Use personal bots automatically when out of build range

[Tinyboss]

Current behavior, when trying to build something with left-click:
If within build range, cursor is yellow, item is built.
If outside that range, cursor is red, nothing happens. But you can shift-click to have your robot build it.

Suggested behavior for left-click:
If within build range, cursor is yellow, item is built.
If outside build range but inside personal roboport range, cursor is green, robot builds it.
If outside personal roboport range, cursor is red, nothing happens.
No interaction at all with regular logistic network.

Just a small quality-of-life change to make your personal robot network more like an extension of yourself.

[deepdriller]

Why green? You're going to effectively place a blueprint, so the cursor should be blue.
Other than that, YES. It might sound like a small tweak, but it can make a huge difference.

[Tinyboss]

Why green? You're going to effectively place a blueprint, so the cursor should be blue.
Other than that, YES. It might sound like a small tweak, but it can make a huge difference.

I had in mind that anytime the game displays the construction bot range, that's green, so there's that association. But it's not very important. Glad you like the main idea!

[SHiRKiT]

Not quite the topic, but I'm already making a mod to handle this. It's not the best, but does the job.

[Tinyboss]

Not quite the topic, but I'm already making a mod to handle this. It's not the best, but does the job.

How does it work? I mean, from the player's perspective?

[bobucles]

The simplest answer is that instead of having the build attempt fail out of range, it just places a blueprint instead.

[SHiRKiT]

Not quite the topic, but I'm already making a mod to handle this. It's not the best, but does the job.

How does it work? I mean, from the player's perspective?

I'm debating if I should place a GUI button on the screen, or force the player to always have no more than 10 construction robots in his inventory. Maybe a combination of both, but I'm still searching through the interfaces how to achieve this. It should totally disable the personal roboport when you have 10 robots in your inventory and you are inside the construction network. Or the ugly button, since I feel this may fail.

[Blue_Lucario]

I one up this
Great idea.

(I'm shore the devs will choose a good color )

[SHiRKiT]

Just for linking purposes, I have created a mod that covers this area that's not covered by the vanilla game. Check it out here: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 92&t=14830

[Tinyboss]

SHiRKiT, I'm sure that could be useful, but it doesn't sound like it addresses the suggestion I'm making:

Disables the personal roboport you are wearing when you go inside your construction network.

You CAN'T have more than 10 construction robots on all of your inventory (quickbar and main), or this mod WILL FAIL.

It will always try to put in the first slot available, so if you don't want to get crazy, just place your personal roboport in the first 4 slots on the top left. Also, it stores the charged energy, so you don't lose it.

For now, it just supports vanilla Roboports and Personal Roboports. Planned to support modded roboports and personal roboports soon. And it only supports 1 personal roboport on your armor.

In theory it should be multiplayer compatible, but I haven't test it.

[TuckJohn]

Yes please. This would be awesome. I trust the devs to make it work and be useful.
Great idea!!

[Nemoricus]

Perhaps there should be an auto-blueprint toggle which makes all of your left-click placements blueprints instead of placing an item.

I can see this being useful in later stage factories, where you have the resources to delegate construction tasks to the bots.

[ratchetfreak]

Perhaps there should be an auto-blueprint toggle which makes all of your left-click placements blueprints instead of placing an item.

I can see this being useful in later stage factories, where you have the resources to delegate construction tasks to the bots.

you already can by shift clicking down a building

[codewarrior]

I like this. I mostly use my personal roboport to extend the range of my normal (non-blueprint) building, so it would be nice if I didn't have to mash Shift all the time to do that.

[Tinyboss]

I just swapped the bindings for build and blueprint in the control options. Now I can build manually with shift-click if I ever want to, and just click for bot-assisted building.

It works well enough that I think this suggestion is no longer necessary.

[Choumiko]

I just swapped the bindings for build and blueprint in the control options. Now I can build manually with shift-click if I ever want to, and just click for bot-assisted building.

It works well enough that I think this suggestion is no longer necessary.

Haha, that's pretty clever

I started to mod it, and for non-rotatable entities it's working fine, only for entities where rotation matters it fails. If player.cursor_stack would give me the direction i could release. So i'll guess i change the bindings too, once i get a properly powered personal roboport.