Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Would be great to see more context aware hints integrated into the mouse cursor

What ?

This is already done for placing ghosts when holding the SHIFT key and holding some building actively in the hand -> A little "ghost" appears as a hint in the cursor.
However it would be nice to have similar mouse cursor hints for:
- Active Deconstruction planner + holding SHIFT key -> "minus" symbol indicating that now you have negated and will remove the deconstricion planning
- Having the mouse cursor above the Inventory/Chest panel + holding SHIFT key -> indicate that you will move ONE stack
- Having the mouse cursor above the Inventory/Chest panel + holding CTRL key -> indicate that you will move ALL items of the same type
- Having the mouse cursor above the Inventory/Crafting panel + holding SHIFT key -> indicate that you will craft ALL
- Having the mouse cursor above the Inventory/Crafting panel + holding CTRL key -> it would be good to have that "craft 5" with CTRL instead of right click

Why ?

SHIFT and CTRL keys do different things in different contexts. As a new player I find it hard to learn what does what and when.
It causes lots of frustration to not know what the holding down of a modifier key will do after I left click.

This is a real simple thing that would actually make a good bit of sense. As a new player, remembering what all of the different modifier keys do can be difficult "Okay... is is ctrl or shift to move a stack? Damn. Nope, that moved everything." and I expect having the hints on the cursor would increase discoverability immensely.

Wow, this is a great idea for new players. +1

I think I have just managed to mix up SHIFT and CTRL in the description again... CTRL moves all and SHIFT is one stack anyway, you get the point.