Friday Facts #255 - Construction tools

[Ringkeeper]

when Devs/people-that-make-the-decisions play their own games you get such FFF Awsome stuff, so much helpful stuff.

[Escadin]

I feel like I might have missed it in the blueprint conclusion and all the previous FF.

Is editing blueprints going to be more user friendly? No more re-typing the name, re-setting all the flags and finding all the icons in correct order again every time I edit an existing blueprint?

[tehfreek]

Also what if clipboard blueprints were actually on the clipboard? I dunno if generation of blueprint strings is instant enough to be unnoticeable. But it would be kinda neat to copy paste from forums and other maps with one less click.

Blueprint string generation is very fast (zlib compression of the Lua structure, Base64 encoding the result, and prefixing a version string), but now you're involving the entire OS in the process instead of just handling it in the game. Need to tread carefully, lest ye anger the user.

[TheRaph]

Hi. Nice FFF with nice features.

About "Holding new blueprint and pressing Q": What about having a Checkbox for "remember my decision" as most widows dialogues have?

[CzBuCHi]

Sounds good, but for UNDO I would restrict it to current screen/view only. Even with long reach settings.

I imagine situations, where I press CTLR+Z and nothing happened. Nothing near the player...
But far away, in remote factory outpost, some crucial infrastructure element just gone out of existence...

What about new alert type - that will point to modified object / space from where that object was removed if it happend outside visible area?

[Crow08]

Great FFF !
The times i wanted to undo something are countless and now it will be possible to do so
Also copy and paste without the need of an explicit one time use bp is great!
I never played with upgrade planner but is seems fair to include it into the game as long as it isn't done instantly, that way it feels cheaty.

[SightedNZ]

So many awesome QoL changes here that have been a long time coming.

Kudos!

[Oktokolo]

While everyone is cheering (yes, me too, but):

You know that next FFF will be about removing belts in favor of a completely bot-based gameplay from burner age to rocket phase?

Well, either that or something equaly controversial. There is a pattern to be seen in the recent FFFs...

[fur_and_whiskers]

I have a couple of questions about the CTRL+Z functionality:
2. I, too, find the lack of usefulness of the QOL features for the pre-bot period unfortunate. Perhaps it would make sense to add a lower tier of non-flying {burner?} construction bots, as previous posts indicated.

I've thought about what it would require for the team to provide low tier walking robots. In fact before getting the game and told it had robots I expected they would walk around. However in hindsight I can see it would be a great deal more difficult programming AI to walk its way around the factory, the landscape and handle being attacked by biter spitters compared to programming something that can fly in straight lines unimpeded by any of the land bound environment. As much as I'd love to see low tier walking base building robots early game It would be a huge undertaking indeed.

[Jap2.0]

While everyone is cheering (yes, me too, but):

You know that next FFF will be about removing belts in favor of a completely bot-based gameplay from burner age to rocket phase?

Well, either that or something equaly controversial. There is a pattern to be seen in the recent FFFs...

Yeah, people seem to go between loving and hating the devs quite quickly (and that's due in no small part to the devs).

[gravityStar]

This seems like added friction, requiring an added mouse click for what can be a very frequent operation, cleaning a blueprint from the cursor. Requiring a cursor move can also be disruptive if a player is trying to build multiple blueprints that are intended to be aligned with each other, e.g. books of rail building blocks.

Strong agree: I'm not a fan of a popup menu that does or does not show up depending on the specific situation in response to a keyboard shortcut.

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),

Moderate agree: I like that this proposal integrates with the clipboard.
Moderate disagreement: Clipboards are the property of the user, applications should not act in surprising ways to overwrite them.

Alternative suggestion: Integrate the Q hotkey behavior with the Undo functionality.
Pressing Q while the cursor holds a new unsaved blueprint destroys that blueprint. Pressing Ctrl-Z though, then returns that new unsaved blueprint to the cursor.
Downsides: This, ofcourse, opens up the discussion of what other cursor states (or interactions), if any, should also be subject to Undo.

2nd Alternative: Add dropped, new, unsaved blueprints to a Recycle bin.
Pressing Q while the cursor holds a new unsaved blueprint moves that blueprint to a Recycle bin with a name of just the current date and time.
Downsides: Oh, now we need a Recycle bin as a new concept/feature in the UI. Ugh. How is this going to work precisely and what other things could/should this Recycle bin be used for? Old versions of blueprints/blueprint books?

