(Hotkey to) Replace existing structures with blueprint / Replace with bp / Forced bp placing/deconstruction

[Extrien]

this could be improved with a 'deconstruction blueprint' for saving tiles or entities you want removed in an area stamp.
This would be amazing for creating 2 stage blueprints. one that includes construction 'scaffolding' like roboports and storage chests, then you just stamp the 'clean up' deconstruction blueprint (redprint?) on it to complete it

[IronCartographer]

this could be improved with a 'deconstruction blueprint' for saving tiles or entities you want removed in an area stamp.
This would be amazing for creating 2 stage blueprints. one that includes construction 'scaffolding' like roboports and storage chests, then you just stamp the 'clean up' deconstruction blueprint (redprint?) on it to complete it

Separating the overwrite from the deconstruction could be useful. Or maybe a middle-click blueprint setup preview interaction to place a "deconstruct entities in this location" marker.

Either way, a clear example use case for something like this is replacing a rail blueprint with another one. Currently there's no way to cleanly change from rail signals to chain signals (within specific locations of a blueprint placed on the existing rail) without clearing the entire area.

[Ingvar]

Being able to mark an area in a blueprint, which would be replaced or cleared would be nice too. If for example you want to replace a straight rail with a "T", you may want to remove rail signals which end up in the middle of the "T", and thus messing things up.
I like the idea of a "blueprints mode" dialogue where one could toggle these options on/off, unless it can easily be done with hotkeys.
But the most important feature would be the option to remove anything in the way for the new blueprint, while preserving or updating (i.e. recipes and settings) anything which remains in the same spot.
I really think this should move from a years long suggestion in the forum to a todo-list. As a developer myself, I see no reason why this wouldn't be easy to implement.

[Impatient]

That also is a good usecase Ingvar. +1

[blazespinnaker]

Mines are my biggest bugaboo. I'll put out mines and then have to manually erase them when I want to put over a new blueprint.

[blazespinnaker]

Oh yeah, doing rocket rush now. This is actually almost(*) necessary, as you have to evolve the layout over time with successive blueprints and fiddling with manual changes is something you want to avoid for the sake of time. eg: adding a splitter to branch off coal (or whatever). You can't really prebuild this stuff as you're rather limited by what you have out of the gate (building a mall is the first task blueprint applied)

You can do it with a deconstruction planner, but you'll need to remember everywhere you're making changes rather than having that in the blueprint. Or, I suppose, just knock out everything of a certain type being replaced and get the bots to recreate, but that's not ideal.

Another approach is building separately for everything, but that is not very space efficient.

Right now I am using inserters to branch off coal. :p

[blazespinnaker]

It wasn't my suggestion, but there's actually a feature I'd dearly love in factorio.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=59554 "Hotkey to replace existing structures with blueprint"

It really would be a game changer in terms of the scenarios wave defense / rocket rush which I very much enjoy.

Is there any reasonable etiquette / method to help advocate for a feature? Maybe some kind of "if you could have one feature, what would it be" thread?

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged last post into existing suggestion thread. Best way to add one's voice to a suggestion is to express oneself on the existing thread.

[blazespinnaker]

Fair enough

[Arctomachine]

With the end of development being announced today, this seemingly easy to develop, but undoubtedly useful feature is left untouched. Will it be lost forever now, unless some modders decide to implement it?

[NotRexButCaesar]

With the end of development being announced today, this seemingly easy to develop, but undoubtedly useful feature is left untouched. Will it be lost forever now, unless some modders decide to implement it?

I don't believe it was not implemented for its difficulty, but for the possibility of breaking things in a way the player cannot easily diagnose. It is better to use a deconstruction planner and have no chance of accidental breakage than to over write something and possible leave things that will break it

[Arctomachine]

With the end of development being announced today, this seemingly easy to develop, but undoubtedly useful feature is left untouched. Will it be lost forever now, unless some modders decide to implement it?

I don't believe it was not implemented for its difficulty, but for the possibility of breaking things in a way the player cannot easily diagnose. It is better to use a deconstruction planner and have no chance of accidental breakage than to over write something and possible leave things that will break it

What you say makes sense, but it is true for minor and/or linear tasks. Imagine a situation where you have to do it for a large tiling blueprint.
First you place a blueprint many times where it should be. Next you put on a deconstruction planner and manually select one of multiple elements in as many tiles as in step before. Next you put on the same blueprint again and fill the gaps again as many times. So basically you do the same operation at least 3 times (more, if you need to replace few things in one tile).
And with hotkey/checkbox/toggle you simply draw a blueprint over the desired area, doing only 1 step instead of 3+.

[Ingvar]

With the end of development being announced today, this seemingly easy to develop, but undoubtedly useful feature is left untouched. Will it be lost forever now, unless some modders decide to implement it?

I don't believe it was not implemented for its difficulty, but for the possibility of breaking things in a way the player cannot easily diagnose. It is better to use a deconstruction planner and have no chance of accidental breakage than to over write something and possible leave things that will break it

Nope. Just press Ctrl-Z, if you make a mistake.

Another annoying thing is that if you want to update a blueprint, and use a deconstruction planner to remove everything and then place the updated blueprint on top of the deconstruction (with i.e. small changes and updates), the pieces which are identical in all ways will still remain marked for deconstruction. So if you have 1000 things and 4 changes, all 1000 must go and be replaced by 996+4. By first solving this, it would be very easy to implement the suggestions in this thread, as it would simply be both operations at the same time.

[blazespinnaker]

OK well, let's do this as a mod I guess. I think it should be fairly easy, Ill take a stab.

It should be in vanilla, would dearly love to know why it's not.

The other one is using shift-copy-past to replace modules but can live without that one as constantly annoying as it is.


edit: hmm not sure if we have API access to bot queue. Need to deconstruct the replaced entities.

[blazespinnaker]

Looked into this. Doable, but very hacky as you can't get bp orientation.

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=47087&start=80#p324060

[bend.n]

+1

[blazespinnaker]

Given the traffic and how obvious the feature is, it'd be nice at least to get feedback as to why it wasn't implemented.

[ssilk]

I can tell you: wasn’t implemented, because it takes time to be implemented, but there is a limited amount of resources (developers).

The right question is: why is the priority of this so low, that it isn’t implemented yet.

Answer: look into the suggestions board.

[Ingvar]

The suggestion board only has 91 topics today. As a software developer myself, this seems low and easily manageable. I won't say all 91 are easily implemented, but cannot see why this one should be any problem, or why it hasn't been added. As stated before, it is a "seemingly easy to develop, but undoubtedly useful feature". I cannot see why it hasn't been implemented or even given an overdue response. The developers are famous for making the game more automatic and efficient to play, making it more fun. I would think this suggestion is right up their ally.

[ssilk]

The suggestion board only has 91 topics today.

I don’t know where you look, but I see 349 pages with 25 topics on each page. viewforum.php?f=6