Factorio Forums

Normally when you open a storage chest and have your character walk away from it the inventory menu will close when you are out of range. You can use WASD to move around while a chest inventory is open.

However, if you right-click some modular or power armor stored inside the chest to edit its equipment grid this limitation goes away. You can walk away from the chest and continue editing the equipment grid freely. I would expect the GUI to close when you get out of range of the chest.

After finishing editing and walking back up to the chest I confirmed the armor was still present in the chest and my modifications were applied successfully. Tested by walking far enough away that the chest was off-screen while at maximum zoom-out in regular view.

Its a limitation of the game engine and it is really not likely to be changed ever. When you have item gui opened (in this case, gui for armor) you have a gui for.. an item. Item does not know where it is stored or if it was moved anywhere. In theory you could have an armor gui opened, armor itself would be taken out by inserter and then would travel over belts and item is even more unlikely to know its position or entity ownership on the map. Only thing known for sure is when item gets destroyed and this closes item gui. Other than that its a "wont fix". Ref 86705

I kinda figured it would be one of those kinds of bugs, but you report what you find.

Thanks.