Factorio Forums

TL;DR

An option to switch off hand crafting for specific items would be great.

What ?

WHAT do you suggest?
For example, I have a production for yellow belts, which I want to use to create red belts. But when I hand craft some red belts, it consumes either the yellow belts I have with me or crafts them on the fly (if I have the ingredients). I created the yellow belt assembly machine to use that items for crafting red belts, so I don't want to waste my iron plates or whatever is required for yellow belts.

Idea would be to mouse over an Item in your inventory crafting part (the right side of the inventory) and press a hotkey (alternative, you can use 3rd mouse button to set blocking on/off). A red led in the corner of that Items (or a red frame around the item) indicates that it is blocked for hand crafting.

Why ?

WHY do you think it increases the value of Factorio as a game?
I like the challange, to build a assembly machine for everything relevant, but I don't want to be forced all the time to go for an assembly machine. Above idea, would allow me to configure it to my needs and is flexible, so I can switch it on/off at any time. It gives me a better control over the items in my inventory and how they are used.

What do you think?

Greetings,
Chridder

I've seen others share this same idea, but it seems to complicate the game even more. After having just successfully done a Lazy Bastard run, I better appreciate the value of automating supplies and having them go into chests. If you want to craft something that requires yellow belts but don't want it to use the belts in your inventory, you should plan accordingly and either have more yellow belts on hand or go get some more from your automated supply chest.

I usually click on the red belts. Then in the build queue I click on the yellow belts to remove any that can't be build with existing belts. And then I go and pick up yellow belts if there aren't enough red belts being build (or build them from scratch if it's to far to walk).

Running around all the time can get frustrating, but sometimes in games we need to struggle at the beginning to truly appreciate the progress later.

I'm not sure if it'd be justified to include this into basic hotkeys or interface, but I fully support this feature being available to those who'd want it - like in basic gameplay options, bindable hotkey to toggle .etc

Alternatively it could be a world setting - ie only tech up to tier 1 automation can be crafted by hand, the rest is assembler only.... but basically I can see the appeal of these options, and its inclusion does not appear to be a potential detriment to the game.

Factory Lobster wrote:I've seen others share this same idea, but it seems to complicate the game even more. After having just successfully done a Lazy Bastard run, I better appreciate the value of automating supplies and having them go into chests. If you want to craft something that requires yellow belts but don't want it to use the belts in your inventory, you should plan accordingly and either have more yellow belts on hand or go get some more from your automated supply chest.

To be honest I don't see exactly, why it complicates the game (from a player perspective) more. From my point of view, the feature would force me to plan my factory better and make more use of automation, but on a voluntary base. I can decide myself, how strict I want to play this, by switching specific receipts off for hand crafting. I want to be able to hand craft yellow belts in the beginning, until I have my automation for yellow belts ready, but then, I want to make sure, that I make use of the automation. So, when then hand crafting red belts, it should not automatically hand craft yellow belts before. Same then later on when I go for blue belts.

mrvn wrote:I usually click on the red belts. Then in the build queue I click on the yellow belts to remove any that can't be build with existing belts. And then I go and pick up yellow belts if there aren't enough red belts being build (or build them from scratch if it's to far to walk).

That's a workaround for what I suggested. Normally I am too slow to cancel the queue or not looking at it as I currently doing something else. Having that setting, would allow me to hand craft exactly the way I want, without cancelling the queue.

Factory Lobster wrote:Running around all the time can get frustrating, but sometimes in games we need to struggle at the beginning to truly appreciate the progress later.

This is an argument that I can not invalidate

Ripshaft wrote:I'm not sure if it'd be justified to include this into basic hotkeys or interface, but I fully support this feature being available to those who'd want it - like in basic gameplay options, bindable hotkey to toggle .etc

Alternatively it could be a world setting - ie only tech up to tier 1 automation can be crafted by hand, the rest is assembler only.... but basically I can see the appeal of these options, and its inclusion does not appear to be a potential detriment to the game.

I think it is not a good idea to make it a global setting as proposed by you "ie only tech up to tier 1 automation can be crafted by hand".

For example, I never create a assembly machine for oil refinery or rocket base, as I only need a few of them, so I hand craft them usually... but this is higher level.
I also normally hand craft mining machines as long as I don't need it as ingredients for something (I think it is now part of one of the science packs), which migh be low level.

So, I think there is no one setting, that fits all styles of game play.

I also find it anyoing that when I build red belts, because I know I will need them soon, all my yellow belts are taken away. So then I'm standing around waiting for more yellow belts to be build.

