Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Remove the "Trees/rocks only" toggle from deconstruction planners, and add an "all trees" item and an "all rocks" item to the available filters for deconstruction planners.

What ?

It would be nice to be able to make a single deconstruction planner which destroys trees, rocks, cliffs, items on the ground, etc. Currently, you have to either use the "Trees/rocks only" option, which cannot include cliffs or other items, or manually pick every possible tree and rock instance to add to the filters. The latter option doesn't even work when you're using a mod like 'Alien Biomes' which adds more trees or rocks, because they can't all individually fit in a single planner.

In addition to allowing a single deconstruction planner to clean up all of nature's messes, separating trees and rocks would let you make a planner which only destroys one or the other, if you're in to that sort of thing.

See also viewtopic.php?f=6&t=68629

I very often use the "trees&rocks only" filter for the deconstruction planner.
I would appreciate having an icon for that filter which has a contrast with the red background that does not entirely rely on hue alone.

We have very nice icons for "Ghost item" and "Ghost tile", as well as "item on ground".
Can we have a "trees & rocks only" icon in the same style?

Is it not the picture of the tree? Or do you want a "ghost tree" icon.

I would rather prefer if "All trees" and "All rocks" became seperately selectable filters the same as for example "entity-ghost". Because the current system doesn't even allow adding additional filters when using "only rocks and trees" which is quite inflexible. For example i can't even make a blacklist decon planner that only deconstructs "man made" objects because rocks+trees doesn't include cliffs or other (modded) natural entities.

AmericanPatriot wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 23, 2020 5:34 pm

Is it not the picture of the tree? Or do you want a "ghost tree" icon.

When selecting "trees & rocks only" I see a green tree on a red background. Not ideal if you have problems distinguishing these colors.
I'd prefer having a white tree symbol when using this filter, similar in style to the "item on ground" symbol.

eradicator wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 23, 2020 6:45 pm

I would rather prefer if "All trees" and "All rocks" became seperately selectable filters the same as for example "entity-ghost". Because the current system doesn't even allow adding additional filters when using "only rocks and trees" which is quite inflexible. For example i can't even make a blacklist decon planner that only deconstructs "man made" objects because rocks+trees doesn't include cliffs or other (modded) natural entities.

This is a fair point, but unrelated from my suggestion. Also I'm sure your suggestion was posted by other people many times in the past, for example here:
viewtopic.php?p=520750#p520750

+1 for that. I currently have an "Unnatural deconstruction" planner that removes all my stuff and doesn't touch the environment, and I had to individually add every single tree to it, in addition to the few rocks, cliffs and fish.

It does not have to be "items" in the normal tabs, if that is a pain to implement. Just the two checkboxes for rocks and trees will do, provided they don't disable the ability to add individual items to the filter. Heck, even the current one will do, just don't disable the grid when it is checked. (And remove the word "only" from its name.)

The linked suggestion is better if implementation effort is to be disregarded, but I think that trees and rocks are the only two categories that contain lots of items that you rarely bother to treat as individual items. Initially I didn't even realize that every kind of tree was a separate entity, thought they were just one with metadata specifying the texture, maybe one per hitbox size.

IMO the "Trees and rocks only" button should only be a shortcut which places generic "Trees" and "Rocks" entries into the filter.

Switching on the toggle should make the filter "Trees" and "Rocks", but it should not disable the grid so the player can further customize the filter (for example, making it "Trees only"). Switching the toggle off should clear the filter.

The reason to keep the toggle is that a new player can easily discover how to make a deconstruction planner which removes trees and rocks only.

TL;DR

Destruction planner can also ignore cliffs and fish, not just trees and rocks

What ?

The destruction planner now has an option to blacklist trees and rocks so it deconstructs all the rest. All the rest includes cliffs and fish.

The deconstruction planner should have in stead an option to blacklist all natural occurring stuff on the map, including fish and cliffs.

Why ?

Clearing out an outpost using the blacklist trees and rocks will cause any cliffs in the area selected to be destroyed and any fish to be mined, which was not the point.

Configure the decon planner like that:

Or use
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Shortcuts-ick
Which adds a deconstruction-planner for trees/rocks and Cliff/Fish/Item on ground.

Have a look at these topics regarding similar ideas:

91389 about making separate "all trees" and "all rocks" filters,
68629 about a general UI overhaul and
48227 a very old topic where, among loads of outdated stuff, similar ideas to this one are discussed.

@ssilk thanks for the advertisement

+1 for making an abstract white trees/rocks icon.

I would also suggest to improve the icon for a "blacklist"-"Trees/rocks only" deconstruction planner. I never noticed this until today but apparently a red crossed out circle is added to the icon. Problem being that red on red is barely visible.

merged

The other topics where too old in my opinion...

So I tried to actually mod this and while it works in principle it really shows how lacking the modding API is in certain parts:

By "Undo not supported" you mean cancelling the order or "un-chopping-down" the trees? xD
But yeah, e.g. "Empty miner deconstruction" mod seems to suffer from the same problem. (Plus its "deconstruction planner" cannot be deleted if you put it in inventory, guess your mod doesn't have the issue.)

evg-zhabotinsky wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 18, 2021 7:42 am

By "Undo not supported" you mean cancelling the order or "un-chopping-down" the trees? xD

The difficulty of wording that unambiguously is yet another annoyance ;). I put it in "quotes" to emphasise that it means the Undo function. Manually cancelling the order by shift+drag works fine.

evg-zhabotinsky wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 18, 2021 7:42 am

But yeah, e.g. "Empty miner deconstruction" mod seems to suffer from the same problem. (Plus its "deconstruction planner" cannot be deleted if you put it in inventory, guess your mod doesn't have the issue.)

I don't use a special planner, I just reuse the standard planner. But as "does not work from library" states - you have to carry it around and waste inventory space or it doesn't work.

I would very much support this!

I'm currently playing with Space Exploration. I want to keep my pollution low so I don't want to remove trees, but I do want to deconstruct all rocks on my planet to make things easier to traverse. Unfortunately, there are so many varieties of rocks that I have to have TWO separate deconstruction planners to cover them all, and that is not even covering the asteroids...

https://imgur.com/a/kqj1Qjx

I know ECO had some similar "tags" for various items in its recipes and so on - https://wiki.play.eco/en/Rock_Tag . Would be nice to have those for deconstruction planner as well!