Just created a new survival instance with the scenario for the server I play on, in order to create some new stuf. Switched to Creative. Turned on creative menu. Spawned in my mid-gam base, which I am 100% sure would have had my standard Device Grouping scheme saved, i.e., as few groups as possible. My Groupings are gone: Eleon's bonehead autogrouping scheme strikes again. I'm litearlly shaking. ~2500 hours coping with this love-hate relationship with this app, words cannot convey the pure rage this evokes. How on Earth whomever created the default auto-grouping scheme in the game thinks that that is in anyway helpful or useful I cannot fathom . . . might as well have one group for every other item and just randomly toss them in . . .) Please someone help me: is there some way I can stop this god damn app doing this? Is there any way to just save MY grouping scheme in a config or something and readily plug it in for any construct?
It only saves custom groupings of you do them before making the blueprint, obviously. You have to set it up for every structure one by one and then save the blueprint. Likewise, the game never automatically auto groups your stuff. It only does that if you actually click the auto group button in the control panel. It sounds like you maybe forgot to re-save the blueprint after setting them up, or you clicked the auto group button after setting them up and then saved it that way. If the game had simply forgot your custom groupings then they would all be un-grouped instead of auto grouped.
You will have to load the savegame you last edited the build in. Have had to do this many many times, happens. Agree, the auto-groupings button, especially if you hit it by mistake in frustration, are a bit of a pain because when adding new devices (I prefer to often play survival mode and edit stuff loads) then grouping again becomes tedious because you cannot "lock things" in the grouping dialog. It's pretty hardcore UI work though to do that.
I think what happened in this instance is that the BP I was looking at was very, very old. I had a couple of other ones that were saved more recently where the custom groupings stuck. More customization and options in this part of the UI is something the game has need for years. 1. Ability to save grouping templates and assign them to constructs one click 2. Sub-groups of groups 3. Ability to sort within groups by various paramters (alphabetical, damage, etc.) It seems like the game is getting pretty close to "final form" when it comes to things like basic look and feel, overall UI configuration and major game play features which need to be represented by UI. Thus it is time for these basic deficiencies in functionality (and more) to be addressed. These fine Eleon folks have constructed something wondrous and many aspects of the UI are good, even some are very good. Overall the UI is acceptable. But the Device Groupings in the constructs main page is still in the same form it was in years ago and the longer you play the game hte more it grates.
What you can do for creative at least is create a few "starter" blueprints that have your device groups already set up. Use those instead of the normal starting blocks. It won't help you actually grouping devices but maybe save you a little time from having to set up the groups themselves for each Blueprint. Of course if they fixed so it was much easier to use that would be better.