So I would like to extend this suggestion to also go the other way: Force crafting from raw materials.

So each item would have 3 settings: Use when available (default), force use, never use.

Alternatively it could be nice to have a hotkey to build as many of an item as can be crafted without crafting something else first.

mrvn wrote:I also find it anyoing that when I build red belts, because I know I will need them soon, all my yellow belts are taken away. So then I'm standing around waiting for more yellow belts to be build.

So I would like to extend this suggestion to also go the other way: Force crafting from raw materials.

So each item would have 3 settings: Use when available (default), force use, never use.

Alternatively it could be nice to have a hotkey to build as many of an item as can be crafted without crafting something else first.

You are right, also that happens quite often to me.
I like your idea of that three options.

Try my small mod "HandyHands", it's linked in my signature. Doesn't do exactly what you request, but I would say it's a superior solution to your problem.

Qon wrote:Try my small mod "HandyHands", it's linked in my signature. Doesn't do exactly what you request, but I would say it's a superior solution to your problem.

While that mod is nice and can save a lot of time it would make it worse. Now all the yellow belts, iron gears and iron plates automatically disappear because I'm placing red belts. You don't even get the choice of not building red belts for the time being. I would say that mod makes this suggestion even more pressing.

mrvn wrote:

Qon wrote:Try my small mod "HandyHands", it's linked in my signature. Doesn't do exactly what you request, but I would say it's a superior solution to your problem.

While that mod is nice and can save a lot of time it would make it worse. Now all the yellow belts, iron gears and iron plates automatically disappear because I'm placing red belts. You don't even get the choice of not building red belts for the time being. I would say that mod makes this suggestion even more pressing.

You can autocraft yellow belts as well. While placing red belts you might run out for a short while (what you have in your hand is given priority #1), but immediatly after removing red belt from your hand HH will craft new ones since priority is given to items that are in low supply. When both red belts and yellow belts are needed it will make sure you have both in your inventory (if you have autocrafting of yellows on also).

So while it doesn't eliminate the problem completely, it will not drain all your yellows to craft red ones except possibly while placing red ones. Maybe I should make sure it never completely uses up all the ingredients if those are also autocrafted, so you have at least a few yellows all the time?

Qon wrote:

mrvn wrote:

Qon wrote:Try my small mod "HandyHands", it's linked in my signature. Doesn't do exactly what you request, but I would say it's a superior solution to your problem.

While that mod is nice and can save a lot of time it would make it worse. Now all the yellow belts, iron gears and iron plates automatically disappear because I'm placing red belts. You don't even get the choice of not building red belts for the time being. I would say that mod makes this suggestion even more pressing.

You can autocraft yellow belts as well. While placing red belts you might run out for a short while (what you have in your hand is given priority #1), but immediatly after removing red belt from your hand HH will craft new ones since priority is given to items that are in low supply. When both red belts and yellow belts are needed it will make sure you have both in your inventory (if you have autocrafting of yellows on also).

So while it doesn't eliminate the problem completely, it will not drain all your yellows to craft red ones except possibly while placing red ones. Maybe I should make sure it never completely uses up all the ingredients if those are also autocrafted, so you have at least a few yellows all the time?

Yes, you should. Maybe keep the same number of stacks (with fractions) of each item. So if you have 50 yellow belts and 50 red belts they are balanced. And if you have 4 train cars then next you would build a 5th train car because that is the least number of stacks. Or instead of stacks use the fraction of the targeted amount, probably better.

The above idea should interact nicely with your mod. E.g. you auto build red belts. But only if you have yellow belts and iron gear wheels, not from iron plates. If have assembler for both of those you want to collect from them instead of wasting time building yellow belts and iron gears by hand.

mrvn wrote:Yes, you should. Maybe keep the same number of stacks (with fractions) of each item. So if you have 50 yellow belts and 50 red belts they are balanced. And if you have 4 train cars then next you would build a 5th train car because that is the least number of stacks. Or instead of stacks use the fraction of the targeted amount, probably better.

That is how it currently works, just that the thing you hold in your hand currently is prioritised extra high. I could reduce the amount things in your hand are prioritised a bit though. So if you have yellow and red belts autocrafted and your hand is empty, it will already act similar to red belts not being allowed to to consume the yellows.

mrvn wrote: The above idea should interact nicely with your mod. E.g. you auto build red belts. But only if you have yellow belts and iron gear wheels, not from iron plates. If have assembler for both of those you want to collect from them instead of wasting time building yellow belts and iron gears by hand.

