Factorio Forums

Everyone's done this a time or two or ten:



Maybe you're switching MK2 armor sets and you do it in the wrong order. Or you meant to use a Spidertron remote but you were on the wrong toolbar. Now you have to have your bots pick up everything, or just load your last save and hope it wasn't too long ago.

Does anyone ever completely remove armor on purpose?

A gentle suggestion: Devs, would it be possible to make it a bit harder to take armor off?

For example, what about a special "take off armor" key combination to be used only when removing armor entirely instead of replacing it with a different set of armor?

That would help ensure that if I do remove my armor completely, at least it's because I meant to do it.

I haven't had this happen to me while switching armor, but it happens A LOT when I cancel too many handcrafts. I remapped the key for picking things up to the numpad decimal, and just run around sucking the stuff up when I do it.

I think something similar to what happens when you try to deconstruct a chest when you don't have enough inventory for its contents would work here. If removing the armor would result in puking items all over the ground, don't let us remove it.

I think it’s part of the game and a lot of fun in multiplayer (turned pants off, he?nice, let’s see what you got here...)

ssilk wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 16, 2020 6:43 am

I think it’s part of the game and a lot of fun in multiplayer (turned pants off, he?nice, let’s see what you got here...)

Do you ever remove your armor (rather than replace it with a different armor) on purpose?

Durr wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 16, 2020 3:56 am

I think something similar to what happens when you try to deconstruct a chest when you don't have enough inventory for its contents would work here. If removing the armor would result in puking items all over the ground, don't let us remove it.

This sounds like a reasonable solution. Maybe alongside some modifier key like shift to force to take of the armor or just allow it if you repeat the action within a short time period.

Kyralessa wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 15, 2020 7:00 pm

*snip*
Now you have to have your bots pick up everything, or just load your last save and hope it wasn't too long ago.
*snip*

While I agree with your premise that it is unusual to take armour off completely (as opposed from swapping loadouts), why don't you just "F" and pick it all up yourself once you've re-dressed yourself? I've never reloaded just because of an inventory vomit.

wobbycarly wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 16, 2020 10:24 am

While I agree with your premise that it is unusual to take armour off completely (as opposed from swapping loadouts), why don't you just "F" and pick it all up yourself once you've re-dressed yourself? I've never reloaded just because of an inventory vomit.

Sure, I could. But the point is that this has happened a dozen times in the same game, because I have two sets of armor assigned to slots 1 and 2 on toolbar 1, and I have two Spidertron remotes assigned to slots 1 and 2 on toolbar 0.

I feel like I know what you're going to say next. Sure, I could assign the keys differently. But the point is that while switching armor is something I do frequently, removing armor is something I never do intentionally, but frequently do accidentally. When armor is hotkeyed like this, it's easy to do accidentally.

This problem arose because how armor works in the quickbar was changed. I think this may have happened in 1.0. Previously, if you had two MK2 armors in your inventory, you could assign a MK2 armor spot on your quickbar, and when you hit that key, you'd pick up the other armor. So switching armor was a matter of: 1 [pick up], click armor [to switch], 1 [drop back into inventory].

Now each MK2 armor is treated as unique in the quickbar, which means it's necessary to use two slots for two sets. This makes it very likely to pick up the wrong one and dump inventory as a consequence. I either have to remember which one I was using, or I have to mouse over the one I'm wearing and look at the grid before I switch.

The problem is compounded by the fact that in the quickbar, the armor I'm wearing and the armor I'm carrying look exactly the same. If they looked different, I could glance there to know which key to hit to switch.

So changing this situation could involve one or more of several possibilities:

• Revert armor behavior to the way it was pre-1.0 (quickbar armor slots don't uniquely identify sets of armor).
• Differentiate worn armor from carried armor in the quickbar.
• Require a special key-combo or key-mouse combo to remove armor without replacing it with some other set of armor.

At least the items don't spill onto belts any more. That sucked harder than a black hole made of Kim Kardashians.

