As I currently have to place the saplings manually, is there a way to make them targetable by blue prints?

I cant see one :(
I think its something automatic within factorio, maybe grid snap or the fact its a tree or something

Too bad.
Is it possible to do that by making them to something like lamps which snap to the grid (just with another sprite)?
And then we keep the current sapling version as a second kind of item.

I guess it would be possible, but that could be confusing for other people as to why there are multiple different items, so probably not worth it

Personally I would love vudu_'s idea of blueprintable saplings, I'm allways trying to automate stuff and I would love to automate wood farming without crafting-based mods.

Additionally, the fluid values have changed to be a lot greater then before since 0.15, this makes the saplings really cheap (nearly free) at the moment since the mod still uses very little petroleum to make saplings. Perhaps this needs to be rebalanced?

Oh oops, forgot that fluid numbers had been changed, I'll fix that soon

So would you be using some automated blueprint mod for farming the saplings? Im definately for farming things automatically, I just couldnt think of a very good way to automate it

Ive just looked into it, Im pretty sure Factorio just automatically sets trees to not be blueprintable, even if the not blueprintable tag isnt set.

I think im going to suggest changing this on the forums as I would have thought that if there was a flag, it would affect any entity

Also, I dont think there is a workaround like not setting it to be a tree, because that would mean other things wouldnt work

Yes I use automated blueprints, the mod is called recursive blueprints. It's a bit of a pain to set up but works great.

It's a shame trees are unblueprintable by design, perhaps they will change it, as you suggested, though wood farming was promised back in 2013 if I'm correct and we've seen very little of that, but who knows ;).

I've seen other mods use a different entity for the sapling though, which did fit in a grit, it's called BioTech if I remember correctly. They looked a bit awkward before they grew into trees though (imo, that is) and the rest of the mod was too far off vanilla for my taste, but perhaps you could look into it?

Or maybe you could add something like a building that slowly plants trees in an aoe if fed fertilisers and/or ammonia (and water). I use the sawmill mod which does the same thing except it only harvests them, and that would synergise amazingly. Though that may be too much of a change.

I think the best option would be adding a building, although I've never done anything like it, so I dont know how easy or hard that would be.

I guess an inserter style planter would look good (either planting in a range, or just in one spot), and fit in fairly well with the vanilla game, although that might be quite hard to do.

An inserter planter would fit much better indeed, love that idea. That would look so nice. But, as you said, it may be too hard to do. Anyway, I'm really glad you're listening and trying to implement wood farming like this, I've been waiting to be able to do that in a vanillish way for so long :)

Really enjoying this mod! Looking forward to some sort of "auto-sapling-planting" of any kind.
Regards,
~B

Just thought I would update you on my plan for how to automate sapling planting:

Ive been thinking about how to do it, and I think adding some sort of planter box is the way to go. Something that when a sapling is inserted into it, it places the actual entity on top of it, and when it is fully grown, it allows an inserter to take the wood out of it, and removes the grown tree.
I dont think this would be too hard to add, and it should be completely event driven, so doesnt need any annoying loops checking each planter every game tick or anything.

Edit: Just spent a while trying to find a way to do it, and it looks like there isnt any events triggered by items being inserted, even if its into a crafter or something that starts processing... This means I dont think there will be an easy way to do it, so I'm back to either checking every planter each tick or finding another way to do it. I guess Ill look into whether this would be a performance problem, and if it is, try to think of another way to do it.

In the latest update Ive added this :D

I don't think it is too bad for performance, but it does mean code needs to be run for every planter every tick

Edit: Just tested this, and a solid 50x50 square of planters takes around as much time per update as a smallish factory of mine, so they have more impact than the average entity, but not a whole lot more