suggestion Blueprints

[JahwsUF]

First off, I'm aware there's an old relevant thread, but I'm loathe to necro a near month-old one.

Mirroring a suggestion from this linked Reddit post, I feel like ONI would benefit greatly from an increased support for build blueprints, in multiple facets.  Pardon as I get a bit technical and break down different aspects of this request.

Base planning

As nearly everyone knows from games in the genre ONI draws from, base layout matters greatly.  Where layout matters, advanced planning matters.  Players often want to allot or reserve space for future construction efforts, so adding the ability to mark "future _____ goes here" is really helpful and reduces the cognitive load of the game - especially if we can mark the exact size of predicted area for that future construction.  For a great example, consider Rimworld's "order -> plan" function.

When making the plan, there's an overlay showing the dimensions of the plan area.  After specifying the "plan order", a mostly-transparent symbol is left on these tiles to signify "reserved area."

Build planning

As any experienced ONI player knows, build order matters.  We've all had trapped Dupes due to this at various points.  The natural thing a player wants to do is visually issue all construction commands for a room (or water tank, etc) at once... but we can't do this in-game presently because of the consequences.  But what if we could?

Suggestion:  give us the ability to "disable" a construction command.  (Maybe call it "delay" for construction plans?)

• This reuses an existing in-game mechanic - we're quite used to disabling buildings, so why not disable construction?
• A dimmed, gray outline of the building could be shown to signify the planned but delayed construction.
  • Already in-game:
    • Whenever a building is placed for "enabled"/active construction, we see a white outline of the building.
    • When attempting to place a building in an illegal location, we see a red outline instead.
    • Attempting to place a building in an in-accessible yields a yellowish, near-beige outline.
    • However, attempting to mine an in-accessible tile presently displays a dark gray outline.
      • Maybe make this match the in-accessible construction outline, for a consistent "in-accessible order"?
      • Then, a darkened version of this outline (perhaps brownish?) could represent "in-accessible and delayed".
  • We don't want the potential confusion of reusing the red outline for 'delayed' orders.
• The 'delay' state of a build order could be toggled via a new command button (like the Dig, Wrangle, etc buttons)
  • Issuing the command on an 'active' construction order marks it delayed.
  • Reissuing the command on the same order cancels the 'delay' and makes it 'active' again.

Build saving/re-use

When playing through the game multiple times, often players find themselves repeating a few of the same "build patterns", as I've termed them for my Steam guide.  In particular, many of us swear by the SPOM, and I additionally swear by my Thermo Aquatuner cooling loop for precision temperature control on Sieved water.  These builds can get precise and technical, especially with the various layers involved for wires, pipes, and automation.  (You'll note that a ton of comments on that guide are requesting more detailed images and overlays... I'll get there eventually.)  It'd be a great help to be able to 'save' the build (maybe with a similar UI as that previously-mentioned "plan"/"reserve"?) for reuse in later games.  Factorio, in particular, does this quite nicely, though it doesn't have the same issue with layers that ONI possesses.

Also, I can't help but notice that debug mode already has this part-way implemented - there are a few existing structures that can be placed directly into the game world, and a copy-paste function also exists with debug.  The trick would be creating a version that copies an existing structure but only places construction orders instead of a pre-built structure.

• Blueprints, when used, should place delayed construction orders.  The player would then selectively enable those orders a bit at a time.
• Blueprints take note of the environmental state of matter for every tile in the build area.
  • Placing a "liquid environment" or "gas environment" tile from a blueprint onto a solid, unmined tile in the actual in-game world should result in a (delayed) "Mine" order, even if there are no actual buildings on the tile.
• If a blueprint has data for a construction layer (wires, pipes, etc) incompatible with existing structures on that layer, the attempt to place the blueprint should fail.
  • Use a 'faded' red for all parts of the blueprint except those in conflict.
  • Use the existing strong, vivid "conflict" red to visually indicate the incompatible parts of the blueprint.
  • It'd be great to have similar functionality on each relevant overlay layer as well.
    • With overlays, parts of the blueprint not relevant to that layer should be desaturated and grayed, as with existing buildings, allowing incompatible parts of that blueprint layer to really "pop" visually.
• Blueprints should also save valve, gate, and filter settings and restore them if possible.
  • If 'restoring' is not possible, having the ability to hover over them in the eventual blueprint UI to see their settings should suffice.