Another solution would be that armour simply doesn't give any inventory bonuses and the player has a more generous inventory from the start. Then changing armour would never spill. Given that the player can already carry 500 oil refineries and a few thousand tonnes of ore, it seems almost churlish to make people scrabble around for rare resources and create huge research infrastructures just to add a pittance to your backpack.

Kyralessa wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 16, 2020 9:05 am

ssilk wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 16, 2020 6:43 am

I think it’s part of the game and a lot of fun in multiplayer (turned pants off, he?nice, let’s see what you got here...)

Do you ever remove your armor (rather than replace it with a different armor) on purpose?

Yes, when I’m at the sea and want to jump into the waves. Then my mobil, money, handkerchief, belt etc. falls down into the sand, quite similarly.


And I must say, what really sucked was the spilling onto belts, it could break the whole factory. Deadlock already says it. No fun. As it is now, it’s funny: you just turn on the right pants and collect all as fast as possible, before the others come. You can use your personal robots with a filtered deconstruction “everything on ground”...

This fact that they fixed that with the belts, instead of removing the spilling, that they added a deconstruct filter for items on ground and the very, very old discussions tells me, that it is part of the game and very low chance to be removed.

ssilk wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:05 am

it’s funny: you just turn on the right pants and collect all as fast as possible, before the others come.

There's nothing "fun" about playing 52-pickup against yourself. Factorio is a singleplayer or cooperative multiplayer game, there are no "others" that come and steal your "loot".

As i see it spilling has always been a placeholder for situations that aren't being properly handled yet. It's been removed from everything else as the game got more polished (remember mine-a-chest-with-full-inventory-spilling?). It's about time to get rid of it altogether.

+1 Prevent taking the armor off when the armor is the only thing holding all the stuff.

[Edit: Or to get really fancy the surplus slots could be turned into ghost slots (visible but inaccessible) or
temporary slots (vanishes when you take the item out) that are converted back to normal slots when you put on another armor.]

Deadlock989 wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 16, 2020 11:04 am

At least the items don't spill onto belts any more.

That just happened in my recent playthrough. Me next to belts, wrong click on armor, when I already saw all the items happily travelling through my factory. But no, they snake nicely around the belts - best change ever!

Ah, and this madness actually is Factorio QR code for this.

If the developers won't, how hard would it be to mod it in

I imagine the "like a chest" solution would be harder than the "give extra inventory outside of armor and remove inventory from armor" solution. Because there is already a way to raise your inventory (the toolbelt upgrade) and editing item stats is pretty trivial.

The problem could be solved, when the state of the more inventory slots would be saved on first time putting on the armor. That way it wouldn't matter how one clicks on the armor.

5thHorseman wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 17, 2020 1:03 am

If the developers won't, how hard would it be to mod it in

1. Prevent the armor from being picked up in the first place: Impossible to mod.
2. Detect when it happens and attempt to undo the spilling: Maybe. But annoying.
3. Remove inventory bonus from armor and add a force bonus to armor technology: Trivial. But boring.

Hm... actually 1) might be doable with some arcane magic: Place a mod gui that looks like the armor slot right in front of the armor slot to intercept user clicks. Getting the positioning right would be tricky (can't read interface settings, have to compensate vehicle slot count and gui scale) - unless you can get the devs to add a relative gui anchor for it...

eradicator wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 17, 2020 1:19 am

5thHorseman wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 17, 2020 1:03 am

If the developers won't, how hard would it be to mod it in

Remove inventory bonus from armor and add a force bonus to armor technology: Trivial. But boring.

Spoken like a true modder

I actually don't find it boring per-se, from a user perspective. It gives me a slight advantage over the current situation in that I don't actually have to CRAFT the armor to get the inventory benefit, but as I'm going to be crafting the armor anyway for all the other benefits, having the inventory upgrade a couple minutes early just means it's easier to get all the components into my hands to craft the armor.

As a hack modder, I think I may even write that mod. Eventually.

Kyralessa wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 16, 2020 10:46 am

wobbycarly wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 16, 2020 10:24 am

While I agree with your premise that it is unusual to take armour off completely (as opposed from swapping loadouts), why don't you just "F" and pick it all up yourself once you've re-dressed yourself? I've never reloaded just because of an inventory vomit.

