MrGrim wrote: Fri Apr 05, 2019 9:00 pm
If I had to guess, one reason this may not make it to vanilla is that is discourages end game divestment from the character as builder and supplier. The "ideal" end game scenario is for the player characters inventory to be composed mostly of blueprints and most if not all building to be achieved via ghost placement. At least, that's what I feel compelled to strive for as it provides the most flexible and streamlined feel.
I put the time into making sure I can place ghosts and blueprints from map view anywhere in my base or outposts, and a train will "magically" appear with all of the supplies for bots to fulfill the requests. If personal logistics were made "too powerful", I may not have bothered...
The devs may disagree, tho.
Yeah I guess they might, and maybe that is a risk for some players. But that's not how I've experienced things.
I build the same way as you describe, but I like to use logistic requests to keep small numbers of a wide range of items with me. Which varies depending on what I'm doing, hence the desire for presets. I like to be able to start designing a new base component at any time, wherever I am, and not have to wait for trains to arrive. When I am ready to build it at scale, then everything is done automatically by bots supplied by trains.
So for example all my outposts/modules have a supply station, serviced by a supply train that brings bots, inserters, logistic chests, walls, turrets, radars, repair packs, etc. A big list of items. They're set up so that once the train arrives bots are unloaded and automatically added to roboports. Then the construction bots can start building using the supplies of the train.
All my outposts are built from blueprints, and primarily built automatically. However I always do the first part of building each outpost myself, using my personal roboport. At a minimum I need to build the rails, signals, power and roboport infrastructure, inserters and chests for the supply station, and the combinators needed for supply station enable logic. I can't rely on existing logistic networks for this because I am now making sure to keep each logistic network small and separate - in earlier games I did have much bigger networks, but now I am keeping them small, focused and with short bot travel distances.
Once that initial building is done the station will turn on and a supply train will automatically head over, and then the rest is built automatically. Though I also carry some turrets with me so that the outpost is immediately defended. And if I stick around my bots will often also build some of the other entities, which the outpost's logistic bots can then reimburse to me once the supply train(s) first arrive.
Generally I like to carry with me 1 or 2 stacks each of quite a wide range of general building items. Belts/undergrounds/splitters, inserters, rails, chests, power, roboports, beacons, modules, drills, assemblers, furnaces, combinators, lamps, landfill, cliff explosives, etc. Plus combat stuff (grenades, nukes, fish, etc). And of course the 200 construction bots I use with my 4 x personal roboports. I'm usually averaging about 100 slots used at any one time (out of 120 max at late-game.)
I keep all this with me both so I can kick off the building of new outposts as I just described, but also so I can start designing and building new base components wherever I am. Like a new type of outpost, or improving an existing design. Usually this is also supported by my personal supply train which carries most items on board. Wherever I am expanding to I put down a BP of my personal supply train station and then send one of my personal trains there, and it then unloads a variety of item types into logistic chests and deploys some logistic bots which then service my personal logistic request slots. Then I can go building and designing anywhere in that area without having to keep going back to the train too often, and without having to immediately build rails so the train can follow me everywhere I go. If I need a large amount of an item - like a huge amount of landfill to fill in a lake - I will call in a specialist train. But for general purposes, my personal supplies are usually enough.
So it's never seemed to me that my use of logistic request slots was stopping me from using trains, or implementing automatic re-supply, or making heavy use of BPs. Because I'm always limited by my inventory size, use of logistic requests doesn't feel like it stops me wanting to build the best possible designs. It feels like it supports me in doing that.
And therefore expanding the concept with multiple presets just seems to me like it would be even more convenient. I feel that if a feature is going to exist at all, it should be as usable and powerful as possible. Kind of like the quickbar, which went from being max two rows of 20 slots in earlier versions to providing 100 slots with up to four visible rows in 0.17. Once the devs turned it into a pure UI element it made sense to make it as powerful as possible.
But I take your point - maybe other people will see it differently, I don't know.
Anyway, even if the devs do agree it would be useful, it may not be a high priority given it can already be done by mods.
