Harkonnen wrote:
About many spaces in inventory - agreed. But on the other hand if it's just due to trash slots and and if you be able to place ghosts by choosing building in crafting menu instead of inventory - would you still need so many things to carry?
At times I build a lot of stuff out of my personal roboport, often whilst outside the logistics network of the main base. (Not just mining outposts. I've built a smelter array outside the main base that needed about 1000 electric furnaces, with productivity modules and speed beacons, and a science array that produced 1000 blue + 1000 purple science packs/minute using the 0.15 science recipes). If I make changes to a section of a factory that is still using yellow belts, then I try to use yellow belts to match what is already there. (Assuming that the yellow belts are fast enough that they don't need upgrading). I also tend to be too impatient to want to wait for the base's construction bots to bring something from possibly multiple chunks away, when I probably already have some in my inventory, so often I deliberately avoid adding any construction bots to my main base, to force my personal bots to build everything. So for a mid-late game period where most of the factory is belt based, but some stuff is bot based, and we have a rail network, I tend to want all the following stuff in my personal logistics request slots.
Stuff to hand craft things I don't request but want to be able to build, often when I'm out of the base's logistics coverage. Iron, copper, steel, green + red circuits, gears, wood (to fuel my pocket locomotive/newly built trains).
Yellow + red + blue belt, all three classes of underground belt, all three classes of splitter. (If the base is using all three belt types).
Small power poles, medium power poles, large power poles.
Yellow inserters, fast inserters, long-handed inserters, stack inserters.
Steel chests, requestor chests, passive provider chests, roboports, construction bots (to replace any that get killed in combat).
Rails, signals, chain signals, engines or locomotives
Mining drills, blue and/or yellow assemblers (not everything needs the additional speed of a yellow assembler, so sometimes I want both).
Walls, laser turrets, repair packs, ammunition for my personal weapons. ( I'm mainly a turret creep guy, otherwise you could also add combat robotics here as well).
Stuff I want at least occasionally, but don't need often enough to warrant always having in my limited inventory/logistics request slots includes: chem plants + refineries + pumpjacks + pipes + underground pipes, pumps, tanks, barrels. beacons + electric furnaces + speed modules + productivity modules. substations. radars + gates. lights. train stops + locomotives + cargo wagons. red + green wire, combinators, power switches, accumulators (for building power switch logic based off of accumulator level, without needing to string a wire to the nearest solar field) . filter inserters. active provider chests, storage chests, wooden chests. logistic bots (if we are building bot based outposts they will be in the first list and on the outpost train, but I won't always have the train with me). Note that with the basic requests in the first line, I can handcraft many of these 'missing items', even in the field, and out of roboport coverage. Most of them are only 0.5 seconds each if I already have all the ingredients, which is no problem if I only want a couple. (Also note that all of the above are vanilla items. Add mods, and the list tends to grow).
Count the above. I make that 38 items, in the 'I always want to have some of these on me' category. Even if I remove yellow and red belt, and yellow inserters that is still 31 items. So I can it some more, and cut passive provider and requestor chests (they are only 0.5 seconds each to handcraft, if I already have red circuits + steel chests). That gets me one free slot for the 'I sometimes want to request these' things. I am constantly juggling logistics requests because I don't have enough request slots to request everything I want to be carrying. So I often end up hand crafting something that I would prefer to request from the logistics system, because it is faster and less clicks to hand-craft, than to clear a slot and request something, then wait for the robots to deliver it before I can place it. Being able to select something from the handcraft menu for ghost placement would be very useful, but if you do implement that then please let me also point at an existing item or ghost, and select that item for ghost placement, without even needing to open my inventory. But even with that as an option, I would probably still want to carry most of the first list, because I might want to build something whilst out in the field at a base somewhere that is not connected to the main base's logistic network. (And even when within the main bases network it will still be quicker to build something out of my personal inventory, than to wait for the bots to bring it from a couple of chunks away.
Other ideas to improve ghost placement include allowing me to continue placing ghosts even after my bots have removed the last of those items from my inventory. (Perhaps by changing the code so that as long as I continue to hold down shift, the game doesn't clear my cursor, even though my bots have already placed all of that item that I had in my inventory). Also please allow me to tell my bots to fast replace something using ghost placement. (I would be fine if the game implemented that as a deconstruct and then normal ghost placement order. That would still be a UI improvement over needing to drop whatever item I wanted to place, grab and use and then drop the deconstruction planner, then grab and place the item I wanted to place originally).
Harkonnen wrote:
- encourage building outposts via supply train, so you will use personal roboport just to setup initial train station with initial roboport for that train to arrive and bring the rest (kinda what I talked about orbital bots, but using player instead of those bots while they are not yet available).
