Double ended crafting queue

[fmammal]

TL;DR

When selecting a recipe to handcraft, hold shift to have it queued ahead of all other queued crafts, rather than putting it at the end.

What ?

Many times I will queue up a bunch of stuff then realize I need something else asap. So, I right click a bunch to cancel the crafts then add what I need now, then redo all the original queues.

Why ?

This is a really easy QoL win.

Sorry the forums search wasn't working for me if this has been suggested before. Thanks!

[Rseding91]

We've talked about this before and we decided that it goes against what we want players to do: automate things. Manual crafting is already super easy - you should be automating the things you're crafting instead of crafting them by hand.

[eradicator]

We've talked about this before and we decided that it goes against what we want players to do: automate things. Manual crafting is already super easy - you should be automating the things you're crafting instead of crafting them by hand.

While this is true for vanilla some of the larger mods require exessive handcrafting before automation of the thing you're handcrafting even becomes possible. And even if it becomes possible it might not immedeatly be feasible due to speed/costs. I know this is true for at least Pyanodon's mods and Xander's mod.

I know it's a limited usecase but would it be feasible to make it moddable? (Maybe an input-action that isn't used without mods?)

[Tekky]

The original poster's suggestion has already been discussed in several threads, for example the following:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=49361 Rearrange hand craft queue - QOL
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41594 Ctrl+click to add to front of craft queue

I agree that hand-crafting should not be made too powerful, because the goal of the game is automation. However, discouraging hand-crafting by having an annoying inflexible interface does not seem the right thing to do. If you want to discourage hand-crafting, decreasing the crafting speed or forcing the player to stand still in order to craft would be better, in my opinion. This would be less annoying than being forced to empty your entire crafting queue just to craft one single small item that you need urgently.

[Rseding91]

... However, discouraging hand-crafting by having an annoying inflexible interface does not seem the right thing to do. ...

What if we change it to not auto-craft prerequisites ALA Minecraft style?

Saying the current system is annoying and or inflexible is simply a lie.

[Tekky]

Saying the current system is annoying and or inflexible is simply a lie.

According to what you say, your own colleague Twinsen must also be a "liar", because in this post, he himself stated that the crafting interface was intentionally being made "annoying". Here is a quote of the relevant paragraph from Twinsen's post:

We had many discussions about improving the crafting queue, including special shortcut to queue to front. After long thoughts I have strong feelings against improving the crafting queue like this, for an important reason: it won't force you to automate. If you were able to queue to front many players will act as walking assembling machines, constantly crafting things, since it would be an efficient way to play. I very often see new players spend many minutes crafting green science packs, sometimes even waiting there until their hand crafting is finished. Adding queue to front will only aggravate this problem. By making it annoying the way it is now, it forces new players to think "if only there was a way to do this easier...".

I am not saying that Factorio's crafting interface is bad, especially when you compare it to that of other games. However, it can be annoying and inflexible in the situation described by the OP (original poster), where you queue up lots of items and then have to clear the entire queue, whenever you need an item urgently.

I agree that the player should not be encouraged to have a very long crafting queue, but should rather be encouraged to automate. My only point is that the player should not be encouraged to automate by deliberately making the crafting interface annoying and inflexible.

As I have already pointed out, there are other ways to discourage hand-crafting. For example, in this post from one year ago, I suggested that the player should be required to stand still for some time to unpack his hand-crafting equipment, and remain standing still while doing the actual hand-crafting. If the player moves, he must spend several seconds standing still again unpacking his equipment before he can continue hand-crafting. This solution would be annoying for the player, but it would be annoying in an understandable way, especially if an animation is being played in which the player unpacks his hand-crafting equipment and uses it afterwards. In contrast to that, the current implementation of the crafting interface is annoying in a non-understandable, frustrating way, in my opinion.

In conclusion, I agree with Twinsen that hand-crafting should be annoying (or at least cumbersome). I just think that this annoyance should be designed differently, so that it fits better with the game.