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Multi-Stage Blueprints Installation

Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 11:41 am
by Carlosgrr
The idea is to transform blueprints into a multi-stage installation procedure - so that i can automatically kill creatures, chop down trees, destroy rocks and deploy my factory within an area "without" human intervention.

For this idea to work, a few steps must be taken:
1 - A better blueprint indication - a point and an arrow would suffice to indicate the starting point and direction of the blueprint.

2 - Unusual delimited area for red/blue blueprints - They can be defined by small pieces of wood/whatever that will delimit the drawing area of the future blueprint, once demarked and finished the drawing area with all objects, the blueprint will give me a square, a circle, a whatever shape I choose with whatever things inside.
Also, with the same "blue" area on a red blueprint, I would not need to destroy a big square area of florest just to build an unusual shaped factory.

3 - Activating robots/inserters/whatever - They can pick-up grenades and when upon a rock... BOOM... 8 of these and one less rock in my way...
Also, these "robots" will have to insertable on the blueprints, so that once they pickup a blueprint they can activate this blueprint in an x,y position with a defined direction.

4 - Materials inside boxes, inside the blueprints - This way i can insert 1 box with a blueprint to be used in the next stage of the installation, once the robot completed this next stage the box with the next blueprint will signal the next robot the next stage to be built, and so on, going indefinetely, until no more boxes with blueprints are found, ending the installation.

With these 4 above the idea of Multi-Stage Blueprints Installation can be made possible, but with these next three, they can be made easier/more insteresing.

5 - Mirror blueprint transformation - so that a blueprint can be re-used with a diferent but similar design, not just 90, 180, 270 rotations, but also mirrored.

6 - Copying blueprint factories - so that a blueprint can be distributed among several activating robots for a faster deployment, and for balancing/enjoyment reasons, once an activating robot uses a blueprint it can be destroyed.

7 - Rotate / Mirror Blueprints Factories - so that a blueprint can be rotated or mirrored in a Factorio style. ;)

I Know this post probably broke a LOT of the "rules" for a good post, but, well, whatever... Plese, reply with your signature if you like it, Comments, improvements and ideas are also welcome. :geek:

Gustavo

Re: Multi-Stage Blueprints Installation

Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 12:48 pm
by ssilk
No, it doesn't break rules. And I like especially the part where you contain a box with a blueprint.

Similar suggestion: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=7406

Re: Multi-Stage Blueprints Installation

Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 8:31 am
by immibis
Just FYI, the yellow text is hard to read on light themes.

Re: Multi-Stage Blueprints Installation

Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2015 12:06 am
by Gandalf
I like most of this. Some thoughts:

- I'd love it if construction robots could be smart enough to clear the space for blueprints by themselves, especially trees. There could be an optional key used to force-plant blueprints onto other buildings that will then be marked for demolition before the new stuff get's built automatically.

- However robots throwing grenades doesn't sound very safe to me. There might be other stuff nearby that gets destroyed (remember you can place blueprints where parts of it already exist) or even the player might take damage. I like the idea of having robots being able to demolish rocks but I think they should be a little more considerate about its surroundings.

- Also not sure how the boxes thing is supposed to work. I'd be careful with “automatic recursive building”, some inexperienced players might end up plastering their map in an infinite loop or something.

- Mirroring blueprints has been requested before, it should definitely be in the game.

- Cloning blueprints might also come in handy with multiplayer.

- On a side note I still feel like blueprints should be automatically cropped to the area that actually contains buildings (currently a blueprint is always as big as you draw it regardless of how much empty space it contains).

Re: Multi-Stage Blueprints Installation

Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2016 7:39 pm
by Faust
This would be great, it would allow players to create self replicating automatas (and if you are extra creative you can use more bluprints in a kind of a genome way so that you can give it evolutionary effect)....