Personally I think I would prefer to continue using my personal roboport to construct the entire outpost (grabbing more stuff from an outpost train when needed). Less to setup, less teardown once construction is finished. Typically my outposts also don't need a resupply train or a pax stop either, so this would be another stop to build and setup. I don't want to leave unnecessary roboports/chests/bots there after construction is finished, nor do I want to leave excess construction material lying around either. So I would want to pack it all up afterwards. Even if I had a trash train setup that could recycle the construction material for me (and even assuming I had a blueprint where the unload station for construction shared the same stop as the trash train), the necessity to manually name the train stop , and then find the trash train, and manually add the new stop to it's route is more hassle than just turning the inserters around and using them to load the excess stuff back in the outpost train. Plus on a multiplayer server everybody needs to be on the same page for things like trash trains at every outpost to be a good idea. If they aren't you are normally better off keeping things as simple as practical. Also note that even if I was using a self building setup, and had the ability to ghost place stuff that wasn't in my inventory, I would still want to be carrying drills etc. It is always going to be quicker to make changes from my personal inventory (possibly via my personal construction bots), than to wait for construction bots to arrive from multiple chunks away.
What would help is a late game roboport + logistics cargo wagons. The roboport wagon could carry it's own logistics bots, and when stopped at a station, and (possibly also needing to be close enough to a pole to connect to power, or for the train stop to connect to power) it could function as a mobile roboport. In conjunction with provider wagons it could resupply player logistics requests. (Alternatively it could also have it's own construction robots and they could build the outpost without me needing to setup and tear down any chests/roboports). A more advanced wagon could function as a combined requestor/provider hybrid. It could have logistics request slots, and when stopped within a normal logistics network, it could request any needed items to refill itself. That would make it faster to change the requests and just send it back to base if I suddenly wanted to add pipes + pumps + tanks + pumpjacks so I could build an oil outpost. If there are concerns about the bots doing things at the wrong time, you could require that it be stopped at special logistics/requester/provider train stops. (This sounds like a different implementation of the provider/requestor rails idea above). Late game requestor wagons could also help reduce entity count at outposts by removing the need for stack inserters to load trains.
(Another UI improvement idea. Copy+paste from train stop to locomotive could add the train stop to the locomotive's route, I'm not sure what the wait condition should be. No condition might be ok. The player will probably still need to specify the right condition, so not adding something they need to delete might be the best solution.)
Regarding autotrash. I would like for it to be smarter. If I have rails set to request to 100, and autotrash for rails set at 200, then i raise the request to 400, the bots bring the extra rails, which immediately get autotrashed. Maybe the right solution is to change autotrash so that it interprets 'autotrash rails at 200' as autotrash rails when I have 200 more rails than I am requesting. That way a change in request size wouldn't need a change in the autotrash setting. (Also it would be nice if it the game would automatically move items out of trash, to fulfil my logistics requests, without needing logistics bots to do it. That way if I grab enough rails from a train that some are autotrashed, then build rails, I don't need to open my inventory to move those trashed rails back into my normal inventory slots before I can place them. Alternatively let my construction bots build items using the rails in the trash slots).
@Harkonnen
The one shot blue-prints idea sounds interesting. That sort of copy paste functionality could be useful even late game for anything that you aren't grabbing wholesale from your blue-print library. (I use regular blueprints for that type of temporary copy. Hopefully this could provide a more streamlined UI. Possibly late game that interface optionally could place ghosts, so that the base's construction bots can build stuff if you don't have enough in your inventory. Ghost placement could also allow your bots to place stuff using this interface, even if it isn't within your normal reach distance).
Ideally I would like to be able to copy and paste an area at least large enough for a green circuit line. eg copper belt, inserters, 3 x copper wire assemblers, inserters, 2 x green circuit assemblers, inserters, iron belt, output belt is 12 x 9. That is without even considering the mirror image on the other side. If it was 9 x 9 I could at least copy and paste the inserters + assemblers, run the belts down manually, then copy the mirror imaged side separately. (If the other side shared the same iron belt and output belt, then I think both sides total 22 wide, so an 11x11 area would also work). A basic stone furnace line is 11 wide (both sides at once). A line for smelting iron ore to steel is 18 wide (both sides, or about 9 wide for one side).
However maybe the better option is to not reinvent the wheel. You could add a new option to start with 'advanced equipment' at map generation. If checked you start with a basic suit of armor (possibly without any armor rating) with a personal roboport + some sort of power source, 10 bots, a few blank blueprints, and a deconstruction planner. (Optionally you could also add more iron/drills/furnaces, etc). You can't make more blueprints yet, nor can you access your blueprint library (though I'm sure mods will add that ability). That way everything is using the same interface from the start, and there isn't another bit of UI for a new player to learn.
You could also adapt your one-shot blueprint idea above by making normal blue-prints auto place from a player's inventory, if you are have the items, and are close enough. Then the player could start with one or a few blank blueprints. If needed/desired you could limit the size and placement range of blue-prints, until the player researches a particular technology. (I'm sure mods will be available to bypass this limit for players who don't like it). If the cost of clearing a blue-print is considered a problem, you could make clearing blue-prints free, but copying to/from your blue-print library could take a few green circuits. Alternatively creating large blue-prints could require a few green circuits, increasing in cost as the blue-print's size gets larger. So small blue-prints that are available early-game would be free).
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