These saved blueprints should be possible to categorize in some manner to facilitate easy browsing and/or searching.  Again, Factorio's got a pretty decent solution for this.

Build sharing

The other big benefit to allowing blueprints is that they become shareable.  There are already existing communities - some here on the forums - where people love to share their existing build patterns with others.  (Note that the SPOM entry on my linked guide refers to a build originally posted on these forums!)  Giving us blueprints and allowing players to share them online can only bolster the community this game will have online and offline.  We already have world generation seeds - add sharable build-pattern codes to the mix!

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All in all, there's probably enough work in this suggestion that I wouldn't surprised if it required its own update.  That stated, I think many of us would be perfectly happy to see ONI:  Construction Upgrade (or Blueprint Upgrade) as an upcoming iteration.

 

Thanks for all you do and for the fantastic game; we all love it and wish to see it become even better!

[heckubis]

honestly in my opinion this would suck the fun out of the game if all you needed to do was print builds on your map. the game is a learning experience and this would only be beneficial in sandbox. and i think it already has it

[JahwsUF]

How so?  Map generation is quite random, so in the late-game (at minimum) there would be different sets of problems to solve.  Not everything is cookie-cutter - not by a long shot.

Also, a large part of the game is knowing when to build things based on your available resources at any given moment.  A SPOM won't do you any good if you don't have enough Water to continue fueling the thing, nor will a Polluted Water + Sieve cooling loop without enough Power draw and Polluted Water available. 

Secondly, a lot of people seem to still enjoy Factorio, which has this exact feature.  Heck, blueprints would be more likely to "suck the fun out of the game" in Factorio than in ONI, and people still love it.   In the former, a resource rate mismatch will be less efficient, sure, but you'll still be able to get throughput, and there isn't any critical resource juggling that can cause total base loss.  Meanwhile, in ONI, use too much Water and all of a sudden your farms die and/or your base runs out of Oxygen.  Or, generate too much heat and your farm dies; it's not like you can simply build a ton of turrets to stave off Factorio pollution-triggered aliens.

Finally, if nothing else, it's not like the game should require the player to use blueprints - it's simply another option and another tool for the player to use.

[Deshiba]

20 hours ago, JahwsUF said:

As any experienced ONI player knows, build order matters.  We've all had trapped Dupes due to this at various points.  The natural thing a player wants to do is visually issue all construction commands for a room (or water tank, etc) at once... but we can't do this in-game presently because of the consequences.  But what if we could?

Suggestion:  give us the ability to "disable" a construction command.  (Maybe call it "delay" for construction plans?)

I usually do this with priority, isn't that what it's for? From your description I fail to see why it would need a new feature.

[JahwsUF]

12 minutes ago, Deshiba said:

I usually do this with priority, isn't that what it's for? From your description I fail to see why it would need a new feature.

When you don't have tons of tasks queued up, priority isn't perfect - especially because it takes about half a second after task completion on a dig for newly accessible tasks to be marked 'available', while Dupes choose their next task immediately.  Too often I've had a Dupe run from across the map, blocking the most accessible task, while the specialized Dupe starts on a lower-priority tile because the high-priority has been 'claimed' by the distant Dupe.

Secondly, if a Dupe only has Construct set to "Very High" priority, he'll seek to construct even priority 1 jobs before doing literally anything else.  SPOMs are very technical builds, and some of the setup stages require the building be only partially constructed.  Without this suggestion, I could not fully detail plans for the SPOM in-game in a single go without ruining the build.

[Vuelhering]

Some discussion on the linked reddit thread:

There were clearly some reservations about the game becoming too cookie cutter if blueprints existed in the standard game (although people do that now with screenshots, manually. cf: SPOM.)

But one interesting possibility that came out is using a senior architect as a foreman. The player can rubber-stamp out rooms or whatever, but the foreman has to actually "fix" the blueprint to where others can build the blueprint. This gives a legitimate and reasonable use for the senior architect instead of just +2 building at a huge morale hit. It also eliminates the primary complaints of people just rubber-stamping out an entire base, as this is a mid-to-late game thing if it requires a foreman. Perhaps the foreman could be to create blueprints, and the "Architect" could be the one to "fix" an existing blueprint so that others could build.

 

I still like the idea of not using a foreman, but doing this solves a lot of the worries people brought up, while still handling some of the tedium that I dislike. I've designed many rooms which I want to duplicate, and it's a pain to do so with the existing system.