Friend Blueprints

Deprecation

As of Factorio 1.1.86, the functionality provided by this mod has been incorporated into the base game!

Version: 1.1.86
Date: 28. 06. 2023
  Minor Features:
    - It is now possible to blueprint entities of friendly forces.

As such, this mod is no longer needed for those playing on the current version of Factorio

Description

Friend Blueprints adds a new type of blueprinting tool called a Friends Blueprint, which works like the vanilla blueprint, except that it also select entities owned by forces that are friendly to the player (vanilla blueprints only select entities owned by the player force). Due to some technical limitations, the friend blueprint doesn't work exactly like the vanilla blueprint, but I hope to overcome these limitations some day.

How it works

The Friends Blueprint is a custom Selection Tool that is designed to emulate vanilla blueprint behavior as closely as possible. It is configured with an entity filter that includes both player and friend force entities. When a selection event occurs, the Friends Blueprint does the following:

1. Replaces itself in the player's hand with an empty blueprint item
2. Adds all entities from the selection event into the empty blueprint
3. Opens the blueprint GUI (currently disabled; see limitations)

Note: a Selection Tool must be used instead of a Blueprint, because Blueprint entity filters are more restrictive, and don't allow friend force entities to be included.

Features

• New Friends Blueprint for creating blueprints that include friend force entities
• New toolbar shortcut for creating a Friends Blueprint

Limitations

• Vanilla blueprints open the blueprint in the blueprint editor as a final step before the blueprint is created. The Friends Blueprint solution can also open the blueprint in the editor, but only after the blueprint is created. It was too weird to have the blueprint simultaneously open in the editor and existing in the player's hand, so for now the open-in-editor step is disabled. Instead the blueprint is created in the player's hand, they can add it to their inventory and open the blueprint editor from there if desired.
• Mods that use on_player_setup_blueprint to make changes to blueprints as they are created (e.g. Bulk Rail Loaders), won't be able to make those changes on blueprints made by Friend Blueprints. This may lead to problems when trying to use a Friends Blueprint to select mod-created entities.

Roadmap

Please see the Github project for the development roadmap

Attribution

• "Multiple Users Silhouette" icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com