[Suggestion] Architect Mode, or export option (Blueprints)

[Ade_McC]

As mentioned on another thread this morning, faced with a blank plot of land, I didn't do very well on my first build. I ran up against issues such as not building rooms large enough, not thinking about water or electricity needs and generally ran out of space very quickly. To overcome these issues and to overcome my lack of imagination, I have been sketching out other peoples buildings - Alpha.prison very useful in this case, and making notes of minimum floor size, essential items and stuff like that in order. This way I can copy these examples to at least have a working building, even if it's a long way from being an optimised prison.

My suggestion is an 'Architect View', similar to the 'Utilities' view that we have right now. This would show up the essentials - building layout, utility paths, all items as icons - all in black and white on a grey grid - all very easy to print off and use as a reference for future building and improvements. It is essentially a blueprint mode, but one where sizes (building footprint vs floor space) are easy to visualise.

Worst case scenario, I'll find myself some grid paper and work it out on hand, but a nice printed option of your latest cell layout or optimised canteen just before things go wrong that can be easily referred to whilst building from scratch would be very nice.

[XmAkiNA]

Assuming IV do their usual trick of developing an API or easy way to plug in to PA, there probably won't be any need for this to be a part of the core game. As an example, Dwarf Fortress has quite a few tools for layout and design.

[gsuberland]

I'm already sketching out ideas for a prison editor, based on the save file format. It wouldn't be very glamorous, and wouldn't have any validation, but it'd do the job.

[RabidZombie]

I'd be very interested in seeing the current clone tool be expanded into a blue-print mode.

Being able to store a variety of different blueprints and then print them onto your prison would be super useful.