Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

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aklesey1
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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by aklesey1 »

Awesome news
Pls pls tell top us when 0.17 will be out :)
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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by super_aardvark »

KatherineOfSky wrote: I SEVERELY object to the proposed Q/blueprint let go solution. In an average 30 minute chunk, I might use blueprints 50 or more times -- that would be a heck of a lot of clicking some option box! ...I reuse the same BP multiple times for small things...
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding how this is going to work.

The menu comes up ONLY when you drop a NEW blueprint that doesn't exist as an item yet. Once you put it in your hotbar, in your inventory, or in the blueprint library, it's an item. You're going to pick it up to use it, and when you press Q it will go back to wherever it normally would.

That's how I understood it, anyway.

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by kovarex »

KatherineOfSky wrote:Nice new additions!

Does the Upgrade Planner functionality mark tiles for upgrade within a network? For example, if you want to upgrade your entire main bus, and you run out of belts on your character: will it also draw from storage within the logistics network? (And ask bots in the roboports to complete the upgrade?)
It uses the normal way of distribution of personal/factory robots as in 0.16 when you build a big blueprint.
KatherineOfSky wrote:
I SEVERELY object to the proposed Q/blueprint let go solution. In an average 30 minute chunk, I might use blueprints 50 or more times -- that would be a heck of a lot of clicking some option box! PLEASE NO! Personally, I prefer that Q automatically drop the held BP into the inventory automatically, (and often on my hotbar). I reuse the same BP multiple times for small things, and often have a handful of BPs that I want to keep on me. (Thus, the Copy & Paste holding only 1 BP is not always ideal. The History *might* solve this, but TBH I find it very easy to just click the icon from my inventory).

If you want players to have options, please make a tickbox in the Options menu. I would rather have the BP dropped ALL the time into my inventory, and then clear it out every once in a while than have to use 50 clicks/decision making points/open inventory & drop in instances per every 30 minutes. That would be absolutely horrendous.

(Also, I am not exaggerating about 100 times per hour -- often, I will use the BP to copy little things here and there, erase, copy, erase, change, multiply, etc.)
I feel that you didn't understand it correctly. The selection is just for newly created blueprint. If you copy paste small things here and there, you can use the copy/paste tool, if you want to make a lot of small blueprints anyway, you just click into your action bar to put it there and move it into the inventory.

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by kovarex »

super_aardvark wrote:
KatherineOfSky wrote: I SEVERELY object to the proposed Q/blueprint let go solution. In an average 30 minute chunk, I might use blueprints 50 or more times -- that would be a heck of a lot of clicking some option box! ...I reuse the same BP multiple times for small things...
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding how this is going to work.

The menu comes up ONLY when you drop a NEW blueprint that doesn't exist as an item yet. Once you put it in your hotbar, in your inventory, or in the blueprint library, it's an item. You're going to pick it up to use it, and when you press Q it will go back to wherever it normally would.

That's how I understood it, anyway.
Yes, that is how it is. Pressing Q always puts it where you picked it from, unless it was just created and you didn't put it somewhere yourself already.

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by kovarex »

ratchetfreak wrote: Also in the clipboard menu definitely have an option to turn it into a proper blueprint.

This would integrate copy-paste with the blueprint library a lot more

workflow will become: ctrl+v and select the area to blueprint, then if temporary use ctrl+v to past wherever, if you want a more permanent copy then go to the blueprint library and click the make from clipboard button to make it a blueprint (then naming and icons),
This is how it works already. Control + V and then you can click to the inventory/blueprint library to move it there. (to create blueprint out of the clipboard)

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by Zavian »

kovarex wrote: Yes, that is how it is. Pressing Q always puts it where you picked it from, unless it was just created.
And that's how I understood it. (Though there is room for confusion, since new blueprint always start with a blank blueprint, that often comes from my inventory).

But there is still going to be a lot of time where I decide I want to make a blueprint for something, and I want a more permanent copy than a simple copy-paste (eg it's something I expect I'll use a few times), but i don't want it in my library, at least not until it has undergone some more testing and revisions. (Even then I might want to control exactly where in the library irt ends up. eg It might belong in a blueprint book for early Bobs+Angels smelting perhaps. I certainly do not want hundreds of random blueprints often with multiple iterations of the same setup in the library).

Regardless interrupting the player to ask questions like that is bad UI design. Maybe always drop it into a first toolbar/inventory slot, and add a tutorial that explains the blueprint library the first time it happens.

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by purdueme91 »

Doomquill wrote:
I agree with the concern that adding an extra click after hitting Q while holding a blueprint is going to be annoying, but I'm wondering if maybe it won't because people will more often use copy past functionality than blueprints. I know most of what I do is Delete old blueprint>shift select new section of things>put them somewhere>press Q. Which the copy paste functionality makes unnecessary. So maybe it won't be as bad as it initially sounds.
I know I will love the cut/paste/undo functionality but I am wondering about this specific point. I have lots of BP of little things here and there that I want to reuse. I try to erase and reuse a BP in slot 1 but then I'll think that I will want to use it later and not delete it. But having a confirm button will be a major pain. How about Q keeps it and Z deletes it? But you are most likely right. I will probably use copy paste instead of the small blueprints especially when I am moving/resizing new things.

With the upgrade planner change, I do think the personal roboport needs to be looked at again. Maybe a starter one that can't support as many construction bots but can run off of solar panels. And only needs red+green science to unlock.

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by teekyman »

Fantastic news with the upgrade planner, and copy/cut/paste!

I also misunderstood from the Friday Facts about how often the dialog box would be showing up. I'm glad that it will not pop up every time I press Q with a blueprint in cursor.

That said, I do think that it adds *some* slowdown to the game, since you will have to do it fairly often.

