Friday Facts #278 - The new quickbar

[JekoRhino]

I read about the blueprint and got to say one thing, let us delete blueprints from our inventory.

It really is frustrating to open them and press delete...
But I just hope they figure that out with the new Blueprint System.
Maybe Blueprints won't be handled as Items any more and instead be just a Menu.
I guess that the shortcut menu will accommodate Inventory and Blueprints in 0.17.

[weaknespase]

I have some doubts about completely replacing toolbar with quickbar. For example, i'd make toolbar slots act as inventory if they don't have a filter set and as shortcuts if they filtered, it might make system overly dynamic for some people, but i think this is the ultimate solution.

Although trying to explain it to the new players will be hard, probably

[ratchetfreak]

It may be worth thinking carefully about how to set/remove/overwrite filters in that quickbar so that new players can get going quickly.

At the very least being able to just deposit an item into the quick bar without needing to middle click (which on a laptop touchpad is a tossup on whether it's actually available)

[danielbrauer]

However before construction bots, blueprints are more or less useless and a lot of time is spend on repetitive tasks blueprints would solve easily. It kind of feels like some sort of grinding and adding grinding is usually not a great game design.

Would this be insane?

1. Allow single-clicking a ghost to auto-place its building if you have it
2. Remove blueprints entirely and introduce them only later in the game, nearer robots in the tech tree

This would allow for a nice improvement from the current uselessness of ghosts in early base design without affording players the ability to plop down blueprints and just sweep through placing them manually.

[astroshak]

Blueprints early on are not useless. They allow you to “reserve” land for a specific thing.

Planning on two full belts of steel, 8 full belts of iron plates, 8 full belts of copper plates, only building 2 iron, 2 copper, and 1 steel smelting column now? You can see how much space you need to clear, and how far down you will be putting the steel relative to the copper and iron that you place, by using blueprints, even if you do not intend to build it all for a while yet.

[Light]

Blueprints early on are not useless. They allow you to “reserve” land for a specific thing.

Planning on two full belts of steel, 8 full belts of iron plates, 8 full belts of copper plates, only building 2 iron, 2 copper, and 1 steel smelting column now? You can see how much space you need to clear, and how far down you will be putting the steel relative to the copper and iron that you place, by using blueprints, even if you do not intend to build it all for a while yet.

Exactly.

Early ghosting prevents accidental overlap of buildings that are planned in the near future. It's an invaluable tool to those who like to plan ahead no matter what stage of the game they're in.

[Koub]

Nonetheless, I'd still love that within hand reach, buildings could be auto-placed on ghosts (maybe with a keybind or something). It wouldn't invalidate the use of bots (which add a LOT of range), but it would make blueprinting useful for other things than just "reserving space".
BTW, when I use blueprints to plan something, it's a pain in the a** to then lay down the actual items. Always forget an inserter somewhere, and it takes ages to figure what I have forgotten.

[astroshak]

I have a simple solution to that, Koub : do not connect power until everything is placed. Unpowered entities flash the No Power icon. Ghost entities don’t. Its not perfect, as it is still easy to overlook them, but no flashing symbol makes it a little more obvious that something was not placed.

This does not help for ensuring the inserter is facing the right way though.

[Koub]

I have a simple solution to that, Koub : do not connect power until everything is placed. Unpowered entities flash the No Power icon.

Now I feel stupid for not having thought of it by myself . It helps neither with inserter direction, nor belt placement, but it should indeed help. I still think that it's a workaround to circumvent a (small) flaw of vanilla game. But I feel I'm quite off topic I should stop here or have to moderate myself .

[Nightinggale]

BTW, when I use blueprints to plan something, it's a pain in the a** to then lay down the actual items. Always forget an inserter somewhere, and it takes ages to figure what I have forgotten.

How about adding a no power like icon for ghosts. Add a hotkey to turn it on/off. Once you are done placing, you turn on the ghost detector and you will be notified if you missed something.

I have a simple solution to that, Koub : do not connect power until everything is placed. Unpowered entities flash the No Power icon. Ghost entities don’t. Its not perfect, as it is still easy to overlook them, but no flashing symbol makes it a little more obvious that something was not placed.

This does not help for ensuring the inserter is facing the right way though.

It's actually a good idea, but power is not a great indicator for everything. It works with inserters, assemblers and similar, but unpowered entities like belts won't be revealed this way. The worst I can think of offhand would be a ghost of a green wire.

Early ghosting prevents accidental overlap of buildings that are planned in the near future. It's an invaluable tool to those who like to plan ahead no matter what stage of the game they're in.

Maybe I remember my plans or stick to similar patterns in multiple games or something, but I rarely plan something and then forget about it momentarily and overlap the area with another plan/entity. Still I can certainly see blueprints being very useful in multiplayer as communication between players regarding plans.

[Pi-C]

I have a simple solution to that, Koub : do not connect power until everything is placed. Unpowered entities flash the No Power icon. Ghost entities don’t. Its not perfect, as it is still easy to overlook them, but no flashing symbol makes it a little more obvious that something was not placed.

This does not help for ensuring the inserter is facing the right way though.

It's actually a good idea, but power is not a great indicator for everything. It works with inserters, assemblers and similar, but unpowered entities like belts won't be revealed this way. The worst I can think of offhand would be a ghost of a green wire.

Ghost of a green wire? Sorry, but I don't quite understand: If you are using wires in blueprints, they are attached to two (one for each end of the cable) entities (inserters, assemblers, belt etc.). Once you replace the ghosts of these entities with the real thing, wire connections are automatically placed. So where should that forgotten ghost of a wire come from?

[astroshak]

As I said, its not perfect. But its the best way I’ve found for making sure that I don’t miss placing something small and easily overlooked, like an inserter, especially in a large array of machinery.

[TackleMcClean]

Wouldn't it be a useful solution if you could somehow compare what you've built on the ground, to a blueprint you hold in your hand?

Overlay the blueprint, make it show a diff between what's on ground and what's supposedly required to build it?

[Zavian]

Related wishlist. I have a large monitor, easily large enough to support a toolbar 40-50 slots wide. I would like to be able to either expand the existing toolbar(s) to one with 40-50 slots, or alternatively display additional toolbars to the left and right of the standard game's toolbars. (I don't want to add more toolbars vertically, because that starts to encroach on the centre of the screen, which should be kept clear. This would be perfect for keeping lots of blueprints handy, and allowing me to keep all the belts, inserters, pipe, chemplants and assembly machines etc available without needing to keep opening my inventory everytime I try to manually build something.

Personally, I mostly mouse select items from the existing toolbar, so I don't care about keyboard support for the additional items. (Although I'm not suggesting that the existing support should be removed). Please make either the width (number of items horizontally) of each toolbar, or the number and location of visible toolbars, adjustable by the user either, via options or config.ini, or mods/Lua commands or additional researches.

Edit: Started a topic in suggestions. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=64611 . Please discuss this there.

[adam_bise]

big changes are also coming to the blueprint library

Do these changes include automated blueprint deployment?

[bocau169]

Hi all,
As with all new features people will come demanding the "old" stuff back, so i do that here, but, be true to urself and get over it and just use the new toolbar and the topic is closed.
Thanks

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into the New quickbar FFF topic, as it's quite a useless rant on a separate thread of its own.