You aren't really wasting time building gears and yellow belts though. HandyHands activates autocrafting when your crafting queue is empty, when you otherwise would not be crafting anything. So it doesn't interfere with regular hand crafting.

It's hard to imagine playing the early game without HandyHands for me. It makes the early game much more enjoyable without introducing any actual cheats, it just starts crafting items automatically. But the effect on gameplay tediousness is huge. I guess you have to try it to really understand how it improves the early game.

But when you are out of yellow belts for the red belts you should rather build the pump jacks, steel furnaces and chemical plants than build iron gears and yellow belts.

Obviously if you are idle then building anything is a plus. But if you have to pick something to build this could make the difference between waiting 10 minutes or 1 minute for your inventory to be ready for the next step.

mrvn wrote:But when you are out of yellow belts for the red belts you should rather build the pump jacks, steel furnaces and chemical plants than build iron gears and yellow belts.

Obviously if you are idle then building anything is a plus. But if you have to pick something to build this could make the difference between waiting 10 minutes or 1 minute for your inventory to be ready for the next step.

You can't say that categorically. It depends on what you need to build most in the immediate future. And as soon as you have more yellow and red belts (% wise compared to requested autocraft amount) than the chem plants and pump jacks and stuff, those will be built instead. You don't have to wait 10 minutes. If all are 0 then it will build them all in equal amounts. It doesn't build only red and yellow belts if you have set autocrafting on for other things.

The mod can't predict the future (yet), but it assumes that whatever you hold in your hand is something that you are likely going to plonk down soon. So that thing gets higher priority. It's only flaw is that it prioritises the item in hand slightly too much. Just try the mod. It does everything perfectly, better than you can imagine. I'm a genius so I designed the mod without flaws. All your issues are already solved. Kind of.

Just.. try it.....

Qon wrote:

mrvn wrote:But when you are out of yellow belts for the red belts you should rather build the pump jacks, steel furnaces and chemical plants than build iron gears and yellow belts.

Obviously if you are idle then building anything is a plus. But if you have to pick something to build this could make the difference between waiting 10 minutes or 1 minute for your inventory to be ready for the next step.

You can't say that categorically. It depends on what you need to build most in the immediate future. And as soon as you have more yellow and red belts (% wise compared to requested autocraft amount) than the chem plants and pump jacks and stuff, those will be built instead. You don't have to wait 10 minutes. If all are 0 then it will build them all in equal amounts. It doesn't build only red and yellow belts if you have set autocrafting on for other things.

The mod can't predict the future (yet), but it assumes that whatever you hold in your hand is something that you are likely going to plonk down soon. So that thing gets higher priority. It's only flaw is that it prioritises the item in hand slightly too much. Just try the mod. It does everything perfectly, better than you can imagine. I'm a genius so I designed the mod without flaws. All your issues are already solved. Kind of.

Just.. try it.....

You still don't seem to get it. The scenario is like this: You already have an assembler that produces iron gear wheels and yellow belts. So with the above suggestion you tell the game that you don't want to build them by hand anymore. Then your mod doesn't have to predict anything. It knows not to build yellow belts, even indirectly to make red belts. It can prioritize e.g. pump jacks even if % wise red belts would be a priority. While those pump jacks are building you would walk back to the assembler, pick up 1000 yellow belt and then more red belts can be build.

mrvn wrote:You still don't seem to get it. The scenario is like this: You already have an assembler that produces iron gear wheels and yellow belts. So with the above suggestion you tell the game that you don't want to build them by hand anymore. Then your mod doesn't have to predict anything. It knows not to build yellow belts, even indirectly to make red belts. It can prioritize e.g. pump jacks even if % wise red belts would be a priority. While those pump jacks are building you would walk back to the assembler, pick up 1000 yellow belt and then more red belts can be build.

Yeah I guess I don't. I don't really get why you would not want to be able to craft belts? I thought I had an idea before but now that I've thought about it more it makes less and less sense. In my defence I've read the OP many times now and it's still not clear what OP wants. It's a fairly qonfusing post. "An option to switch off hand crafting for specific items would be great." That... is the idea? It seems so useless that it has to be more to it. No? And then the why is "I like the challange, to build a assembly machine for everything relevant, but I don't want to be forced all the time to go for an assembly machine". If you can just toggle it on/off then what does it accomplish and how does it help you with this goal?

Before I thought that the point was to not use up yellow belts when crafting red ones. So the yellow ones in your inventory stays there and when you craft red belts the prerequisites are crafted as if they were missing from your inventory. Now I understand that it's supposed to do.. the opposite?

