Factorio Forums

TL;DR

A hotkey or button for the action bar that allows you to force your personal construction bots out to solve any jobs they are able to.

Alternatively, an action bar toggle: Prefer personal construction Yes/No: When you are near construction ghosts that you have the items for, even if already reserved by another construction bot, send a new bot out from your inventory to build it.

What ?

When using blueprints or copy paste near your robot logistic network, you regularly end up with the situation of "Why won't my bots just BUILD THIS!" AKA: Ghost placements that you could fulfil but for some reason, nothing is happening. Unbeknownst to you, somewhere in the distant eschalons of your base, a construction bot has woken up and gone "I can do it! I can do it" and begins it's slow trudge to a provider chest, then down to near you to build it.

There is a similar issue, if you've accidentally abandoned a personal bot miles away, it will reserve a construction ghost and no-one else will ever touch it. With this button, you could reforce the build queue and make it get built sooner rather than later.

This issue can occur in MANY situations. If you paste or blueprint something bigger than your personal range, but within a construction network, a chunk of it will never get built by you, even if you have the items and *are right there*

Why ?

This is a common problem "Why won't my bots build this" is a common question. Even experienced players have "I wish my bots would just build this"

+1
I have had this - particularly if you have your personal roboport off in a base, then turn it on, the jobs have already been assigned.

You can kind of do this by deconstructing the thing and then using control z.

I never thought of that - really good idea!!

Would love to see some more opinions on this. In my own, this is something no one realises they want until they have it.