i think i mentioned this already over on steam, but it just occurred to me again how good this would be, and i've got my thoughts more in order now, so i think it bears repeating.
a lot of us like to build furniture and decorative objects out of blocks, but i haven't actually used any of mine in my survival game because of how difficult it is to rearrange and move them once they are placed, especially compared to pre-made, actual furniture objects.
for example, a chair that i crafted at the work bench is one solid piece, so i can easily pick it up and move it around as i get more things/get better at decorating/move around the map. but if i make a chair out of blocks, the only way to 'move' it is to tear it apart block by block, or risk deleting part of the house it's in to delete it in a chunk via creative mode, and then re-place it as a blueprint.
it's pretty annoying/immersion breaking and i think it's a real shame that blueprints/player-made objects are basically limited to permanent fixtures like buildings rather than also being practical for use as objects in the world.
suggestions i came up with for fixing this;
- a moving dolly 'tool' item that, when equipped, allows you to select an area of blocks to then move all at once. operates like a blueprint but without leaving a copy behind that then has to be deleted. (unfortunately this still risks including unwanted nearby objects in the selection area... and having to use a dolly for something as small as a bottle or book is kinda silly.)
- a glue 'tool' item that lets you 'fuse' blocks permanently by clicking each individual block in sequence, rather than selecting an entire area(or perhaps you can toggle between either method). a single bottle of glue would only cover so many blocks, so you would need to craft multiple and then glue already glued chunks together for especially complex builds. the glued blocks would then act as a single object from then on, so if you sledgehammered it, it would break into a single pick-up-able object (this would then need to have an icon/name, but i think just a generic moving box symbol would be fine). i'd still like it best if it then had the pickup option in the radial menu, but even without that this would still be a vast improvement over having to deconstruct things one block at a time.
- a blueprint 'mode' you can select when you get a blueprint from the table that makes the blueprint act as a single object (like it does when you initially place it) forever, allowing it to be picked back up/reverted to blueprint form after it has already been placed in the world. this would be an additional option, so you could still choose to generate modifiable structures with the same blueprints too. unfortunately this would not work for blueprints that have already been placed before the new mode was added.