Friday Facts #383 - Super force building

[Roxor128]

I noticed the placing of landfill left holes if there wasn't anything in that space in the blueprint. Any chance of a way to override that and force them to be filled?

Maybe it could be done at the blueprint level by having a dummy object that can be put in empty spaces (potentially automatically from the blueprint menu) to force construction of landfill when placing on water, or deconstruction of rocks and trees when placing on land (the latter would be very nice to have for rail blueprints).

[Rebmes]

Yet another fantastic addition / improvement. Game changer.

[AntiElitz]

Seems really cool! I love the landfill stuff in particular.
While you are working in this anyways, what do you think about moving the automatic deconstruction if trees and rock to normal placement? To me personally it feels like I never don't force print as there always is any tree or rock or cliff in the way. Unfortunately this kinda takes the point of it.

[Brambor]

Seems really cool! I love the landfill stuff in particular.
While you are working in this anyways, what do you think about moving the automatic deconstruction if trees and rock to normal placement? To me personally it feels like I never don't force print as there always is any tree or rock or cliff in the way. Unfortunately this kinda takes the point of it.

I do use regular non firce

This looks fantastic!

One corollary feature request though - can we get an option to add landfills/platform tiles on regular force build? (Or even make that default behaviour, if you prefer.) I know for sure I will have times I want to build over a lake or extend a platform, but not replace any previously built machines - especially when working with large patterned blueprints, I don't want to destroy large portions of my base because I misaligned the blueprint by a tile.

You can ctrl+Z. But you are right, didn't they comment on that the previous FFF?

[IronCartographer]

This is great but changes like this should not take this long, and im a dev. Teams roughly the same size are doing far more complex things in the span for 3-4 month cycles. What is it about Factorio that adds months to something like this?

The development time of the expansion has likely been more invested into systems that had to be prototyped, tested, scrapped, and re-implemented because of finding that they were not as fun as could be. Also, FFFs are weekly, not monthly! There are so. many. FFFs like this yet to be posted between now and whenever the expansion actually releases!

[VampireSilence]

Something that just came to my mind. Maybe you can rename the different force modes, so their names better fit their functions.
"Force Mode" => "Ignore environment/terrain"
"Super Force Mode" => "Ignore buildings" or "Ignore everything"

[Qon]

Something that just came to my mind. Maybe you can rename the different force modes, so their names better fit their functions.
"Force Mode" => "Ignore environment/terrain"
"Super Force Mode" => "Ignore buildings" or "Ignore everything"

Force and Super Force doesn't just do those things.

Regular place mode only places everything if there is no collision or doesn't place anything at all.
Force mode overwrites trees, rocks and cliffs. But it also places everything that doesn't collide.
Super Force treats all deconstructible things like Force mode treats trees. But it also constructs over water and space tiles if necessary and constructs undergrounds to keep belt lines intact.

I think the current names might possibly be improved, but I don't think your names are it. Better to be vague about the details than try to describe it with a name that doesn't really match all the things that it does. And "ignore everything mode" is a bad description, it doesn't "ignore", it overwrites. And the overwriting of trees isn't really the most important part of the mode, it would be a useful mode without that feature. The placement of some things in the blueprint despite collisions of other is more important imo. And your suggestions don't really sound like good names anyways.

[Karamel]

If I nuke landfill, is it no longer landfill and no longer able to be deconstructed? This would be a tradeoff then, on nuking landfill to increase its pollution absorption.

If landfill can be mined, then clearly a nuke should simply destroy it, reverting the tile to water. Maybe landfill should just be replaced with a platform supported by poles and pillars from below, the kind we use to build on water IRL, to make it clear it's basically just a building (rather than literally a bunch of stuff that's been dumbed on water to create land as it is now)?

[varundevan]

Now ,
The game is more like a design software..
Like AutoCAD..
And you are adding features to make the life of the designers easy.

What if we can do force building normally without having to press Ctrl+shift ..

[dactrin]

Part of me wants the super force to be locked behind a research technology so I don't feel too bad about all those conveyer belts I had to manually fix in the past

But the water does not feel right. It doesn't make sense to me that you can effectively spawn water anywhere on the map. It would be consistent and fun if water would only flow from existing bodies of water and the player was forced to build channels. A little TimberBorn in Factorio

https://indiegamereviewer.com/wp-conten ... y-City.jpg

[Qon]

But the water does not feel right. It doesn't make sense to me that you can effectively spawn water anywhere on the map.

Wrong. You can't.

[dactrin]

But the water does not feel right. It doesn't make sense to me that you can effectively spawn water anywhere on the map.

Wrong. You can't.

The last gif in the update clearly shows water spawning when placing water pumps.

[Qon]

But the water does not feel right. It doesn't make sense to me that you can effectively spawn water anywhere on the map.

Wrong. You can't.

The last gif in the update clearly shows water spawning when placing water pumps.

Wrong.
It clearly shows landfill being deconstructed, which means that your claim of "anywhere" is wrong.

[Henry Loenwind]

Half of the replies seem to be about what people want or want not to happen in one of the 3 modes. So my suggestion:

Add a new tool to the quick action bar that brings up a mini-config menu.

