A fast way to generate buffer chest blueprints for fast expansion
Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2019 6:33 am
I am doing a lot of repetitive expansion, using a massive blueprint I've been building upon. This expansion blueprint (appropriately named Manifest Destiny), has all the usual suspects, turrets, substations, big electric poles, roboports, walls, etc.
I spent about an hour configuring buffer chests to request all the items that Manifest Destiny uses, with the intention of including them in the blueprint. My idea was that this would create my supply lines, keeping the front lines stocked with enough supplies to build the next expansion.
Currently it takes a very long time for the bots to fly all the way to the war front, and I didn't want to deal with adding expansion trains.
So I did a copy paste of the painstakingly configured buffer chests, distributed the buffer chests into my new front lines, and re-created Manifest Destiny with the buffer chests included.
But... somehow I messed up, and the buffer chests never made it into the next version of Manifest Destiny...
I ended up pushing the chests off the end of my clipboard, and all that work was lost. 
I know, "Should have made a blueprint of it to be safe," and "Just over request the items and don't sweat the waste."
After being reduced to silence over my loss, I was again reminded of an idea for a blueprint generator, which can create a blueprint of requester/buffer chests, which request the contents of any given blueprint. The tool would take in a blueprint, and generate a new blueprint, which contains requester or buffer chests (configurable), these chests would request all the items of the inputted blueprint.
I've had many situations where such a tool would come in handy.
All this to say, has anyone come across such a tool, or is anyone else interested in engineering such a thing with me?
I spent about an hour configuring buffer chests to request all the items that Manifest Destiny uses, with the intention of including them in the blueprint. My idea was that this would create my supply lines, keeping the front lines stocked with enough supplies to build the next expansion.
Currently it takes a very long time for the bots to fly all the way to the war front, and I didn't want to deal with adding expansion trains.
So I did a copy paste of the painstakingly configured buffer chests, distributed the buffer chests into my new front lines, and re-created Manifest Destiny with the buffer chests included.
But... somehow I messed up, and the buffer chests never made it into the next version of Manifest Destiny...
I ended up pushing the chests off the end of my clipboard, and all that work was lost. I know, "Should have made a blueprint of it to be safe," and "Just over request the items and don't sweat the waste."
After being reduced to silence over my loss, I was again reminded of an idea for a blueprint generator, which can create a blueprint of requester/buffer chests, which request the contents of any given blueprint. The tool would take in a blueprint, and generate a new blueprint, which contains requester or buffer chests (configurable), these chests would request all the items of the inputted blueprint.
I've had many situations where such a tool would come in handy.
All this to say, has anyone come across such a tool, or is anyone else interested in engineering such a thing with me?