Factorio Forums

Proposal - whenever you place belt piece over different type of belt piece (e.g. red over yellow), original orientation is preserved. This way you can quickly upgrade long belt areas with all their bends and corners without tedious R-R-R-R-R, especially on counter-clockwise turns.

Another sibling issue - when you place same type of belt but rotated differently, items on that belt piece are grabbed into inventory. I consider this a bug because if you hit R on existing belt piece, items remain there.

First, I agree and like the first-upgrade-is-type idea. I would also extend it to say that you cannot place belt while in upgrade mode.

That is, if you start by clicking in open area, you're in "[re]place" mode, and can add belts wherever, including replacing existing ones. This is the current mode. However, if you start by clicking an existing belt of a different kind, you're in "upgrade" (or downgrade) mode, and are prevented from placing new belts as long as you hold the mouse button. Additionally you keep the direction of what exists already. This allows the user to be less careful when replacing belts, because they can more-or-less scribble down the new belt type.

Harkonnen604 wrote: Another sibling issue - when you place same type of belt but rotated differently, items on that belt piece are grabbed into inventory. I consider this a bug because if you hit R on existing belt piece, items remain there.

I agree that this should count as a bug and would be nice if it could be fixed -- but I'm not sure if it can be. By the game's definition of in-place replacement, the content of the replaced item should be left alone, while the entity is swapped. The problem is that a rotated belt has a differing number of "item slots" per side if it's a corner in comparison to a straight segment. This means that you could turn a belt lane with 5 items on it into one that can only fit two. I'm not sure if there's a good solution to this other than to pick up the items that don't fit.

Upgrade is a very nice idea, so you won't put stray belt piece elsewhere, this can also ease upgrading underground belts and splitters along the way - i.e. while in upgrade mode (no matter how you started it - with replacing belt, underground belt or splitter), all 3 of these get upgraded in their original orientation as you hover mouse over them if you have replacement in the inventory.

As for bent belt compression - I also thought of it, but for some reason inplace rotation by R allows bent belt to straighten with same items in place either one or the other is a bug.

As for "content should be left alone" - yeah, and it behaves like that for inserters, no matter if you switch type or rotate it by replacement or both - whatever in hand remains there (and allows simple inserter to hold a big stack if you replace stack inserter, which is a separate bug-or-not).

P.S: if devs decide that upgrade mode makes life too easy, please give us at least shift-R for CCW rotation

I dunno. When I compare how often I use an upgraded belt to change some belt-construction vs. upgrade a belt, then I need to say, the first is much more often, than the second.
I would prefer a specialized tool for that. Like https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Slayer15 ... de-planner

ssilk wrote:I dunno. When I compare how often I use an upgraded belt to change some belt-construction vs. upgrade a belt, then I need to say, the first is much more often, than the second.
I would prefer a specialized tool for that. Like https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Slayer15 ... de-planner

I ahve already out in a proposal for a tool like upgrade planner in the base game (i recently upgraded the planner to use 0.13 features), but i would also like to see it along a suite of other useful tools

ssilk wrote:I dunno. When I compare how often I use an upgraded belt to change some belt-construction vs. upgrade a belt, then I need to say, the first is much more often, than the second.
I would prefer a specialized tool for that. Like https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Slayer15 ... de-planner

Hmm.. in my games I usually just upgrade things because all splitters, underground belts and other stuff are laid out hours ago, and there is no need to rearrange it, just give it faster throughput.

Klonan wrote:I ahve already out in a proposal for a tool like upgrade planner in the base game

I had proposal some time ago about logistic network setting (via roboport) about general upgrade plans like upgrade all belts, upgrade all assembly machines (to tier3), pave everything, etc... all via bots

Harkonnen604 wrote:Hmm.. in my games I usually just upgrade things because all splitters, underground belts and other stuff are laid out hours ago, and there is no need to rearrange it, just give it faster throughput.

I don't would like Factorio to simply stupid upgrade stuff. There needs a bit more intelligence, cause things are different. Not always the best/fastest etc. entity is the best for every job, cause there is a balance to the cost of that.

Klonan wrote:I ahve already out in a proposal for a tool like upgrade planner in the base game

I had proposal some time ago about logistic network setting (via roboport) about general upgrade plans like upgrade all belts, upgrade all assembly machines (to tier3), pave everything, etc... all via bots[/quote]
That is not the same. An uncontrolled upgrade is hilarious expensive.