Building material should default to "Any"

[HabdomeRaider]

If I don't select a specific building material when placing a building, I probably don't actually care what it's made from. So don't send dupes halfway across the map to pick up a specific material or tell me you can't build it because I'm out of Obsidian. Just grab whatever's closest and start building.

[SmallMuffin11]

I kinda get what you want, but imagine you use all your gold for random item because  gold is closest to your bulding item ? is that what you would really want ?  What i would like is to have default material set to the one which you have the most maybe.

[Kasuha]

The game could let us give materials priorities (including priority 0 "don't use this" or giving several the same priority) and the default "any" choice could then use materials according to that setting. It would definitely be convenient for builds where we care more about it being built soon than what is it built from.

[tehMugwump]

For me, I'd prefer it default to whatever you have the most of.  I'm forever building a long string of something out of material I have very little of and have to go back and fix it all.

[Masterpintsman]

I would prefer if it would stick to the material I selected and simply stop painting when I run out (even when I draw with the LMB held) with a message in the paint cursor information that there is not enough material of that kind left to build any more of this.

Computers are immenstly fast but compareably stupid - let them do what they can do best.

[caffeinated21]

On 5/4/2017 at 3:17 AM, HabdomeRaider said:

If I don't select a specific building material when placing a building, I probably don't actually care what it's made from. So don't send dupes halfway across the map to pick up a specific material or tell me you can't build it because I'm out of Obsidian. Just grab whatever's closest and start building.

+1

I'm torn over granularity here... I like the idea of "use whatever is closest" as an option, but... i'd want to be able to exclude certain "high value" materials that i reserve for special cases (absyllte, gold, wolframite, etc)

[HabdomeRaider]

The main scenarios that aggravate me are:

1. The build menu defaults to a resource I'm low on (usually Obsidian for some reason). I try to build a ten-tile ladder and the dupes build two segments before running out. Now I have to cancel the build order, select a different material and replace the eight tiles of ladder.

2. If I have a dupe digging far from base, and I need them to build a small ladder to clear a gap or something, I don't want them going back to base for sandstone. I'd rather have them use the building materials right at their feet that they just dug out. But, I also don't want to have to manually switch materials between the dupe far from base and the dupes in the base which should be building using the sandstone.

Maybe some combination of proximity and quantity could work.

[Xuhybrid]

The material you build out of becomes very important. You won't want to build a water container out of Sandstone of transport hot water through granite pipes for example.

[HabdomeRaider]

21 hours ago, Xuhybrid said:

The material you build out of becomes very important. You won't want to build a water container out of Sandstone of transport hot water through granite pipes for example.

If I wanted to choose what material to build something out of, I could still click on a material to choose it. I'm just saying the default if I don't choose a specific material should be "Any" or "Closest" or "Most Available" rather than "Obsidian".

[Masterpintsman]

4 hours ago, HabdomeRaider said:

If I wanted to choose what material to build something out of, I could still click on a material to choose it. I'm just saying the default if I don't choose a specific material should be "Any" or "Closest" or "Most Available" rather than "Obsidian".

If the setting is persistant in the sense of 'closest' and 'most available' as selectors in the material menu that stay selected between builds:

Fine with that.

I just don't see a use case for 'any' as I have no clue how it could behave compared to the other two.

[TwitchRouniee]

I would like to see this in the game. Built your powerline with copper but you ran out? No worries, we'll start building it with Gold/Wolframite/Iron (our next most abundant source).