Code: Select all

                  | Normal | Shift | Shift+Ctrl |
------------------+--------+-------+------------+
Add Landfill      |  [ ]   |  [ ]  |     [X]    |
Remove Landfill   |  [ ]   |  [ ]  |     [X]    |
Remove Cliffs     |  [ ]   |  [X]  |     [X]    |
Replace Buildings |  [ ]   |  [X]  |     [X]    |
Upgrade Buildings |  [ ]   |  [X]  |     [X]    |
Tunnel Belts      |  [ ]   |  [ ]  |     [X]    |
Tunnel Pipes      |  [X]   |  [ ]  |     [ ]    |
Remove Trees      |  [ ]   |  [X]  |     [X]    |
...

Or, maybe even split it into two tabs:

Code: Select all

            ______________     _______________
___________/ Item Placing \___/ Ghost Placing \__

                  | Normal | Shift | Shift+Ctrl |
------------------+--------+-------+------------+
Force Ghost       |  [ ]   |  [X]  |     [X]    |
...

or columns

Code: Select all

                  |      Item Placing           ||      Ghost Placing          |
                  | Normal | Shift | Shift+Ctrl || Normal | Shift | Shift+Ctrl |
------------------+--------+-------+------------++--------+-------+------------+
Force Ghost       |  [ ]   |  [X]  |     [X]    ||   X    |   X   |      X     |
Remove Trees      |  [ ]   |  n/a  |     n/a    ||  [ ]   |  [X]  |     [X]    |
===
n/a -> hidden because "force ghost" is on
...

[dactrin]

But the water does not feel right. It doesn't make sense to me that you can effectively spawn water anywhere on the map.

Wrong. You can't.

The last gif in the update clearly shows water spawning when placing water pumps.

Wrong.
It clearly shows landfill being deconstructed, which means that your claim of "anywhere" is wrong.

You're right, thank you. That makes me better about it!

[computeraddict]

If I nuke landfill, is it no longer landfill and no longer able to be deconstructed? This would be a tradeoff then, on nuking landfill to increase its pollution absorption.

If landfill can be mined, then clearly a nuke should simply destroy it, reverting the tile to water. Maybe landfill should just be replaced with a platform supported by poles and pillars from below, the kind we use to build on water IRL, to make it clear it's basically just a building (rather than literally a bunch of stuff that's been dumbed on water to create land as it is now)?

We definitely do reclaim land from water like landfill in Factorio. It's just not as selective or granular: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation

[Gloynus]

I wonder how such a modification would work with railroad bridges? Will the water be covered with earth and ordinary rails will be laid on it or will bridges be placed on the water?

[Impatient]

The only piece in the puzzle, that is missing now, to fully close the circle is: NOTHING ... to be buildable

I see, that super force building will be great to upgrade/modify existing builds. Like, if I want to upgrade an existing mall by just plopping the next blueprint over it. Except, if in the upgraded build a built entity needs to be removed. If I am informed correctly, then this is not possible yet. Also with super force building. I forsee workarounds like the upgraded blueprint containing powerpoles or something in places where an entity needs to be removed. Maybe even mods which actually do introduce a buildable NOTHING-entity, which costs nothing, has not collision box and does not interact in any way with oher entities. It could be used in blueprints to super force the kind of "removal" of an entity in that location.

BTW, this idea isn't new. Players who follow the forum for a longer time will know that this feature has been brought up time again and again for years. Here is a feature request by mrvn from 2019: viewtopic.php?t=78843 and I know, the topic has been brought up in many other discussions.

So, NOTHING to be something (super force) buildable for the game engine and NOTHING logically occupying every tile which is empty, is imo the last, missing piece to fully close the circle between constructing and deconstructing. An unfiltered decon planner for example would logically just super force "build" NOTHINGs in the whole selection area and not "remove" things. NOTHING could be used to fill all the free tiles in a blueprint and thus switch out anything there against NOTHING (effectively empty the tiles) if the blueprint is super force built over something. Or removing manually eg an inserter, would - from the game engines perspective - not remove the inserter, but super force build NOTHING there instead.

This isn't a feature request. This is an idea. A logical concept. That could be used to address other things.

[Cerberus]

I have one request though: now that you have super force building. Maybe it is a good idea to move cliff deconstruction to super force building instead of regular force building?

That would be nice. I too have had situations where I destroy cliffs when I didn't mean to and it can be frustrating.

I would go as far as saying cliff deconstruction is more important to be put into super force build than waterfill now! Because waterfill can get mined from now on (so undone) and cliff deconstruction can not be undone

[Qon]

The only piece in the puzzle, that is missing now, to fully close the circle is: NOTHING ... to be buildable

You can put e.g., wooden boxes in the blueprint and then use a filtered deconstruction planner to remove them after. This allows you to build landfill in otherwise empty spots to avoid holes. And you can remove belts from the gaps in your belt balancer so leftover belts don't mess the balancer up after Super Force placing it on a bus.

I was considering making a mod that had an entity that marked itself for deconstruction when placed, to get your suggestion. But how would you add it to a blueprint if whenever you place it it is already gone? If it only removes itself when placed by bots then you have to manually add one for each tile, impossible for large blueprints with large areas needed. If you add a tool to mark areas then you kind of have to duplicate the blueprint placement tools, force area and super force on area. And actually it needs to be available inside the blueprint editing view also, but that view needs to be reworked then because large blueprints have tiles so small that blueprint view is useless for manual edits. A button to "fill empty space with nothing" with some coordinate input might be needed then.

So in the end, wooden boxes in empty spots of a super force built blueprint that are then removed with a filter planner seems like it does the job even better, just requires an extra step simple step. But the setup is so much easier because you can edit where the wooden boxes are with all the blueprint tools without them disappearing while you edit them.