Factorio Forums

The main reason is to make it intuitive to build pipes adjacent to eachother without them autoconnecting. This is annoying because it forces a lot of empty space between pipes (or a lot of underground pipes because they dont autoconnect). I've seen that topic before, but the discussions were old and my suggestion different enough that I thought it'd be better to make a new topic.

Procedure is like rails. If you place your cursor over empty squares and start dragging, the pipes autoconnect to everything adjacent. However if you click while hovering over something connectible to pipes (refinery output, offshore pump, another pipe, etc) it will create a multi-pipe building segment to put down like the new rail building mode. This segment will not connect to anything except other pipes it passes through.

Should also enable building pipes, that don't connect.

Same for belts. Automatically building of underground belts.

Poles. Walls...