Building stuff over stuff

[lurkinglurker]

I would like to suggest three sets of things here in this thread, both having the same theme (see title).

 

Firstly... (I've done a brief search on this one, but had not found anything similar. Please link if there are)...

- Allow the building of wire and conductive wire over any other wire and conductive wire, replacing them once built. (this should be doable right now in the current ONI build, but I'm adding it here as contrast)

- Allow the building of heavy watt and conductive heavy watt over any non-heavy wire and conductive wire, replacing them once built. And vice versa.

And IMO the most essential out of everything in this post:

- Allow the building of conductive heavy watt over heavy watt wires, replacing them once built. And vice versa.

By build over, I am speaking of the building behavior of normal/insulation/airflow/mesh/metal/plastic tiles, normal/insulated/radiant pipes and normal/insulated/radiant vents; you can choose to build different types of pipes over normal pipes, for example, and you can also choose to build a normal tile into a space occupied by another normal tile as long as the material used is different.

I was thinking the same, but for electricity, would be nice to have.

 

With that done, why not extend this to other things:

- Allow the building of doors (all three types) over other doors and all types of tiles, replacing them once built. And vice versa.

- Allow the building of ladders (all types) over tiles (all types). And vice versa. Oh, and poles too.

 

And since we're going this far:

- For all the rest of the buildings, allow a "hollow out" tickbox when building anything and everything (said tickbox having a "press constantly to tick" hotkey. Alt/control/shift?). If the option is selected, whatever you've selected to build can be placed everywhere, no matter what's in the way.

And if there is anything else that is in the way of making the building that has just been placed, those are treated like dirt... literally; deconstruct tasks will be assigned to any buildings/items in the way just like dig tasks are assigned to dirt/mineral/ore tiles that are in the way of new construction tasks.

 

These suggestions aren't exactly gamebreaking, nor does it actually eliminate that much busy-work. But I think all of these would be nice to have. Replacing wash basins with the equally sized sinks. Replacing a mealbox with a fridge. Bulldozing the microbe musher with a grill. Adding a thermocooler into a room full of tempshift plates. Etc, etc...