Factorio Forums

So in Terraria, another game that has a lot of crafting, you can open up a chest and craft directly from the contents of the chest. Originally I thought this could be a simple addition, but I just realized that the chest window and the crafting window are not displayed at the same time. Still, it could be an interesting way to prevent overfilling of your inventory with items you don't really need because the inserters beat you to refilling the chest

When I saw the title, I thought it might be going to suggest being able to pick up a chest full of stuff and carry it with you and construction bots treating it as part of your inventory, but with the penalty of not being able to enter vehicles or fire weapons.

Maybe have a gear icon after the limit icon in the container to have it open the crafting pane above and allow you to craft including the contents.

On the contrary of Terraria and similar games, Factorio's goal is not to craft, but to automate crafting by building a Factory. I think this kind of solution would not apply to Factorio.

It would be nice though to take just one item from a stack in a box instead of having to take the whole or half the stack.

In Factorio the to be crafted items are moved to some kind of “hidden” inventory, and when be cancelled, the items fall back to the players inventory. What should happen, in the case the items are taken from another inventory? Because the case that the danger that you can fall in a situation where you cannot access anything, because your inventory is full is much more positive.

ssilk wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:02 pm

In Factorio the to be crafted items are moved to some kind of “hidden” inventory, and when be cancelled, the items fall back to the players inventory. What should happen, in the case the items are taken from another inventory? Because the case that the danger that you can fall in a situation where you cannot access anything, because your inventory is full is much more positive.

But that's already the current situation where you begin crafting, take additional items from a container, and then cancel crafting. In the current case overflow falls on the ground, and I would expect the same if you are crafting from a container. That's just the risk of overreaching.

ssilk wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:02 pm

In Factorio the to be crafted items are moved to some kind of “hidden” inventory, and when be cancelled, the items fall back to the players inventory. What should happen, in the case the items are taken from another inventory? Because the case that the danger that you can fall in a situation where you cannot access anything, because your inventory is full is much more positive.

Some thing, I imagine, as by default. Back into my inventory, or if that fails, on the ground. Back to the original chest if kindness is felt, but that wouldn't be necessary, and of course, the same "spill to the ground" can apply there.

tehfreek wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:53 pm

ssilk wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:02 pm

In Factorio the to be crafted items are moved to some kind of “hidden” inventory, and when be cancelled, the items fall back to the players inventory. What should happen, in the case the items are taken from another inventory? Because the case that the danger that you can fall in a situation where you cannot access anything, because your inventory is full is much more positive.

But that's already the current situation where you begin crafting, take additional items from a container, and then cancel crafting. In the current case overflow falls on the ground, and I would expect the same if you are crafting from a container. That's just the risk of overreaching.

But what if you craft 10000 copper wires from a chest. Then you enter a train, drive to the other side of the world and cancel the crafting. Do the copper plates drop to the ground or magically teleport back to the chest?

mrvn wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 10:26 pm

tehfreek wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:53 pm

ssilk wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:02 pm

In Factorio the to be crafted items are moved to some kind of “hidden” inventory, and when be cancelled, the items fall back to the players inventory. What should happen, in the case the items are taken from another inventory? Because the case that the danger that you can fall in a situation where you cannot access anything, because your inventory is full is much more positive.

But that's already the current situation where you begin crafting, take additional items from a container, and then cancel crafting. In the current case overflow falls on the ground, and I would expect the same if you are crafting from a container. That's just the risk of overreaching.

But what if you craft 10000 copper wires from a chest. Then you enter a train, drive to the other side of the world and cancel the crafting. Do the copper plates drop to the ground or magically teleport back to the chest?

As I said, they fall on the ground.

tehfreek wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 10:37 pm

As I said, they fall on the ground.

A suggestion in another thread inspired me, and I think the correct answer is that if you move more than 128 tiles from your start location, and have more than 50 items, they should fall to the ground and then detonate like land mines.

That'll teach you to suspend disbelief for crafting 10,000 copper cables by hand, but refuse to do so for teleportiong invisible items.

