Factorio Forums

One of the issues blueprints have, is that there's no easy way to make small changes to them. The only thing you can do is remove buildings (which becomes hard when blueprint is big, because there's no zoom in feature). And if you want to place new buildings, you have to place the blueprint down, make changes, and then update the blueprint.

I suggest a button called "Edit blueprint". Pressing it will send player into an editor-like environment, where they are free to zoom in/zoom out, place new buildings, remove buildings. It can behave similar to the "Rail signal tutorial", which opens an editor-like simulated environment. This will create a seamless way to edit the blueprintsright through the blueprint menu.

This also solves another issue players are having - planning and designing. A lot of players are complaining, that bots gets in the way of planning, forcing them to plan blueprints in the middle of nowhere (where bots don't reach) or exiting the current game and opening editor mode. With this suggestion, players could plan without exiting current game or having to avoid bot construction areas.

Another thing I wish to be added to this editor-like environment, is some of the cheat tools, like infinity chests, infinity pipes, loaders and electric interfaces. This way it will be possible to test design right in the game, without requiring player to exit current game and entering editor mode. Of course player is required to remove all cheat buildings before saving the blueprint.

The last thing that many players would like to see, is a checkbox inside the blueprint, that will make deconstruct orders on all empty tiles. There are some blueprints, that require having empty spaces, and with introduction of super-forced placement of blueprints, it would be nice to have some way of creating empty spaces via a blueprint.