Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Make quicker the process of specifying direction of a device (belt, inserter) when placing it.

What ?

Currently when I place a belt or an inserter, in the worst case I have to press 'R' 3 times before placing, to rotate it into the correct position.
And each time I press R I have to visually control, is it enough or not, because the starting (default) rotation can be different and the target (required) rotation too.
So it is not intuitive to expect how many times I must press 'R'.

I would like to have a way to do it quicker, with e.g. a mouse gesture.
Possibilities:

• A special key toggles a mode when mouse movement after placing defines the direction.
  E.g. the key is 'Control'. I press and hold Control, place the object and without unpressing the Control or mouse button move the mouse up. Then the object is placed facing upwards.
• Pressing a movement key while placing the object and holding left mouse button defines it's direction.
  I.e. I place the inserter and still holding left mouse button - press W. Then the inserter is placed facing upwards.
• A special mode, toggled by a key, when gragging mouse when placing the item does not place multiple items in one predefined rotation, but places them in rotation which follows the mouse movement. I.e. when I place belts and hold left mouse button, I can draw a rectangle on the ground, and the belts will be placed rotated correctly to make a loop.

Why ?

Such a feature will make pre-blueprint building easier and quicker. Currently for me the constant rotating of belts and inserters is the most annoying thing in the game. Only my stupidity in inventing factory layouts is more annoying

Comment

And thanks for the game!

You know you can press shift-R?

ssilk wrote:You know you can press shift-R?

That's still two clicks to reverse direction as opposed to a click-drag for direction. Like this idea though it may be odd to integrate with something like a train loader with a row of insterters.

ssilk wrote:You know you can press shift-R?

Yes, starting 0.15 afaik, right?

But it even complicates the thinking. Now I need to think which rotation direction (R or Shift+R) should I start using to reach the desired rotation with the minimal number of rotations.

A different, more abstract approach to the "problem":
I always know the final device direction, i.e. the device orientation I want to get in the end. "Up"/"down"/"left"/"right".
Why should I need to force my brain each time to make calculations how I should reach that target rotation from the current rotation? Like "left-R-R" instead of "right", or "up-R-R-R-ohWaitScrapThis-Shift+R" instead of "left".
Why not specify just the desired rotation instead of the steps from the initial and final ones?

Shokubai wrote: ... it may be odd to integrate with something like a train loader with a row of insterters.

The new functionality should not spoil the existing behaviour shown in this example.
Sometimes it is needed to place rows of devices having one orientation, like in the train loader,
sometimes - to quickly place multiple devices in different orientations, e.g. when routing liquids between nearby dependable assembly machines, or when several assembly machines coop and pass items to each other, or when doing a complicated belt routing junction.