Allow using blueprints/planners remotely

[ividyon]

TL;DR

Make blueprints and similar concepts (upgrade planners, deconstruction planners) usable from anywhere regardless of their location.

What?

Currently, you can only use blueprints, deconstruction planners and upgrade planners if they are physically in your inventory.
Allow them to be used (and bound to shortcuts) regardless of their position in the world.

So, for example, if you remote view a chest and it has a blueprint inside it, you should be allowed to use it, or add it to your quickbar and have it be accessible.

Even better, decouple them from the inventory system altogether.

Why?

The limitation of not being allowed to bring items on a space platform makes interacting with blueprints, upgrade planners etc. very annoying, because your two options are:

• Laboriously send a rocket containing your blueprints along with you when traveling to another planet via space platform.
• Re-create your blueprints on the new planet, keep a separate list of blueprints on each planet.

Not being able to access your quickbar shortcuts for upgrade planners and blueprints is not ideal with this limitation in place.

Therefore I propose to make them accessible regardless of where they currently are.

[BlueTemplar]

Are you aware of the Blueprint Library ?
(And/or of the Blueprint Import/Export function as a character string ?)

[ividyon]

I was not aware of the blueprint library. I'm kind of confused now, as by default, your interaction with the Blueprint/Planner buttons is limited to creating a physical item in your inventory, so I assumed that is the extent of the feature.

Why would the primary interaction not be tied into this library system instead? Why is it present as a physical item at all?

Needing its existence pointed out to me seems like a design issue in itself. In that case, I would change my suggestion to promote usage of this blueprint library as the primary action when using various key presses/keybinds related to blueprints, rather than defaulting to the inventory system.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, one reason is that the inventory system came first.

Still, the BluePrint Library is the first icon on the top right...

One thing that is missing I guess is a Tips&Tricks page about it ?

[AileTheAlien]

Instead of a tips+tricks page about it, I think it'd make more sense to not allow blueprints to exist in the game-world as normal items. Right now, when you make a blueprint and then hit Q so that you can do something else, it ends up in your inventory when that's not really necessary at all. Being able to put a blueprint (or a book) into a chest is even less necessary, unless you're trying to give another player in multiplayer a blueprint directly in the game. But it'd be just as easy if Z dropped a copy of your blueprint or book, either onto the ground or directly into a friend's blueprint library. (Have a cooldown so you can't spam acquaintances on multiplayer servers.) If you hit Q when creating your own blueprints, they just go onto the bottom- or right-most empty space of your blueprint library. Way less confusing IMO.

[Koub]

[Koub] Moved to Gameplay Help

[ividyon]

[Koub] Moved to Gameplay Help

I don't quite agree, seeing as the conversation pivoted to why the Blueprint Library is not properly embedded with the system.

The problem would still remain that you cannot add "remote" blueprints into the library, etc.

[Harb42]

To be honest I have just faced this problem:
I have installed a mod, a blueprint sensor, that can read blueprints and signal out its ingredients. The problem is that it can read only actual items. The sensor is on Vulcanus, and I am on Aquilo. And arrived there not a long time ago. No cargo pad, no silo, etc.
No matter what I cannot create the blueprint item into any inventory besides the engineer's.

[BlakeMW]

I agree with OP that blueprint shortcuts should be usable remotely, and yes I know about the BP library.

It's weird because if there's a "local" blueprint, you can still tediously go to its location, open it, make a copy of it and use that copy. They can't be used remotely, but they can be copied remotely.

Especially with the fact that you can have "anonymous" blueprints, what I mean is when you ctrl-c and hold shift, thus creating a blueprint. That blueprint doesn't exist anywhere except in your hand and if you empty your hand it vanishes from existence instead of going into your inventory. So blueprints don't even need an underlying blueprint item to be in your inventory.

As such as I see no reason why a shortcut to a remote blueprint shouldn't work, even if it just creates an anonymous copy when you click on it.

Obviously: why not just use game library? Because by default blueprints go in your inventory not in your library, that's the entirety of the reason.

[adam_bise]

Agree, BP as an item shouldn't even exist. When you create a BP it should pop up the library with the BP in cursor so you can put it in the library or a book. Why else would you create a BP and not copy-paste if you didn't want to save it? It is annoying when a BP winds up in my character inventory I have to exit remote view, open my character inventory and then go back to remote view when I could have just pressed B.

If BP absolutely must be an item, then at least open both the charcter inventory AND the BP library when pressing B, otherwise remove them as an item entirely.