Here we are. I'll be submitting through the crash reporter, obviously, but this caught me by surprise. General guidance suggests no reasonable person would hit the limit under normal conditions. I'm not even really sure what I did that was so egregious, but here goes the explanation.
I was in the Blueprint Designer Mk2 just trying to create a simple catalog of recipe blueprints. What I mean is each recipe gets a blueprint that fits into the designer, so that all connections are correct, inputs and outputs have the appropriate belts, etc. I've largely neglected proper factory design and infrastructure for most of my playthrough, so this is my first concerted attempt at organization.
I had just finished creating a blueprint for every smelter, constructor and foundry recipe that I have unlocked so far, and I was over half way through with the assembler recipes. To speed up the process, I put off the recipes that require different belt speeds until later, so that all I need to do is change recipes, type a new name, pick a new icon and save. I was switching from Mk1 belts to Mk2 belts for a recipe (I think it was the standard Rotor recipe). At first I was swapping the mini-lifts but I changed my mind when I realized that screws would likely need a "top-up", and it would be easier to do this on the bottom belt, rather than the middle one (stacked). So I swapped the mini-lifts back to Mk1 and was swapping the ground-level belts from Mk1 to Mk2 when the crash happened.
As for the state of my current game, it's fairly trivial compared to what I've seen shared on YouTube and in this subreddit. I still have my Phase 1 starter factory I never bothered to tear down that produces a maximum of 2 smart plating per minute and a handful of reinforced iron plates and rotors. I have a Phase 2 factory that sits idle 90% of the time because I built it into a dead-end, but at full-tilt it can produce about 10 smart plating, versatile framework and automated wiring per minute. And Phase 3 didn't get a dedicated factory, as I decided to just hand feed manufacturers via storage containers to complete that phase. I do have an oil factory, though, that is producing about 200 plastic and rubber per minute, as well as about 600 turbofuel per minute feeding 48 fuel generators. Oh, and I forgot to mention my 64 coal generators.
The single biggest construction in my current save is a "sky rail" as I've taken to calling it. I wanted to build a rail network, but I was struggling to route it through all of the ground-based obstacles and elevation shifts, so I opted to start it at the level of my first aluminum factory. I went out close to the map edge, and then made a circle around the entire map. I then added "spurs" inward wherever a stop should be. I think I have about 15 train stations at this point. I also have radar towers set up for full map visibility.
The only other thing that sticks out in my mind as a possibility is that (for the first time in my playthrough) I was collapsing the recipe groups when I was blueprinting. Initially, I was just scrolling to the relevant recipe, but that got annoying as I was doing all of the rebar and nobelisk recipes, so I collapsed everything except that group, and saved that configuration. I know game state can be a weird thing when it comes to persistence so maybe some visibility attribute gets counted in the game state and/or multiplied for each blueprint saved in this way. Otherwise, this was no different than any other game session where I used the blueprint designer.
Anyway, just wanted to share. I always thought it would be impossible to hit the limit lol.
New achievement! UObject Hoarder.
Reward: Crippling anxiety and compulsory saving!
