[2.0.21] Deploying a spidertron with bots destroys all its equipment (and colour and name)

[mrbaggins]

Using bots to deploy a spidertron from a landing pad effectively wipes all it's settings and grid contents.

Save file linked below. Go to gleba, Look at the spidertron in the landing bay. Has a name, a colour, and a full equipment grid. Use bots to ghost place this spidertron. Spidertron is placed with no colour, no name, no logistics requests, and most importantly, it's equipment grid completely wiped.

Ghost placing from my own inventory so my personal bots place it maintains all the above lost info and equipment.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CU_4a9 ... sp=sharing

[robot256]

Most likely not a bug and duplicate of 118257.

Spidertrons placed by bots are altered to match the attributes of the ghost that requested them. You can place a ghost that matches the attributes of your customized item by blueprinting it before you mine it, or by shift-clicking with the actual customized item in your cursor. Pipetting any spidertron, or selecting it from the remote view inventory, will always place an unconfigured spidertron ghost.

[mrbaggins]

Except I Pressed Q on THE spider. So the ghost should match.

If I do the same with one in MY inventory, it picks up the one in my inventory and places it correctly.

[IsaacOscar]

Except I Pressed Q on THE spider. So the ghost should match.

If I do the same with one in MY inventory, it picks up the one in my inventory and places it correctly.

I believe q only copies the entity type, not any settings.
Ctrl-c, ctrl-x, and alt-b however should copy the settings (or at least they do for buildings)

[danbopes]

I had posted here (Another dupe of this): viewtopic.php?p=634658#p634658

The problem is Q only does grab the entity type. My sticking point is that even if you just grab the entity, it shouldn't ever remove the grid, just leave it intact. You and many others also fell for this trap, and I feel like it's worth a reconsideration into the logic. There is no easy way to deploy a spidertron after it's been loaded into a container, unless you've already pre copied it into a blueprint previously.

[IsaacOscar]

If I do the same with one in MY inventory, it picks up the one in my inventory and places it correctly.

Sorry, I must've misread this,
I don't have access to factorio right now, so I can't test it, but what I think your saying is this:

1. If you have a spidertron in the players inventory, use q on it, then use shift to place a ghost of it. The construction robots will then take your spidertron and plop it down with its equipment, colour, name, etc. the same as it was when in your inventory.
2. if you do the exact same thing as 1., but the spidertron is in a logistic chest and not your player's inventory, the spidertron places by the construction bots will have default settings (empty equipment grid, white colour, etc.)

If the above is indeed how it is behaving, then this is clearly a bug due to the inconsistency.
If however #1 acts as I described for #2, then it's just annoying/surprising behaviour, but is consistent with the way q works for buildings. (albeit buildings don't remember there settings when you manually pick them up and put them down again)

[robot256]

When you press Q on the item in your inventory, it does not put a ghost in your cursor. It puts the actual spidertron item, with stack size 1, in your cursor. If you then shift-click with that item, it places a ghost of the configured spidertron, which I think makes sense. There is no way to do this operation in remote view. Pipetting a configured spidertron item in another inventory places a *ghost spidertron* in your cursor. This always places an unconfigured spidertron ghost.

There is no inconsistency here, unless you think shift-clicking with a configured spidertron item should place an unconfigured ghost. The desire for a way to create a blueprint from a remotely-located configured vehicle item is a very good feature request, not a bug.

[Loewchen]

When you press Q on the item in your inventory, it does not put a ghost in your cursor. It puts the actual spidertron item, with stack size 1, in your cursor. If you then shift-click with that item, it places a ghost of the configured spidertron, which I think makes sense.

Q (as in pipette) will not take the spider item you actually click on though, it will always pick the one in the first slot instead. If you ghost place that the bots will then pick the last one in inventory and clear the grid to create one with the first ones grid...

[mrbaggins]

1. If you have a spidertron in the players inventory, use q on it, then use shift to place a ghost of it. The construction robots will then take your spidertron and plop it down with its equipment, colour, name, etc. the same as it was when in your inventory.
2. if you do the exact same thing as 1., but the spidertron is in a logistic chest and not your player's inventory, the spidertron places by the construction bots will have default settings (empty equipment grid, white colour, etc.)

If the above is indeed how it is behaving, then this is clearly a bug due to the inconsistency.
If however #1 acts as I described for #2, then it's just annoying/surprising behaviour, but is consistent with the way q works for buildings. (albeit buildings don't remember there settings when you manually pick them up and put them down again)

Correct, that is what is happening.

When you press Q on the item in your inventory, it does not put a ghost in your cursor. It puts the actual spidertron item, with stack size 1, in your cursor. If you then shift-click with that item, it places a ghost of the configured spidertron, which I think makes sense

Fair, though it's silly that Q on a specific spidertron is different in the two cases. Q on a specific spider shouldn't be different based on where that spider is.

[IsaacOscar]

Q (as in pipette) will not take the spider item you actually click on though, it will always pick the one in the first slot instead. If you ghost place that the bots will then pick the last one in inventory and clear the grid to create one with the first ones grid...

Oh god, now I see what's happening. The confusion then is caused by "shift" clicking to make a ghost when you have an entity in hand, does not create a ghost with default settings.

Personally, I think q on vehicles should always preserve the settings, but that would be an "Ideas and Suggestions" not a bug.

[robot256]

Personally, I think q on vehicles should always preserve the settings, but that would be an "Ideas and Suggestions" not a bug.

I would make a mod that does this, but the API does not give any way to know what item slot was selected when the pipette tool was used.

[danbopes]

Personally, I think q on vehicles should always preserve the settings, but that would be an "Ideas and Suggestions" not a bug.

I would make a mod that does this, but the API does not give any way to know what item slot was selected when the pipette tool was used.

How about just not removing equipment when an empty spidertron is placed?

[robot256]

Personally, I think q on vehicles should always preserve the settings, but that would be an "Ideas and Suggestions" not a bug.

I would make a mod that does this, but the API does not give any way to know what item slot was selected when the pipette tool was used.

How about just not removing equipment when an empty spidertron is placed?

Turns out it wasn't impossible to do in a mod after all, let us know if this works of if there are side-effects we didn't think of: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RobotVehicleDeployment

What you're really asking for is something like the AAI Programmable Vehicles "Vehicle Deployer", which literally "places" the given vehicle item as though the player did, so all settings are preserved. You don't want or need a blueprint to be involved at all. Blueprints are great for copying customized vehicles, but placing blueprints of unconfigured vehicles isn't necessarily useful when you have configured vehicle items available. But unfortunately right now the only way to get robots to do anything is with a complete blueprint.

[Loewchen]

I close this now, for suggestions see viewforum.php?f=6.