The way I see it, blueprints in the book are the really useful ones that you are proud of, and want to keep around, while blueprints in the inventory but are not in the book are the temporary ones that you may not need much again. These temporary ones you may still need to use a *couple* of times while scaling, so I think you'd almost always want to keep them, then delete them after a couple of uses. However, I think that copy/cut/paste will completely supplant the role of the temporary blueprint, and people will find ways to use copy/cut/paste over what they currently do with temporary blueprints.

So, I'd prefer that pressing Q deletes the blueprint entirely by default to avoid all the clutter to the inventory.

For me: Pressing Q deletes blueprint > Pressing Q drops blueprint in the inventory > Pressing Q opens a dialog box

I agree with purdueme that perhaps the best solution is to use multiple keybindings:
Q - drops blueprint in the inventory, where it can be saved to the book later
Z - deletes the blueprint completely
or something like that

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by kovarex »

Zavian wrote:
kovarex wrote: Yes, that is how it is. Pressing Q always puts it where you picked it from, unless it was just created.
And that's how I understood it. (Though there is room for confusion, since new blueprint always start with a blank blueprint, that often comes from my inventory).
Well, the case I'm mostly covering is, that you click a new blueprint and you select content for it right away. If you have an empty blueprint somewhere (inventory/action bar), and you pick it (so the hand on the slot appears) setup it, and press Q, there is no reason why it shouldn't go where you picked it up from.

And again, instead of pressing Q, you just manually click an quickbar (action bar) slot to store it. Action for an action.

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by Blacky007 »

kovarex wrote: Well, the case I'm mostly covering is, that you click a new blueprint and you select content for it right away. If you have an empty blueprint somewhere (inventory/action bar), and you pick it (so the hand on the slot appears) setup it, and press Q, there is no reason why it shouldn't go where you picked it up from.

And again, instead of pressing Q, you just manually click an quickbar (action bar) slot to store it. Action for an action.
I wish there is a zoom in a blueprint - I have sometimes giant Blueprints and want to remove 10 litte things.
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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by kovarex »

Blacky007 wrote:
kovarex wrote: Well, the case I'm mostly covering is, that you click a new blueprint and you select content for it right away. If you have an empty blueprint somewhere (inventory/action bar), and you pick it (so the hand on the slot appears) setup it, and press Q, there is no reason why it shouldn't go where you picked it up from.

And again, instead of pressing Q, you just manually click an quickbar (action bar) slot to store it. Action for an action.
I wish there is a zoom in a blueprint - I have sometimes giant Blueprints and want to remove 10 litte things.
Blueprint inspection/edit is for another day :)

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by psihius »

Please lift the research queue 5 tech queue limit. Leave it unlimited or some somewhat big number :)

Also, adding "continue this limited research" option would be great so it can just chug along endlessly until changed :)

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by juliejayne »

So last week was Pitchforks and burning torches. Now this week it is all Festivities, celebrations fireworks and cheering. I thought this was Factorio, not Rollercoaster....

But hurrah, hurrah, hurrah... love all the changes mentioned today... 100% wonderful.

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by irbork »

All news this week to my liking :D

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by orzelek »

This FF is both nice and sad :P
There are many QoL features that look cool but all of them require bots.

And I'm sorry but example of copy/pasting stone furnaces with bots is waaay of mark. Unless we will start with bots now there is no way at that stage to have bots. And any more complex mod will now have increased annoyance on entry since all the QoL features will be locked behind construction bots.

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by Tuk »

torham wrote:
ratchetfreak wrote:When pressing Q with a new blueprint the blueprint should become the ctrl+v blueprint in the clipboard.

Also in the clipboard menu definitely have an option to turn it into a proper blueprint.

This would integrate copy-paste with the blueprint library a lot more

workflow will become: ctrl+v and select the area to blueprint, then if temporary use ctrl+v to past wherever, if you want a more permanent copy then go to the blueprint library and click the make from clipboard button to make it a blueprint (then naming and icons),
This is an excellent idea!
Approved!

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by QGamer »

Wow. I appreciate all the thought & care you put into making Factorio so user-friendly. Thank you. :D
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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by CzBuCHi »

All nice QOL improvements :-) when it get public? ;o) anyway:
so when the player presses Q, it will invoke a small selection popup next to the mouse, so the player can explicitly select what to do
what about keyboard sequences: pressing one key, then another?

for example:
  • Q, Q: destroy
  • Q, E: to inventory
  • Q, B: to bp library
(also as mentioned before integration with clipboard would be nice)
  • Q, S: save to clipboard and destroy
CTRL+B: create blueprint item from whatever is currently in clipbard and put in hand (current item in hand if any goes to inventory)

---
visual studio has nice clipboard feature where presing CTRL+SHIFT+V it shows popup menu with last 10 used textx in clipboard to choose from ... could be this also implemented?

- say given shortcut create blueprint book from last used 'clipboard' blueprints sorted from newest to oldest, player then can select what he needs, place it down and dispose book by double tapping Q (or saving it somewhere) ...

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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by WIZ4 »

How about a capsule with temporary construction robots for an early game?
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Re: Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

Post by Eydamos »

One thing that usually bothers me with blueprints and that none of the current changes addresses is the following: It is impossible to change circuits.

Quick example: I build a setup with a couple of Assembling machines, chests and inserters and a decider combinator. I have already set which item to check for and the quantity as well as what the assembly should build and now I create my blueprint. The next time I build the blueprint I realize my mistake: everything is already set and I have to stop everything, clear the chests etc. most likely I will also forget to update the blueprint before I have set the items to craft.

So my proposal: Instead of just letting us remove buildings from the blueprint give us an advanced edit mode via a button where we can click on buildings to change the settings of the building that are saved along with the blueprint, like what to craft, what to look for, the quantity etc.

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