Another way to make this whole hand crafting more realistic would be to not have a magic hidden inventory for crafting inputs at all. When you craft 100 copper cables the 200 copper plates remain in your inventory and count down as you make cables. It's your job to not use them for something else. If you run out of copper plates during crafting then it fails or pauses.

And then you could add crafting from any inventory. You could open the chest inventory and then the craft menu and start crafting. That would then use copper plates from the chest. The balance would be that you couldn't move away from the chest or the crafting would stop. Or even couldn't close the inventory without aborting the crafting.

The big drawback would be that it becomes harder to say what can still be crafted with items in the queue. But hey, you are supposed to automate stuff, not handcraft.

I generally hand craft things that I need only 1 of, so a factory would seem overkill. For example, I do not need 50 personal amors. Telling a factory to build only one of a thing gives you a similar situation XD

But only the topic of feasibility, given what other people have said I could imagine the following:

1. Completely fill your inventory with iron plates.
2. Build 10000 copper wires.
3. There is no space in your inventory, construction will pause.
4. Do this for 17 more chests.
5. Take mrvn's train.
6. Cancel construction.
7. Not only would the copper plate explosion be humongous, you've also instantaneously transported 17 full chests of copper plates. If you care to pick them all up.

I would actually be more in favour of mrvn's suggestion of being able to take one item from a stack. Preferably in such a way that the stack in your hand grows by 1 every time, so you can pick up exactly what you need (the inserter will even help you by refilling the stack). Currently that can only be done in reverse (by rightclicking an inventory with a stack in hand, I usually rightclick a stack to grab half and then spam rightclick to place the ones I don't need back one by one, hoping to beat the inserter). How exactly this should be implemented UI wise I dunno. Putting it on rightclick would make things symmetric, but we are all used to half-stacks now.

Logically since you are working with the contents of the chest a simple way to avoid runaway abuse is to only allow the "chest crafting" when the chest is open -- close the chest and it will cancel any incomplete handcrafting added since the chest was opened (put the "limbo" materials back into the chest, then inventory, then spill out as usual).

tehfreek wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 10:37 pm

mrvn wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 10:26 pm

tehfreek wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:53 pm

ssilk wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:02 pm

In Factorio the to be crafted items are moved to some kind of “hidden” inventory, and when be cancelled, the items fall back to the players inventory. What should happen, in the case the items are taken from another inventory? Because the case that the danger that you can fall in a situation where you cannot access anything, because your inventory is full is much more positive.

But that's already the current situation where you begin crafting, take additional items from a container, and then cancel crafting. In the current case overflow falls on the ground, and I would expect the same if you are crafting from a container. That's just the risk of overreaching.

But what if you craft 10000 copper wires from a chest. Then you enter a train, drive to the other side of the world and cancel the crafting. Do the copper plates drop to the ground or magically teleport back to the chest?

As I said, they fall on the ground.

That could be used as kind of cheating. Go to chest, craft something that tooks really long, goto destination, stop crafting, catch up items on ground. This is currently possible, too. But much more complicated, cause you cannot use items from external source.

Ranger_Aurelien wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 30, 2019 4:33 pm

Logically since you are working with the contents of the chest a simple way to avoid runaway abuse is to only allow the "chest crafting" when the chest is open -- close the chest and it will cancel any incomplete handcrafting added since the chest was opened (put the "limbo" materials back into the chest, then inventory, then spill out as usual).

Hm. So you can then work only in a short area around the chest. And once you go a bit too far: Crafting will be cancelled?
Really not, what I would expect.

This suggestion is just not thought through to the end yet.

ssilk wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:01 pm

tehfreek wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 25, 2019 10:37 pm

As I said, they fall on the ground.

That could be used as kind of cheating. Go to chest, craft something that tooks really long, goto destination, stop crafting, catch up items on ground. This is currently possible, too. But much more complicated, cause you cannot use items from external source.

The only "complicated" part is Ctrl-clicking on the container. And just like the belt rotate packing exploit, if you really want to go through the effort of picking up tens of thousands of items from the ground then more power to you. Me, I'll just take my car.