But if you don't want to hand craft something then... just don't? What is the point of the suggestion really? The hand crafting block is entirely self imposed since you can just lift it at any time. All it does is prevent you from accidentally crafting a couple of yellow belts, that you can just cancel the crafting of and go pick up new ones if you prefer.

All you have to do is to pick up the yellow belts to stop handcrafting them. And if you are using HH then don't have autocrafting of yellows on ofc. I'm not going to change my mod to support this suggestion.

Qon wrote:Before I thought that the point was to not use up yellow belts when crafting red ones. So the yellow ones in your inventory stays there and when you craft red belts the prerequisites are crafted as if they were missing from your inventory. Now I understand that it's supposed to do.. the opposite?

That was my extension to the suggestion.

Qon wrote: But if you don't want to hand craft something then... just don't? What is the point of the suggestion really? The hand crafting block is entirely self imposed since you can just lift it at any time. All it does is prevent you from accidentally crafting a couple of yellow belts, that you can just cancel the crafting of and go pick up new ones if you prefer.

All you have to do is to pick up the yellow belts to stop handcrafting them. And if you are using HH then don't have autocrafting of yellows on ofc. I'm not going to change my mod to support this suggestion.

Yes, the point is to prevent accidentally crafting a couple of yellow belts. Sure you can cancel the crafting. But by that time you will already have crafted a couple. So you used up iron plates and iron gears. No big deal with yellow belts. Well, now you do the same with circuit boards and you are left with copper wires and no copper plates. So you need to go fetch some new copper plates and have useless copper wires in your inventory. And then you get some wooden beams, some steel bearings and some titanium bearings and some steel gear wheels and and and. All those intermediate products you "can just cancel" clutter up your inventory.

It would be nicer if one could shift click on red belts and only build as many as can be build without building yellow belts first.

mrvn wrote: Well, now you do the same with circuit boards and you are left with copper wires and no copper plates.

If you are left with no copper plates then you had 1 or 2 before? If losing 1 copper is 100% of your carry stock then the problem isn't accidental crafting once a month.
Just craft one more green circuit and to get rid of the wire. Or have it on your auto trash list.

mrvn wrote:And then you get some wooden beams, some steel bearings and some titanium bearings and some steel gear wheels and and and.

Not vanilla. In vanilla it's basically only copper cables that can be left over from an accidental craft. If mods introduce annoyances then it's not really the factorio devs responsibility to fix it.

mrvn wrote:It would be nicer if one could shift click on red belts and only build as many as can be build without building yellow belts first.

Or just plonk down a single red belt assembler where your yellow belts are crafted? What's the point of hand crafting red belts if you want to completely avoid crafting yellow belts? It makes no sense to me.

Qon wrote:What is the point of the suggestion really?

Sorry again, that it is not so easy for me, to explain my suggestion well. As I am not a native english speaker I struggle sometimes and might write something down that confuse people. Sorry for that.

1. Point
Let's stay with the yellow belt / red belt example.
When I work in an outpost for example, upgrade here and there some assembly machines, upgrade yellow to red belt, etc... I might collect some yellow belts from the upgrade.
I like to reuse them to produce some additional red belts, so that I can upgrade a bit more. Fine so far.

But I also have some iron plates with me, to build some other things like assembly machines, if I need some. I don't want to spent my iron plates for yellow belts, just because I have overseen, that I have not enough yellow belts in inventory. So instead, I rather would like to run back to my main base to pick up some red belts, which I produce there and have more than enough and use the time while running to build the assembly machines, which I have not automated.

Thats just one example. When building up a new factory part, I run quite often in such situations. And then, I have to return to main base, have to collect new iron plates from my main bus, have to run to the chest where my red belts are, have to grap some gears somewhere and so on. Just because I accidently spent all iron plates and gears for yellow belts. Otherwise I would only need to pick up red belts.

2. Point
As I said in OP, I like to hand craft latest techs until I have the automation for them in place. Or for some rare things I might never go for automation (for example nuclear power plant).
But I want to make sure, that I have automated the materials to craft a nuclear power plant.

3. Point
I have 50 burning furnaces in a chest, as I replaced them with electric furnaces.
But you need burner furnaces to craft steam boiler. So, before I hand craft new bruner furnaces, I want to use them from the chest.
So, blocking them to be hand crafted reminds me to pick up the 50 from the chest.

But that brings me to another point. the recipe previe should also show that I could hand craft the burner furnace, but that I have blocked it.

I hope that explanation makes the suggestion a bit more clear?!