Factorio Forums

In 0.16, it's possible to delete tile ghosts (and only tile ghosts) with the deconstruction planner. If I open the planner's filter config, make sure that there are no entity filters selected, and ensure that the dropdown list under the Tiles tab is set to "only", the decon planner only affects tile ghosts without affecting entities or entity ghosts, making it really easy to remove large areas of tile ghosts.

This doesn't work in 0.17; the only way I've found to be able to remove tile ghosts is by clearing all of the decon planner's filters (as though right-clicking on it), selecting the entire area for deconstruction, and then canceling deconstruction on the entities. (I'm just glad I discovered this before I got my logistics network up, so at least I don't have to worry about not canceling deconstruction fast enough!)

Is there another way to do this? Or is this a bug or intentional change in behavior from 0.16?

Context: when planning out my base in the early stages of the game, I like to put down outlines, consisting of ghost hazard concrete, around where I'm going to build various things, like my smelting columns. I use hazard concrete because I don't generally make it in the game, so bots won't try to place it. As it gets later in the game, I've actually built the smelting columns, so I don't need the outlines any more, but by then I've got the logistics network up, so I get alerts nagging me that the bots can't place hazard concrete. So at that point it is really useful to be able to wipe out just the hazard concrete ghosts.

Thanks!

I found the same thing yesterday when doing some tests on the deconstruction planner and have just raised it as a bug.

I see nothing in the changelog indicating it's an intentional change and as you say there's currently no way to remove tile ghosts without affecting entity ghosts, which is a useful thing to be able to do, so it seems like it must be a bug.

TheBloke wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2019 1:04 pm I found the same thing yesterday when doing some tests on the deconstruction planner and have just raised it as a bug.

Thanks for the confirmation that I'm not just seeing things, and thanks for writing up the bug report. (I'm a programmer myself in my day job, and I only wish all the bug reports I got were so clear and detailed!) I'll keep an eye on that thread to see what happens.

This seems to work fine.

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I guess I can see how it's unintuitive that "tile ghost" is in the entity list, not tiles, but unless I'm missing something no actual functionality has been lost.

ManaUser wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2019 6:20 pm This seems to work fine.

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Copy blueprint

I guess I can see how it's unintuitive that "tile ghost" is in the entity list, not tiles, but unless I'm missing something no actual functionality has been lost.

Ohh yeah that does work. Thank you. I did try that Entities->Tiles Ghost option but I had Tiles->Only set at the same time, duh! Tiles->Only blocks any setting in Entities in 0.17.

So in 0.16.51 there were two ways to remove tile ghosts: Tiles->Only would do both tiles and tile ghosts, or one could select Tile Ghost under Entity->Unsorted.

In 0.17 only the latter works. And the method in 0.17 to get a deconstruction planner that removes both tiles and tile ghosts (but not entities and entity ghosts) is: Entities->Tile Ghost + Tiles->Always.

So now I'm not sure if this difference from 0.16 is a bug or if that was a deliberate change.

Thanks ManaUser I'll update my bug report. Maybe it's not a bug at all but I'll let the devs confirm if the change from 0.16 was intended.