[Eyeer]

Well, i'm w8 for integrating a Blueprint Flipper (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Blueprint_Flipper) and side inserters and i dont need a mods any more for my next playthrough

[Pascali]

Too many work done, without doing something. The game plays itself with all this contstructions tools and blueprints.

Just like bying a puzzle and pressing 1 button and the puzzle is build -> next game.

[5thHorseman]

Too many work done, without doing something. The game plays itself with all this contstructions tools and blueprints.

Just like bying a puzzle and pressing 1 button and the puzzle is build -> next game.

I got excited that I could win so easily with just these few changes so I loaded up a game, installed the mods that do these things, and pressed 1. Sadly, I did not win. Looks like I have to actually play the game to win.

[Kotu]

looking good, I do wish there was some construction automation before robots though.

Some kind of ground based robot which only needs science packs 1/2 and uses normal engines

[theolderbeholder]

Och, it is bloody christmas, I tell ya.

[Engimage]

Really glad to see so many awesome news at a time

I do not agree on blueprint library implementation but apart from that its just a party FFF

[calmari71]

The (arguable) advantage is, that it can no longer upgrade instantly from the player inventory, so it is more balanced and consistent with the other construction tools.

And the (arguable) disadvantage is that it is now completely locked behind robots. This means that the example screenshot of replacing yellow/yellow belts/inserters with blue/red isn't ever going to happen, because you get red belts and fast inserters way before robots. This is especially hurtful in mods that make robot research significantly more expensive while still requiring several upgrade steps (i.e. xanders mod). Maybe a sort of manual mode would be possible where you have to press a button and hover over each marked-for-upgrade entity to manually upgrade it? This wouldn't be as fast as bots, but works without them and removes the need to manually select the correct item for each upgradeable entity. I.e. an "assisted manual upgrade" mode.

This is the second post I've read where people fixate on the items used in the example. Its a demonstration of the capability. Who cares whether or not its a likely situation. Its a proof of concept, and it works. What difference does it make if they show upgrading yellow belts to red or if they show upgrading red belts to blue. Did the tool upgrade the the item? Yes it did.

Second, the "you have to use bots" thing. Klonan's mod is broken OP and bypasses the game mechanics in a big way. It lets you remotely replace an item instantaneously without the use of bots. That's fine if you want that kind of thing in a modded game, but its definitely not realistic in terms of base game balance. As for "push a button and hover over the entity" you already have that capability in the hotbar.

[Pascali]

Too many work done, without doing something. The game plays itself with all this contstructions tools and blueprints.

Just like bying a puzzle and pressing 1 button and the puzzle is build -> next game.

I got excited that I could win so easily with just these few changes so I loaded up a game, installed the mods that do these things, and pressed 1. Sadly, I did not win. Looks like I have to actually play the game to win.

You can just copy a blueprint from anywhere and it´s build. You only have to say build irgon-mine on this place and coal-mine on that place -> all done by robots and blueprints. Lean back and play another game. So all this comfort-things are competitors to your game-play-time. And you don´t have the nice feeling you have done all the work by yourself. At least a option has to be there, where you aren´t able to use blueprints and this autoreplace-stuff. So all players in a multiplayer-game have the same chances. But in a singleplayer game i would like to see this too. So you aren´t tempted to use this easyplay-features.

[Oktokolo]

You can just copy a blueprint from anywhere and it´s build. You only have to say build irgon-mine on this place and coal-mine on that place -> all done by robots and blueprints. Lean back and play another game. So all this comfort-things are competitors to your game-play-time. And you don´t have the nice feeling you have done all the work by yourself. At least a option has to be there, where you aren´t able to use blueprints and this autoreplace-stuff. So all players in a multiplayer-game have the same chances.

All players in multiplayer are able to use blueprints. They also are able to view youtube videos about best mine-based tactics and bring their own experience to the game. Chances are already as equal, as they can be.

And if you want the feeling that you have done all the work by yourself... Try just not using blueprints from the net (it actually works - tested it some hundreds of hours myself).