Factorio Forums

Building ghosts cannot be placed on Aquilo on top of Ammoniacal ocean tiles, Brash ice, or Smooth Ice using force-build (shift) or super-force-build(ctrl+shift). (The tiles that require ice+concrete for buildings.)

This is extra annoying since two types of tiles are required on this planet, so it would be one of the obvious use cases for the ghost-on-water functionality.


Expectation:
Ice, concrete and the building should be placed as ghosts.

Result:
No ice, concrete or building ghosts are placed, only chest ghosts (entities which don't require both concrete and ice?)
If the ice and concrete ghosts are placed manually, then the building ghost can be placed as normal.
Even if unlocked, foundation tile ghosts are also not placed. If ghost ice tiles are placed, then concrete and the building are added as expected.


How to reproduce:
Try to place any building ghost on any of the tiles mentioned without first manually placing ice platform.

Further information, while messing around with other things in the editor, I realized that this issue seems savefile dependant! Attached are two saves, in one of them it works as expected, but it's broken in the other. The savefiles both have the same technologies researched (from the editor)
There are other unrelated entities in the nauvis surface as I was testing other things, please ignore.

Thank you for the report. The behavior you observed is not a bug. Since there is multiple options of covers for ice platform (concrete, refined concrete, hazzard concrete, ...) the system cannot deduce by default which tile to autofill by default (this explaines your first observed behavior).

To mitigate this issue, the game substitutes the last used cover tile as a proxy for default tile cover for the covered tile (per surface per force). EG after you use concrete as a cover for ice platform, concrete will be treated as a default cover for ice platform (until you use different cover). This information is saved, which explains your second observation.

example video (as shown, ghosts counts as a cover)

this cant be "not a bug" this is highly annoying for blueprints:
thats the issue: thats my bp to build, both ice and concrete is listed
but it gets stuck
this is the ground after placing down the blueprint
these tiles arnt done right
i cant place down ice platforms, so these tiles ARE ice platforms but even if i place down the bp again, the concrete isnt added
that is the view if i wanted to place down concrete, if i do, the tiles get filled and i can build

if i try the same with a "double layered" platform+concrete blueprint it doesnt

if i remove the ice platform and concrete from the main blueprint and just force down the entitys it works like a charm

so why does the system decide which ground to put down if i just force a building down, but cant do it if i force down a building + ground tiles?

I've encounterd this too yesterday.

My first arrival on Aquillo i was like "lets see what to do on this planet" and didn't read or saw anyting before.

I tried to build a Building on Aquillo and was greated with an Error "You can't build on this tile"
I was like "Ok, then I will press SHIFT does this work. No, ok then SHIFT+CTRL. No, ok then I cant build here then and need the Foundation like on Vulcanus and Fulgora"

and after 7 hours (after landing) I was like "Hmmm... how do i get Lithium, I have not enough for Foundations" and tried to pump the Lithium Liquid into a Train (because it was possible to build Rails on these tiles at this moment) and did not succeed in any way of achieving to pump it in a Wagon

It was then at this moment I realized something is wrong, everything else worked until now

Then I've looked at the "Tipps And Tricks" section for Aquillo and read i have to use Concrete and nothing else was mentioned about any other tile-placing object/material like the other forms of concrete likewise i didn't know if the other variants worked (which variants weren't the important part of this anyway)

Everything up to now is/was obvious without any external Information.

What can I say after 7 hours (after landing) of missing infos, my packaging skills are now better then before and i need to redesign my base now (which wasnt big anyway because I tried to Tetris everything)

On Vulcanus and Fulgora is the Error message "You need Foundations to build here" or someting like that.
I cannot remember this message either I just heard the Sound and I was like "Ah Ok not buildable here" or it was forgotten by time because my save is 140h long and i've another save with other people which are also very long already but not on Aquillo.
Sometimes I didn't get any messages, only Sound and Visuals.

