Add a Planning Tool / construction planning

[saykhia]

Prison Architect has a Planning Mode which allows you to "ghost build" but it limited to "walls" and "objects". I can see Factorio can have a similar feature allowing for planning of "buildings" "inserters" "power poles" and "belts/tracks".

[ssilk]

Merged the topics.

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To the point, that you need the item to plan: I really don't like that. If I do so, either I have the items to place it myself or not. If not, why should I need still one?

My suggestion here: if I do that, I need to be inside of a construction area. The bots will place it for me.
I want to pickup a ghost item from the contents in the logistic network. This is of course a ghost.

For advanced planning (multiplayer) I'm eventually outside of the area and it makes much sense to have here more tools. I would like to have then some kind of virtual planning stuff:

- I can place every type of item now and in future as some virtual thing. Shimmers blue, not magenta?
- mark areas (with colors and names), place signs (with text)
- a "tool", which changes an area of those virtual buildings into ghosts, so that they can be build.
- and eventually vice versa.

There is no reason, why that shouldn't be available very soon from beginning.

This stuff is somehow needed, because it's somehow the next logical step; it would reduce some of the problems, players mention many times:

- "I need to wait, till it is ready"
- I use blueprints extensively and if I make too much, the ghost-buildings time out and vanish
- need planning tools for multiplayer

Tags: planning tool, virtual buildings, planning mode

[Neotix]

Planning could be merged with blueprints.
Right now we have to build something before making blueprints. It's little ridiculous because on entire World people first are drawing blueprints, and then building something based on that plans.
Just add tool to edit blueprints.

[Kitefr]

I think you misunderstand blueprint with planning here.

Blueprint are useful when you know what you want to do and how you want to do it.
And planning, well... It is for planning NOT for automatic construction.

I like the one in Prison Architect. Powerful to make me think like how I want to put things without wasting a lot of time and simple to be clear on how things are.

If they making one, I don't want them to merge it to blueprint as they are two totally different things.

[drs9999]

I decided to make a mod for it, so stay tuned. I should not take that long.

[drs9999]

And done...

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=4022

[ssilk]

I think Neotix meant, that when ready with planning, this can be built. Or it can be made to a blueprint. And in my opinion also vice versa: A blueprint can be placed as plan.

Well, there are some parallels from planning to blueprint to construction.

Btw: because you gush for Prison Architects planning mode: I don't know that game. So I've looked if I find something about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkN05PEdiec

And it would have been better to post such a link by yourself, cause it tooks sometime for me to find something about

@drs9999: Quite impressive!

[Neotix]

I think Neotix meant, that when ready with planning, this can be built. Or it can be made to a blueprint. And in my opinion also vice versa: A blueprint can be placed as plan.

This is exactly what i meant.
When I have an idea but no resources i want to have a tool to save that idea, and realize it after gathering materials. Some colors are not enough because after some time many people won't remember what that colors means, what they wanted to build, with what setup.

[katyal]

What I would like is a sort of "doodling" interface (almost like the map editor) that I could open up from a paused game. This interface would have a toolbox with all the items sorted on tabs. You could quickly sketch out a design and make a blueprint of it. Then you could go back to your game and actually use the blueprint you just created.

I'd also like to second the idea of making blueprints independant from the save game so that once created a blueprint would persist from one game to the next.

[ssilk]

Some reference list for this topic: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 616#p35582

[katyal]

Hehe thanks for plugging your monster thread in SSilk I almost posted there but it seemed more on topic to post here.

[ssilk]

That monster was just meant to concretize some of the most common ideas (cause there are many different directions) and bring it into some kind of overview (planning can have many different directions, but you need to look at the most, before making new suggestion).

[harch]

My opinion, that there should be some separated interface, or building that provides that interface, where you can plan your blueprint with some parameters like size and stuff.
And after you finish plannig, you will be able to compile(assemble) your plan to blueprint or save as preset, and setup this blueprint on the ground.