Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Holding another hotkey when building blueprints marks all objects in the blueprint area for destruction, instead of just things that are in the way.

What?

When you place a blueprint, if things are in the way, you can't place the blueprint. You can "force-place" the blueprint with Shift, but this only removes objects that would collide with the new objects, and doesn't remove player objects. I propose a new modifier (say, Ctrl+Shift) that causes all objects in the blueprint area to be destroyed, even if they aren't in the way. This would be equivalent to using a redprint over the blueprint area, then placing the blueprint. The only objects excluded would be objects in the exact same position and with the exact same configuration. (Objects that would be exactly the same before and after the operation.)

Why?

Have you ever built a newer blueprint over an older one, and still had old power poles sitting around, because nothing in the new blueprint overlapped them? You know how blueprints can't be used to upgrade objects or change configurations on objects? This would fix that. Also, it would be great for removing trees around your blueprints.

I like the idea. I could use this feature a lot of times.
I have been looking at force place (shift) feature as well and I find adding aggressive force place being useful. Currently force place ignores entities placed by players and marks trees and rocks for deconstruction but if you could hold like Ctrl it could mark all conflicting entities for deconstruction replacing them with blueprinted ones.
The most use for my feature would be replacing bus with splitters and for OP inserting intersections over existing railways erasing extra poles and signals
Also placing a railway blueprint would clean up space nicely.
However there would be a bit of a problem with diagonal blueprints which would require the whole rectangle being cleared... So my version is more predictable

Hmm. I hadn't thought about the diagonals thing. The extra modifier key could just be used to enable replacing player objects, instead of bulldozing the whole area. For the more aggressive tree clearing, you could just have it expand the collision boxes of the objects by 1 tile.

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=45635 Improvements for the Construction-Phase (Handling of Blueprints / Ghosts / Copy / Pre-Configuration)

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You can already just use the deconstruciton planner (aka "redprint") for this, and there's other things the devs could be spending time on.

No, this is different from doing a red and then a blue, in the case where you upgrade an older blueprint to a newer one and some of the entities are already in place.

I like the idea quite a lot, although admittedly it's not a super high priority thing.

AileTheAlien wrote:-1
There's other things the devs could be spending time on.

That's true of every suggestion out there.

Blueprints need work. They may need an entire rewrite. And they are a very important part of the game. For me they are probably the most frustrating UI interaction in the game.