Blueprints: Mirror/flip

aober93 · Post by **aober93** » Mon May 01, 2017 8:48 pm

killkrogs mod was updated for 0.15 as well

Krusnik · Post by **Krusnik** » Sun Jul 30, 2017 9:45 pm

Did a bit of searching and didn't see this. Hope its not a dupe.

TL;DR

It'd be great to not have to use a mod to flip BP's horizontally or vertically.

What ?

While there is available mods to do exactly this, it seems it would be a feature that would be simple to implement. Maybe Shift+R to mirror/flip horizontally and Ctrl+Shift+R to flip vertically.

Why ?

Mirroring blueprints would be incredibly helpful for where appropriate. Even if it was only certain entities that could be mirrored, I could totally live with that.

fechnert · Post by **fechnert** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 11:08 am

I agree. Thought exactly the same the last time a was building a train unloading station.

Julissa Doe · Post by **Julissa Doe** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 9:26 pm

Agree. This is too useful of a feature to be left out in core game.

gexxo · Post by **gexxo** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 9:39 pm

Totally agree. It is just annoying to not be able to do this by default.

torne · Post by **torne** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 9:54 pm

The game doesn't support this because not all blueprints can be mirrored correctly: see any machine with multiple fluid inputs/outputs (chemical plants, refineries) for a start; plus also rail layouts (since signals and stations are always on the right side with respect to travel direction). The mods which mirror blueprints simply ignore these issues and it's your problem if your mirrored blueprint no longer works, but in past threads it's sounded like the developers don't want to introduce an "official" feature which breaks in this way.

kreatious · Post by **kreatious** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 3:20 am

Can't just have it play that error sound when a blueprint can't be mirrored?

Jap2.0 · Post by **Jap2.0** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 3:54 am

kreatious wrote:Can't just have it play that error sound when a blueprint can't be mirrored?

I'm sure that then they'd have bug reports about "BLUEPRINT NOT WORK PLZ FIX".

Okay, that was a bit of a joke, but seriously, if they have some things un-mirrorable, then people will consider it a bug and report it, and they'll either have to make it work somehow or have an imperfect mirroring system (which doesn't seem like something they would do).

Patashu · Post by **Patashu** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 4:46 am

Jap2.0 wrote:Okay, that was a bit of a joke, but seriously, if they have some things un-mirrorable, then people will consider it a bug and report it, and they'll either have to make it work somehow or have an imperfect mirroring system (which doesn't seem like something they would do).

I mean, if the devs make the error messages and detection of unable to be mirrored as pedantic as possible (e.g. rails only can't be flipped if there's signals, chemical plants only can't be flipped if they have a recipe with different fluid inputs/outputs, etc. and the message always says why) it wouldn't be a problem.

Jap2.0 · Post by **Jap2.0** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:13 pm

Maybe. Personally, I think that the developers would not want to put it in the game unless they could make it work perfectly, so I doubt it.

Krusnik · Post by **Krusnik** » Sat Aug 26, 2017 3:13 am

I do feel that having a universal mirror tool would not be applicable for all situations/entities. That being said, some of the more basic things like belts and assembly line could potentially be very straight forward when working on a mapping.

I'm with Patashu that some basic feedback on entities that were unflippable the vast majority of people would understand the issue and use the tool for what was available.

Post by **Koub** » Sat Aug 26, 2017 7:48 am

Actually, this is an already suggested thing :
search.php?keywords=blueprint+mirror&te ... mit=Search

Krusnik · Post by **Krusnik** » Sat Aug 26, 2017 6:14 pm

Koub wrote:Actually, this is an already suggested thing :
search.php?keywords=blueprint+mirror&te ... mit=Search

I guess I suck at searching!

TRUEpicness · Post by **TRUEpicness** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 12:28 pm

i dont think it would work for train stops/signals because of the right hand side thing

Post by **Koub** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:35 pm

Except if you use 2 way tracks. Actually the blueprint system does not carry content validity. You may create a blueprint with "insert faceroll here" contents, and plonk it down. The "factory-" created wouldn't work, but that's not what we expect from a blueprint. We just expect replication.

