Factorio Forums

I'd really like to have the blueprint system available from the beginning of the game and layouts available between games. It is a serious pain to migrate designs between games presently, especially if you don't use mods. There are hundreds of posts with 'blueprint strings' from people who are working around the absence of this feature. When it was originally announced I thought the Blueprint Book was this feature. I even spent some extra time making really complicated designs to use in the future when it was released. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed. I also feel like it would improve early game base layout and co-op play as it would be easier to coordinate. I think the existing tech could just allow bots to build your layouts.

Regardless, you do a great job, just hoping this idea seems like as good an idea to you as it does to me.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just a question of game balancing?

LuckyStar wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just a question of game balancing?

Well it definitely has balancing implications, but he argues solely from the usability standpoint.

I'm not talking about starting with Construction robots. The actual auto construction of the blueprints would still require the current tech.

You can use shift click item placement from the beginning of the game currently. Nothing will build that for you. I'd just like to see blueprint placement available from the beginning of the game with the addition of a blueprint library that is cross-game so you don't have to rebuild them or use a mod to migrate designs.

Considering the cost of a blueprint, I don't see this making much difference to the game balance.

Please have a look into viewtopic.php?f=80&t=4682 Planning (Signs, Cloning, Ghosts, Blueprinting and more...)

There is a logical plan, of what kind of tools should be available at which state. Not that this will be ever implemented like so, but the logic is simple straight (in my eyes ). In this case it belongs to

1) Planning:
....
2) Clone
...

I added this to the list, that follows that post.

keleios wrote:I'd really like to have the blueprint system available from the beginning of the game

Already available in this mod Start with blueprints

This would be great in vanilla, I want to lay out my factory in ghost form when I don't have all the objects to finish it so I can see how the parts fit together. Would also require this Quick-replacing ghosts should keep configs to be implemented to make it work well since manually filling in the ghosts would be the only mechanism available in the early game.

keleios wrote:and layouts available between games. It is a serious pain to migrate designs between games presently, especially if you don't use mods. There are hundreds of posts with 'blueprint strings' from people who are working around the absence of this feature.

This is implemented in 0.15 (not released)

AndrewIRL wrote:

keleios wrote:I'd really like to have the blueprint system available from the beginning of the game

Already available in this mod Start with blueprints

This would be great in vanilla, I want to lay out my factory in ghost form when I don't have all the objects to finish it so I can see how the parts fit together. Would also require this Quick-replacing ghosts should keep configs to be implemented to make it work well since manually filling in the ghosts would be the only mechanism available in the early game.

keleios wrote:and layouts available between games. It is a serious pain to migrate designs between games presently, especially if you don't use mods. There are hundreds of posts with 'blueprint strings' from people who are working around the absence of this feature.

This is implemented in 0.15 (not released)

It's all available in sl-extended:
viewtopic.php?f=97&t=39562

filled blueprintbook, revive ghosts and more

just add a few files to the save file and you're ready to go.

Migration with the blueprint string mod you can copy whole books and keep all the settings. But the problem is only expanded. I keep many books to migrate only what i need. (For example marathon mod production lines, or Early game production, late game etc) so i can migrate only what i need ,but with as little imports as possible because the problem is with version control. There is none. Having many books then is a mess in your inventory. The Icon always switches to the last used. The Icons are not descriptive and distinct enough. AND if thats no enough they swap position occasionally.
Lucky there is t least an inventory expansion mod.