Factorio Forums

TL;DR

When you're placing an agricultural tower, you get a helpful overlay that show you which 3x3 cells it will be able to plant in, and, for those it can't, whether its the wrong soil type, the wrong biome, or blocked by an object, but it doesn't tell you which tile in an unplantable cell is the problem. It should.

What?

When you're placing an agricultural tower, as well as colour-coding each 3x3 cell based on plantability, the UI should indicate which specific tiles in each non-plantable cell are the problem, and further whether each problem tile is:

• In need of artificial soil
• In need of overgrowth soil
• In the wrong biome
• Blocked

I have no strong opinion on how this information should be indicated, other than it should not be a colour-based overlay, since a. that would conflict with the per-cell overlay that already exists, and b. Gleba has enough usability issues for colour-blind people already. My first though is maybe small per-tile icons?

Why?

It is virtually impossible to tell whether a given tile is plantable or not just by looking at it; that's why the tower has that overlay in the first place. But since it doesn't tell me why a given cell isn't good, trying to find a good location for a tower mostly just consists of waving it around until I find a spot with lots of green squares. If I could see which tiles are the problem, then I could move the tower intelligently to avoid them, or at least align the 3x3 grid so the minimum number of cells are affected.

Additionally, the overlay currently makes no distinction at all between cells that are not plantable but can be made so via the use of artificial soil and those that can be made plantable only via the use of overgrowth soil. This is a critical distinction, since artificial soil is relatively cheap and available almost immediately in a Gleba run, while overgrowth soil is only available much later and is much more expensive even when it is available.