Ability to place building plans before the materials are available

[Dopey]

Hello,

I would like the ability to place down plans for buildings even though I don't yet have the materials for it.

There already seems to be handling for these situations when you build long stretches of pipe or wire but don't have enough materials to build them all at that moment.  Edit: This behavior seems to have changed since I last remembered it, playing in the automation upgrade.  Now it seems more rigid, stopping me from placing more buildings instantly as I run out of materials.  Now it is a slightly greater annoyance when trying to pre-plan an area...

In this case, I'd like the ability when just beginning to start off placing ladders and beds and such right away, then fill in the digging orders and let the duplicants get to work.  As it stands it's just a minor annoyance to wait for them to initially dig out some walls before pausing again to place ladders and beds and toilets and such.  So I think it'd be a nice UX improvement.  Just standard priority following for what gets built first.

I can see minor problem where you may have a high priority expensive item (insulated tile) vs. low priority cheap readily available item (wall) but it seems simple to have the next assigned job decision to just build what it can afford first or wait and assign no jobs until it can afford the next highest priority job whenever the update does another check.  This is actually probably already implemented in the game given the existing situations where things have build plans but material shortages.

I haven't seen this mentioned yet in a simple couple of searches.

Good Day

[Kasuha]

1 hour ago, Dopey said:

As it stands it's just a minor annoyance to wait for them to initially dig out some walls

That's definitely minor annoyance as you just dig a few tiles and everything becomes available.

What I see as major annoyance is, when you run out of available materials in the middle of placing a run of wall or wire, the game will quietly switch to a different material.

Perhaps it could be combined with adding a prioriy 0 ("don't do it") - priority 0 orders would not be done, and in case of builds would not reserve any materials. When running out of available materials, the game could switch to priority 0 instead of starting to use a new material. And the player would have to manually paint them higher priority to get materials reserved and duplicants working on them. Such orders could also be drawm differently (similar to unreachable digs/builds) so the player can see that something changed.

[Saturnus]

I'd prefer if priority 0 actually did reserve the materials so you know you have them should you release the build.

[Supraluminal]

I would like to see some kind of effective blueprinting capability (without requiring resources).

On 2/25/2018 at 5:55 PM, Kasuha said:

What I see as major annoyance is, when you run out of available materials in the middle of placing a run of wall or wire, the game will quietly switch to a different material.

I agree that this is super-annoying. As a separate matter from a blueprinting feature, I would be really happy if the game just stopped placing building plans when I run out of my chosen material, requiring a manual selection of the next material to use.