Question Regarding Blueprints

[xenothestrange]

Coming back to the game after some time, I remembered there are blueprints or ways to make them, and I was looking for it. And I noticed that I can use the keybind alt B to go into blueprint mode and start creating them and so on...

But if I tried to add the blue print shortcut to the area just to the right of the item bar, it says that I need to research a certain technology before I can access that.

I believe these two things should be consistent and more specifically available because we should be able to make blueprints and stuff before we actually have access to robots.

I don't want to press Alt B all the time and people shouldn't have to really remember that you should just be able to add the blueprint button to the sidebar that I'm talking about or have it be there by default.
Idk.

Why are they not consistent?

[NineNine]

Coming back to the game after some time, I remembered there are blueprints or ways to make them, and I was looking for it. And I noticed that I can use the keybind alt B to go into blueprint mode and start creating them and so on...

But if I tried to add the blue print shortcut to the area just to the right of the item bar, it says that I need to research a certain technology before I can access that.

I believe these two things should be consistent and more specifically available because we should be able to make blueprints and stuff before we actually have access to robots.

I don't want to press Alt B all the time and people shouldn't have to really remember that you should just be able to add the blueprint button to the sidebar that I'm talking about or have it be there by default.
Idk.

Why are they not consistent?

It seems like a reasonable way for new players and experienced players to both be able to enjoy themselves.

Clicking on the blueprint button, as a new user, is not going to make any sense, and be completely overwhelming if they haven't even gotten to bots.

But, if for some reason, you are an experienced player want to look at blueprints before you even get to bots (again... I'm not really sure why you would want to do that), it's still available. As an experienced player, I'm at bots at about 1/1000 of my game playthrough, so I don't miss anything by not being able to click that button for the first few hours.

[Tertius]

I don't use extra functions like ALT-B or clicking on the shortcut bar for creating blueprints. Since it's probably very common to use ctrl-c to copy things, notice you create a blueprint if you hold SHIFT while selecting items for copy. So alternate blueprint creation is: activate copy tool with ctrl-c and hold SHIFT while selecting items.

Even if you forgot to hold SHIFT while copying, open the inventory and drop the thing in your hand into the inventory. Or if you threw it away, press ctrl-v to get it again for pasting, then drop it into the inventory instead of pasting. It's a blueprint of what you just copied.

[jdrexler75]

...or just press 'B' to drop in your blueprint book.

[xenothestrange]

Alright, fair enough. I have seen new users get overwhelmed and confused by the sheer number of things there are to do in systems to engage with initially. Like if you start messing with wires before you have circuitry unlocked.

I guess it's hotkey time

Aside, blueprints are a good way to save some stock things you always make or template so you don't mess things up. Specifically things like balancers

[Nidan]

This once per install unlock has a command to fully unlock it immediately: /unlock-shortcut-bar
Similarly, for the tips and trick section there's /unlock-tips .

That said, I don't see why one would use the icon instead of the hotkey. (My shortcut bar only has two icons to show the state of my robo ports and legs; the only function I actually click on is import blueprint string as my infrequent user of it doesn't warrant assigning a hotkey nor putting it on the bar.)