Copy/paste huge areas?

[pat]

In my current game, I'm trying to go all solar, but copying and pasting large areas is tricky. I can do it in small chunks, but I was wondering if there was a way to copy and past sections that are several screen sizes.

[Fel]

You can move while holding the button to copy a larger area, if the area is covered by radars you can copy them with the zoomed in map (and move the view as needed while holding the button).
The problem is more for pasting since you can't see the borders, so it might be required that you set yourself a guide line (for solar your could pre-build a line of substations up to the one you need around the center of your paste.

Because it's a bit of a pain to do this like that it's usually faster to copy/paste medium size parts that fit in the screen and pasting it multiple times.

[pat]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I've been doing. Having a roboport in there helps a bit because I can use the logistic connection line as a vertical or horizontal alignment guide. It'd be nice if I could do it in map mode.

Thanks.

[piccolo255]

One of the mods I use (I think it was https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Shortcuts ) has a shortcut button to zoom out to a much greater distance than vanilla. IIRC, the exact factor can be set in the mod options.

You could also use a console command:

/c game.player.zoom=0.1

Test it by reducing the zoom factor slowly, in multiple steps. Reducing it too much will have a major performance hit.

Note that if you zoom out too much, you may not be able to place the blueprint exactly where you want, so there's still a limit to how big of a blueprint you can use.

[Ryan]

Here's how you do it:

Hit M and goto Mapmode
Zoom in to the minimum distance to copy/paste
Move around with WASD and use the mouse to lasso the objects for Copy/Paste

You can go as many screens vertical/horizontal as you want. Your character does not move as you are in map mode and have freedom of camera movement.

[KatherineOfSky]

While you can copy large areas of production into a blueprint using the methods above, you may want to be cautious. Ultra-large BPs can cause crashes, and are also difficult to place down, (because of the zoom/sheer size).

[pat]

Originally posted by piccolo255:

You could also use a console command:

/c game.player.zoom=0.1

Oh, that worked VERY nicely. I plopped down fifty acres of new solar field ghosts and I could hear my army of construction bots saying, "Are you &*$%-ing me???"

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

While you can copy large areas of production into a blueprint using the methods above, you may want to be cautious. Ultra-large BPs can cause crashes, and are also difficult to place down, (because of the zoom/sheer size).

A word to the wise - thanks for that. I'll save my game prior to doing these.

[Ryan]

There is some kind of satisfaction seeing and hearing 1000 robots swarming to an area to build on a large swath of land.

[PhatzDomino]

I know you already have an answer but I use this mod for this very purpose

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Infinizoom

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Ryan:

There is some kind of satisfaction seeing and hearing 1000 robots swarming to an area to build on a large swath of land.

Or 5000. Or 10,000! Yeah, as long as you have enough backstock in your storage system it is a blast to see a huge wave of bots fly in and plop down that module in a few seconds.