Impatient · Post by **Impatient** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 7:19 pm

Koub wrote:Except if you use 2 way tracks. Actually the blueprint system does not carry content validity. You may create a blueprint with "insert faceroll here" contents, and plonk it down. The "factory-" created wouldn't work, but that's not what we expect from a blueprint. We just expect replication.

i agree. and i second the feature request.

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 8:17 pm

Koub wrote:Except if you use 2 way tracks. Actually the blueprint system does not carry content validity. You may create a blueprint with "insert faceroll here" contents, and plonk it down. The "factory-" created wouldn't work, but that's not what we expect from a blueprint. We just expect replication.

Mirroring signals should be no problem but probably no what you wanted. Chain signals would now be after normal signals instead of before them. Worse with train stops as the train would stop nowhere near the inserters or pumps. I think you would have to add a filter for the mirroing so you can mirror the inserters and chests but leave the signals and train stops as is.

As for fluid using buildings they usualy have inputs on one side and outputs on the other. As long as all the buildings are layed out horizontal or vertical you have one direction left where you can mirror. And then you can rotate to get a near mirror for the other direction with the necessary change of pipes. If you have some fluid buildings that are horizontal and some that are vertical then, well, your problem.

The devs could add mirrored buildings to make mirroring blueprints perfect. I see no reason why a pumpjack needs to have its fluid output in only 4 possible places instead of allowing all 8 that would make mirroring possible.

Why are liquid inputs restricted to a fixed liquid anyway? Why not allow any pipe input to carry any liquid present in the recipe?
And one could make the output pipes mirror-able, e.g. instead of outputing one liquid at the top and the other at the bottom output one at top and bottom and the other in the middle. Mirrored it would be the same. Although this would be problematic for refineries with 3 outputs on one side, would be too large. Better to have one output per side and 2 freely selectable input pipes on the fourth.

Post by **Koub** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 8:27 pm

mrvn wrote:mirrored buildings to make mirroring blueprints perfect. I see no reason why a pumpjack needs to have its fluid output in only 4 possible places instead of allowing all 8 that would make mirroring possible.

Why are liquid inputs restricted to a fixed liquid anyway? Why not allow any pipe input to carry any liquid present in the recipe?

I remember seeing the devs answer to these questions. It was something like "It's intended, and part of the puzzle". If I have the faith, I'll try to find the actual posts, but it will take some time.

olafthecat · Post by **olafthecat** » Thu Oct 12, 2017 12:09 pm

This would be cool

Most sandbox games do not have this, so I would like to have factorio to stick out from the crowd in that case.
PLS correct me if I'm wrong.
Also, why do they not change it so that 'Factorio' is actually a word in the forum dictionary, it is the name of the game after all

Jelmergu · Post by **Jelmergu** » Sun Dec 31, 2017 10:37 am

TL;DR

The Foreman mod adds the ability to mirror a blueprint, which I think should be a vanilla feature

What ?

Foreman has added the ability to mirror a blueprint by using a hotkey. I wonder why it is something that has to be added in with a mod, and isn't just vanilla. Foreman isn't yet updated for 0.16(as of 31-12-2017), which makes me aware of the fact that I use its mirroring ability a lot.

I think it will improve the game as I often use the balancers in my blueprint library to reduce x amount of belts to x amount of belts. (14 to 4 for example). I'd use two 7 to 4 balancers next to each other followed by 8 to 4 balancer. The problem here is that the 7 to 4 balancer has 2 belts worth of space next to it, which makes it 'ugly' to put next to eachother, but more importantly I have to space the 14 belts in the middle by two belts.

Well i'd best show a image of the visual problem I am talking about...

: Nice balancer.png (1.06 MiB) Viewed 7104 times

I think that most players agree with me that the left looks better than the right... It was a pain to make the left side though without the blueprint mirroring.

Factorio Forums