Maybe it is a possible solution to use concrete anyway at least (because any other needs concrete anyway) or have a setting "defaultGroundTile" and/or "forceGroundTiles"

I mean I could have easyly avoided this by reading the tipps and tricks but after playing Factorio after 800 hours and beeing locked in my normal gaming behaviour and trying to not get "spoiled" lead to this.

This is my Opinion about this.
Have Fun and success.
The Factory must grow!!

Lou wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:22 am Thank you for the report. The behavior you observed is not a bug. Since there is multiple options of covers for ice platform (concrete, refined concrete, hazzard concrete, ...) the system cannot deduce by default which tile to autofill by default (this explaines your first observed behavior).

To mitigate this issue, the game substitutes the last used cover tile as a proxy for default tile cover for the covered tile (per surface per force). EG after you use concrete as a cover for ice platform, concrete will be treated as a default cover for ice platform (until you use different cover). This information is saved, which explains your second observation.

Hi, Lou.
I encountered this bug after I used paving which can be seen on the screenshot - it even automatically uses refined concrete here, but not for the ice platform. Full recording and save files attached.

Hares wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2025 8:55 pm Hi, Lou.
I encountered this bug after I used paving which can be seen on the screenshot - it even automatically uses refined concrete here, but not for the ice platform.
...

The non-default covers are saved per-tile. In the "not-works" save, you paved over (some) natural ice, but not over ice-platfrom, that's why the autofill failed

Xellnix wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2024 11:59 am this cant be "not a bug" this is highly annoying for blueprints:
thats the issue: ...

I could not replicate the described behaviour, could you please send a save where you observed it? From what I see it could be nothing or a separate issue entirely.

Player117427 wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2025 11:49 am I've encounterd this too yesterday.

My first arrival on Aquillo i was like "lets see what to do on this planet" and didn't read or saw anyting before.

I tried to build a Building on Aquillo and was greated with an Error "You can't build on this tile"
I was like "Ok, then I will press SHIFT does this work. No, ok then SHIFT+CTRL. No, ok then I cant build here then and need the Foundation like on Vulcanus and Fulgora"

and after 7 hours (after landing) I was like "Hmmm... how do i get Lithium, I have not enough for Foundations" and tried to pump the Lithium Liquid into a Train (because it was possible to build Rails on these tiles at this moment) and did not succeed in any way of achieving to pump it in a Wagon

It was then at this moment I realized something is wrong, everything else worked until now

Then I've looked at the "Tipps And Tricks" section for Aquillo and read i have to use Concrete and nothing else was mentioned about any other tile-placing object/material like the other forms of concrete likewise i didn't know if the other variants worked (which variants weren't the important part of this anyway)

Everything up to now is/was obvious without any external Information.

What can I say after 7 hours (after landing) of missing infos, my packaging skills are now better then before and i need to redesign my base now (which wasnt big anyway because I tried to Tetris everything)

On Vulcanus and Fulgora is the Error message "You need Foundations to build here" or someting like that.
I cannot remember this message either I just heard the Sound and I was like "Ah Ok not buildable here" or it was forgotten by time because my save is 140h long and i've another save with other people which are also very long already but not on Aquillo.
Sometimes I didn't get any messages, only Sound and Visuals.
...

Yeah, communication of this to player is lacking now. When it comes to non-default covers, I will add a tip and trick, but as you yourself is an example, lot of people will not see it in there.

The floating text messages (while correct) do not explain the situation as well as in other situations, I will consider some solutions to it.

Player117427 wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2025 11:49 am Maybe it is a possible solution to use concrete anyway at least (because any other needs concrete anyway) or have a setting "defaultGroundTile" and/or "forceGroundTiles"

not sure if setting one specific default would not communicate the wrong message (that you need only that one specific tile).

Player117427 wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2025 11:49 am ...
On Vulcanus and Fulgora is the Error message "You need Foundations to build here" or someting like that...

that message appears when trying to landfill (or build other tile) on top of lava or oil-ocean tiles. Which correctly appears over ammoniacal ocean stearing the player towards ice-platform, but does not help with the cover unintuitivity.