i have a blueprint of 6-to-6 belt balancer. It is made of express belts and splitters. But I currently run a fresh game (with robots already being researched, built and used) where I only have regular belts and splitters researched. I take the blueprint, tick the checkbox and robots will built the same structure while using yellow items instead of blue ones. If I have fast (red) belts and splitters in my inventory, robots will use them with a priority, compared to regular belts.

Example 2: I have a blueprint of electrical circuit production with express belts, assembling machines 3 and modules. I will be able to use it, so robots will build this blueprint with regular belts, assembly machine 1 and no modules.

I know that this might cause issues like "the length of underground belts does not match", "throughput will be different" but I believe that since its an advanced option, user will have enough discretion to decide, whether to use it and manually fix it or not use it and built manually. In my opinion for advanced gamer with good knowledge of the game it will be faster to build a temporary solution and fix issues manually, compared to the need of full manual build on top of the ghost.

Priority list for instances:
  • Express transport belt > Fast transport belt > Transport belt
  • Express underground belt > Fast underground belt > Underground belt
  • Express splitter > Fast transport splitter > Transport splitter
  • Stack inserter > Fast inserter > Inserter (other inserters dont particapate)
  • Assembling machine 3 > Assembling machine 2 > Assembling machine 1
  • Steel furnace > Stone furnace
Why ?
This allows to save amount of time for manual construction, in case you already have construction robots technology researched and robots built. This will also save a number of blueprint books you have to have in case you start new maps from time to time, for example. you will only need a blueprint book of express belt balancers instead of 3 different ones.

Edit note 1: corrected typos and added better examples.
Edit note 2: added priority examples.

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