preserve manually added items in the crafting queue

[sparr]

If I queue five pipes and one pipe to ground, those five pipes get used up making the pipe to ground. I would prefer if queuing the pipe to ground would only use pipes already in my inventory, and add more pipes to the queue as necessary, rather than using pipes already in the queue.

More practically, if I start with nothing, and queue six things, I want to end up with six things.

[Sedado77]

If I queue five pipes and one pipe to ground, those five pipes get used up making the pipe to ground. I would prefer if queuing the pipe to ground would only use pipes already in my inventory, and add more pipes to the queue as necessary, rather than using pipes already in the queue.

More practically, if I start with nothing, and queue six things, I want to end up with six things.

I had the same problem at 1st, but you can solve this by 1st building the pipe to ground and then the pipes...
Make the end product 1st and then the mid-products
Once you get used to this, it no longer becomes a problem.

[sparr]

That's all well and good if you know the recipes by heart, but sometimes I forget that electronic circuits are used to make an oil refinery.

Also, that's less helpful if you aren't queuing them at the same time. Sometimes I add stuff to the end of a long queue, and having it eat up things that I queued a minute earlier is disconcerting.

[ssilk]

Then you should rethink your strategy.

How can I make my queues smaller? Wouldn't it be a great idea to have a refinery-assembly?

[Sedado77]

That's all well and good if you know the recipes by heart, but sometimes I forget that electronic circuits are used to make an oil refinery.

Also, that's less helpful if you aren't queuing them at the same time. Sometimes I add stuff to the end of a long queue, and having it eat up things that I queued a minute earlier is disconcerting.

That happens to me a lot at the start of a game, specially with the pipes -> pipe to ground and the stone furnance -> boiler... but again, it's at the begining... later on you shouldn't have the same problem

[sparr]

but again, it's at the begining... later on you shouldn't have the same problem

I keep re-playing the early game on different settings.

[AlexPhoenix]

How the game must determine or you do all items from stratch or you use smart craft?

[sparr]

How the game must determine or you do all items from stratch or you use smart craft?

Each item in the queue would have a flag for whether it was added manually or automatically. If it was added manually, then it's not eligible as a component of future things being added.

[Sedado77]

but again, it's at the begining... later on you shouldn't have the same problem

I keep re-playing the early game on different settings.

Then you played enough times to know that if you need (lets say) fast inseerters, long handed ones and regulars, you do them in THAT order, not regular inserters first and the advanced later...
AND this gives another problem... if it were like you say... let's say you need 1 electric pole. this uses 1 cable... 1 cable are made by 1/2 copper, so leaves 1 wire unused (2xcopper wire for each copper). If you do a cable for uniting 2 poles and are left with a cable in your inventory, (wich you did as final prod, not intermidiate) then if you make a (for ex) electric circuit, THAT cable woudn't be used...

Or better example yet. you have researched Adv. Electronics. You can now manufacture lvl 2 assembly machines... wich use 1 lvl1 assembly machine... But the assembly machines usualy are made as final products, so... you would have to make ANOTHER lvl1 A.M. for constructing the Lvl2, even if you are trying to replace one lvl1 with a lvl2...

so...

IMO it's okay the way it is.

EDIT: Also, if you need a fast inserter and a regular one, and HAVE a regular one... it is EXACTLY THE SAME (time and resourse-wise) to grab the regular you already have to make the fast one (1s if you have the intermidiate products) and then the regular (another 1sec with int. prods) that making the fast one from scratch (1sec again for regular and 1 sec for fast).
The downside is that if you've got looots of inserters and are trying to replace them with fast ones, you'll end up with lots of crates filled with regular inserters...