Sure, I could. But the point is that this has happened a dozen times in the same game, because I have two sets of armor assigned to slots 1 and 2 on toolbar 1, and I have two Spidertron remotes assigned to slots 1 and 2 on toolbar 0.

I missed this bit... I don't swap armour often, so I don't use the toolbar for this, so I can see how your problem is more prevalent that it would be for me. I instead reserve the bottom-right slot in my inventory for MK2; always select from the inventory, click on the armour icon, and they swap over.

5thHorseman wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 17, 2020 5:35 am

eradicator wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 17, 2020 1:19 am

5thHorseman wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 17, 2020 1:03 am

If the developers won't, how hard would it be to mod it in

Remove inventory bonus from armor and add a force bonus to armor technology: Trivial. But boring.

Spoken like a true modder :D

I actually don't find it boring per-se, from a user perspective. It gives me a slight advantage over the current situation in that I don't actually have to CRAFT the armor to get the inventory benefit, but as I'm going to be crafting the armor anyway for all the other benefits, having the inventory upgrade a couple minutes early just means it's easier to get all the components into my hands to craft the armor.

As a hack modder, I think I may even write that mod. Eventually.

In an MP scenario crafting it for everyone can take some time. Peronally I just don't like the feeling of getting bonuses out of thin air.

But apart from that it might not be that trivial after all. At least not if you want to preserve the exact same balance as now. The problem is that the armor gives you +X for exactly the armor you're wearing, but the technologies always give you all unlocked bonusses. In a modded game with multiple armor-research trees it's likely that there isn't any clear order in which the armors will be unlocked, and thus no way to guarantee that the bonusses stack in such a way that the result is exactly that of the "highest" tier armor available. So if you're going for an easy implementation of say +5 slots per armor tech you'll end up with a bunch more slots than usual. Can't ever have enough slots anyway ;).

You usually unequip the armor by accident.

The only edge case where you might want to switch armor later would be when you use different setups for armor like:
combat armor, a mix of everything
building armor with roboports
speed armor
personal laser defense armor for spidertron

JimBarracus wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 17, 2020 7:03 am

The only edge case where you might want to switch armor later would be when you use different setups for armor like:
combat armor, a mix of everything
building armor with roboports
speed armor
personal laser defense armor for spidertron

Yep, I have an MK2 for speed and building, and an MK2 stuffed full of lasers. When I switch between them but hit the wrong one first, or when I accidentally grab my armor instead of my Spidertron remote, that's when the inventory dump happens.

wobbycarly wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 16, 2020 10:24 am

...why don't you just "F" and pick it all up yourself once you've re-dressed yourself? I've never reloaded just because of an inventory vomit.

I tried this today, and it wasn't that bad, just a little more time-consuming than I'd like. But unlike some screw-ups where I say, "At least I know not to do that again," I know I'll be doing this one over, and over, and over...

eradicator wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:30 am

ssilk wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:05 am

it’s funny: you just turn on the right pants and collect all as fast as possible, before the others come.

There's nothing "fun" about playing 52-pickup against yourself. Factorio is a singleplayer or cooperative multiplayer game, there are no "others" that come and steal your "loot".

Sorry, multiplayer was a bad comparison. But even I play: “oh no I did it again”, and I smile what mess I did.

And the solution is simple: Either pressing F and run around for some seconds or use the destruction manager and filter for items on ground.

As i see it spilling has always been a placeholder for situations that aren't being properly handled yet. It's been removed from everything else as the game got more polished (remember mine-a-chest-with-full-inventory-spilling?). It's about time to get rid of it altogether

I’m not 100 % sure, but I think I remember rare situations where you need this feature.

Think of the hidden inventory in the crafting queue: what to do with the inventory when the player aborts?

+1 Prevent taking the armor off when the armor is the only thing holding all the stuff.

What is more important: changing to the power suite with less inventory but more fire power or forbid player to change , because he will loose items?