I wonder if its possible to actually fully pause the game on every other surface, while you re designing in the lab? Its not really that important, you can always save the bp and load earlier save, but it would sure be convenient.

And also, regardless if thats possible or not - thanks for this mod, its incredibly useful.

Thank you! Unfortunately, there's no way to alter time on a single-surface. It might be possible to pause time on every-surface, but of course that means you can't be live-testing what you are building. I think this sort of thing would only make sense for single-player. How's all of that sound?

Yeah, what i was thinking is purely single player thing, where you can enter the lab, create a bp, extensively test it out then jump out and build it, without having to save that blueprint to global bp book and loading a save before you went to the lab. If freezing all surfaces except the lab is impossible, its unfortunate, but its nothing critical. Putting every surface on pause is already possible with Time Tools mod, so i guess its not that useful? Anyway, thank you for your response!

If however its possible, but only for single player - thats more than fine with me. It wouldn't make any sense freezing other players while you re blueprinting anyway xD

Thank you! Unfortunately, there's no way to alter time on a single-surface. It might be possible to pause time on every-surface, but of course that means you can't be live-testing what you are building. I think this sort of thing would only make sense for single-player. How's all of that sound?

That would be great.
I love to build detailed blueprints, which can take me hours. During this time, the evolution of biters advances to such a point that it becomes almost impossible to defend.
You have to play save-load .

Stopping time while building blueprints would be great.

It's unfortunate to report back that this likely isn't possible. Pausing the current Tick is not a nice experience on anything except for the Map Editor mode, since you're also paused and can't do anything. The Map Editor has special game logic that allows it to move and edit the world, but no other modes have that capability. In other words, all I can do in this mod is something similar to Time Tools (so you can install that to see how it would work), or swap you into the Map Editor (so you can run /editor or install a mod for that). It's much harder to curate that experience, so I can't see myself going either of those routes.

The way I've always role-played this for myself is that your Sandbox is a deep bunker for scientists with a large do-not-disturb sign so as to not interrupt your thought process. You're cut-off from your reality on purpose, and you shouldn't be away for too long lest terrible things happen out there. I know that's not ideal for everyone, but for now it's the best I've got (absent other input or ideas).

I see! Thanks for researching into that possibility nevertheless. I am using Time Tools mod, so i know, what you re talking about. Its a shame that selective time stop is impossible, but its nothing critical. Just having a quick shortcut to activate a private cool space to plan stuff at is already really good.

How about just disabling biter ai and evolution while in the sandbox?

That's a possibility, if we're still talking about single-player games, since I could pop then push the evolution values. I'm sure what I can do for AI since I haven't investigated it, but this seems to be on the right track even though it's not the magic bullet I was imagining: https://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/LuaForce.html#LuaForce.ai_controllable

How about simply setting entity.active = false for all entities of force "enemy"?
If you wanted to extend this idea to multiplayer, just check if all players are outside of the sandbox surface, and disable biters in this case.

I'm just pitching ideas here, there may be better solutions to this issue.

Hmm, i didn't even think about the biters xD I mostly was concerned about power and overall factory consumption going on merrily, while i am twiddling thumbs in a lab. But yeah, pausing biters while you re planning stuff would come in handy for sure, if thats doable.