Why do blueprints hardly ever work?

[CDEEKS]

I have always tried to stay away from BP as there terrible and never work for me. i cant place them despite having the whole area paved and they always are red and cant be placed down / any advice how to fix this?

[mmazvis]

From what I have noticed, blueprints are very dependent of planets latitude. When you build your factory, don't build in between different latitude lines, because if you do, then you can only paste that blueprint only on the lame latitude line as it was originally built on. You can clearly see if its on different latitudes, is when the build squares don't match up.
https://i.imgur.com/QXhiSbj.png

Personally, I try to make all my blueprint near the equator. This way I have found the least issues when pasting blueprints closed to poles.

[josmith7]

Because it's hard to make a good blueprint - and most people making them don't adequately test and document them.

The planets are spheres, and so things bunch up as you move towards the poles. Spacing that worked near the equator can be too tight as you move away from it (or blueprints that worked fine further from it might spread enough that some buildings are too far from power if you place it closer to the equator)

And if you cross a 'fault line' where the grid adjusts you can only place that blueprint straddling that same fault line. (And conversely if you create a blueprint that doesn't cross a fault line it's illegal to place it down over one)

So you can be limited in where you can place them; and folks don't always document that.

Oh, and I've found a few instances where the game will let me place, say a spray coater, very close to a sorter but when I take a blueprint and try to place it back in the exact same spot it'll say there's an illegal collision.
(Which, again, would be caught if people tested placing their blueprints and verified that they work over a reasonable range of placements -- but I'm guilty of failing to do that myself. OTOH I generally don't publish my blueprints so the only one I'm hurting by poor testing is myself)

[josmith7]

When making a blueprint for wide reuse its best practice to:
1) pick which latitude band you want it in (though sufficiently narrow designs can work in both the equatorial band and the next one out)
2) create the design you're going to blueprint as far from the equator as you can within that zone (so the buildings are as close as possible)
3) after capturing the blueprint test placing it both in its original location and as close to the equator as you can
3a) when testing don't just see if it places down -- fire it up and make sure all components are fully working; everything's getting power, you captured all the necessary belts & sorters, and generally nothing went weird.

(Sandbox mode can be useful for creation and testing since you can build nearly instantly, use auto-create/destroy on materials so you don't need to worry about setting up mining or the state of your other production lines; nor about the design jamming up due to nothing consuming its output. So you can place multiple copies and test them without having to use your factory to produce all those buildings and belts)

[CDEEKS]

thanks for the tips

[Grish]

Same I use a tonne of blueprints very rarely have issues from Dyson Sphere Blueprints

[Lucky-E]

Game "use shift + enter to force build "
me: .... <sounds of the shift and enter key getting demolished ..>
Game "use the shift + enter key to force build"
me:..... -opens blueprint menu and creates yet another blue print because "lines don't Match" ...

Game: <simpsons Nelson voice> HA HA


(right now i am going for the "finish the game without using foundations.... yeah .... all my blueprints are useless on the home planet LOL ) i wish they could blend lat. lines a bit better when creating blue prints i started naming my prints with the Lat Line i copied it from

[Tau Ceti]

One thing to do is to only build large arrays directly adjacent from the equator. Also as soon as you reach the first fault line, some builds may fail because they grids are smaller, so you need to build gaps between buildings to accommodate the lost space. Having said that, don't just copy pasta random schema from random people on some website. Make sure you know they did their due diligent, and then build from there on your own.

[matrix3509]

As other have said, blueprints don't work when you cross certain latitude lines. They are especially prone to failure near the poles. I had this same problem when starting out. I fixed it buy making may production lines only go east and west, and I only start adding production further away from the equator of a planet when I run out of real estate. Its easy to see when a blueprint will fail because the grid lines in construction mode won't line up with the grid lines of the lower latitudes.

[Vectriel]

My blueprints have been failing regardless of the latitude lines. The biggest consistent thing to fail is any blueprint containing belts that do a 'arch bridge' over another belt. Sorters are a hit or miss, sometimes they place sometimes they don't. For a game that scales up to planetary level automation, I don't know how I'll ever get that far when I can't get a blueprint to work without a ton of hand-fixing

[josmith7]

This may not be your issue -- but the game isn't great at letting you jigsaw blueprints back together; something people often attempt with the early game "mall" blueprints in order to work around the initial low item count.

If the blueprint calls for placing a sorter but the target belt or building isn't there (yet) the sorter get silently omitted. (But that's the only way I've personally seen sorters not get placed)

But belt; belts can be tricky to blueprint if you need to turn a factory into a jigsaw of overlapping blueprints.
Belts can only stitch together if they have exactly a single 1 grid square overlap, and that overlap is flat.
* Have a blueprint that ends with a belt segment forming a 'T' intersection with an existing belt? that's a collision (two 1 grid square overlaps on the same square); and forcing placement will omit a belt segment.
* Have a blueprint that tried to add a single belt dot to the middle of an existing belt (or vice versa)? (Really easy to do when you have belts arching or flying over each other) that's a collision too.
* Have a blueprint with a two belt segment overlap of an existing belt? Collision and forced placement causes a gap.
* Have a blueprint that ends on a belt sloping up or down? That's a collision and forced placement causes a gap.

These issues seem, in my experience, to go away once you can create and place larger blueprints; which are self-contained and only import material through distributors, PLS, or ILS -- and you've no need to mess with splitting them into jigsaws and stitching them back together.