TL;DR
The "visualize entity fluid pipelines" hotkey should attempt to run only for entities that have a "visualize pipelines" button in their UI.What?
Currently, the "visualize entity fluid pipelines" hotkey attempts to run when not just when used on pipes/underground pipes/storage tanks, but on any entity with a fluidbox. This includes: fluid pumps; chemical plants and refineries (always); and assembling machines, foundries, electromagnetic plants, biochambers, and cryo plants (only when set to a recipe that uses fluids). However, it does nothing when used on those entities. It just prevents any other hotkey from executing.This means that if I set the "visualize entity fluid pipelines" hotkey to, for example, Shift + Left-click, it conflicts with the "paste entity settings" hotkey which is also set to Shift + Left-click by default, preventing me from copy-pasting entity settings for no reason. Shift + Left-click already has other contextual hotkeys defined for it by default, such as the "remove pole cables", "add train stop", and "place a tag in chat" functions. So it seems like an intuitive choice for that hotkey as well.
The obvious solution to this issue is to have the hotkey activate only on entities that have a "visualize pipelines" button in their UI, since the hotkey is explicitly described in the tooltip as an equivalent to that button.
Why?
Since the "Visualize entity fluid pipelines" hotkey is replacing a functionality that in 2.0 required no hotkey to use, being able to set it to a convenient key combination is important. And all the existing convenient key combinations already have at least one (if not several) functionalities defined for them, so stopping the hotkey from unnecessarily conflicting with other hotkeys is significant.Additionally, the fact that the hotkey attempts to run at all when used on entities other than pipes/underground pipes/storage tanks leads to confusing behavior, since whether or not it blocks other hotkeys from activating on a given assembling machine depends on the type of machine and what recipe it's set to.
- Factorio_ Space Age 2.1.14 2026-08-22 16_49_49.png (83.61 KiB) Viewed 151 times