Well, wouldn't that destroy the main purpose of the game? Building factories and stuff?

The only thing i figured is to use


local buildEntity = {name = "basic-transport-belt", position = ent.position}
local player = game.player

--Make sure the player has nothing on the cursor
local cursorStackBackup = player.cursorstack
player.cursorstack = nil

--Set the mouse position
local ...

I think I understand what your problem is now.

The actual path has to be:
"Factorio/Mods/TestItems_0.0.1/something/axe.png"

but in the lua files it should be:
"__TestItems__/something/axe.png"

Please post your info.json. It could also have something to do with that.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

Making entity.operable = false would be a great solution, if only I could call it when a recipe was set. I went through the list of events: https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Lua/Events but none of them seem appropriate. I wonder if its possible ...

Since I had a bit too much time on my hands, I mocked up a quick control.lua that should do the job

This should work although i have not tested it :3
require "defines"

if not glob.entityPositions then
glob.entityPositions = {}
end

prototypes = {{"assembling-machine-1"}, {"assembling-machine-2 ...

It doesn't work because the path "__TestItems_0.0.1__/something" needs to be "__TestItems__/something".