Hotbar/belt changes: Just Hotlinks, no items itself

[BurnHard]

I am sorry if this has been discussed already, I haven't found a thread.

I think it would be a good change, to let the belt/hotbar just hold shortcuts to the items in the packpack, not contain the items itself. This would have some advantages:

No more forgotten items, at the moment i ALWAYS have to double check, when i eg need a splitter(do I have one in the shotcut? no-- Do I have one in the inventory? no--- Check second belt? ah yes. . After the change, regardless even if I keep the most important items in my hotbar, I would always find them also in my inventory). This would fix some sorting/space problems (eg 10 transport belts in hotbar, next time i use full stack of transport belts in the backpack, use 50 of them) now i have two nearly empty stacks, that wont merge and keep it difficult to track.

Maybe a bad example, but I would like it to work the way like usable items in some MMOs, like Lotro or WoW. You place the health potion in the hotbar, it shows the the total numbers of that item in your inventory, you can use it. When they go empty, it just greys out (just like when you save the item to a slot position now). and when you refill the item in your inventory the link is active again. The numbers in the link are summed up (eg two and a half stack of fast belt in inventory: Link shows 140, you don't have to count all things manually!)

[ssilk]

Totally agree.

This situation comes more and more: biters eat parts of my steam engines. My whole factory has no power anymore. I need to hurry. Create pipes, underground pipes etc. then want to place it. This is really difficult, because of this 3 places where it can be. I remember an earlier game, where I created 128 pipes, before I saw, that they are in the belt.

I won't be annoying, but I repeat that the whole handling with the keys, different hotbars, and sometimes need to press the key, sometime it selects; the items are never, where I want them, even if I fix their positions, when I forgot to press q and so on, the whole handling is just more and more unusable. Currently I mainly don't use the hotbar, only transport belts, inserters and poles. The rest is unused and I wish, that we would have also stack-limitations for them, because I never see how much I really have.

Well, it's alpha. I think this should be completely reworked in some months.

[TGS]

I think this is kind of a flavor change, but definitely should be an option at least. Personally if it became an issue for me I'd simply setup a common 'bar' of things I do/use then lock that item to the bar. So only those items can go in the bar. It's not a optimal solution, but it would work for the interim?

[Avarant]

Would personally love this change. Gets annoying managing items hidden in my other hotbars

Hopefully it would come with a compensatory inventory increase.

[Chrille]

I don't hate that items are actually held in mousepointer and hotbar. But it get's quite frustrating with the two belts and how a lot of items seem to jump around.
There have been so many times that I'd gone "WTF!? Why is there a steam engine in my hotbar!? I haven't used them in hours!" and similar. They just move around way too much.

If you use Item 1 in hotbar and hten change to item 2 with keypresses. (For example when building belts or trains and want to switch between items often) it just doesn't feel intuitive that they would change place! I expect 1 to stay as 1.
Yes I know this can be almost fixed by locking the item with middle mouse press, but that just gives you the annoying error of not being able to move the items and you have to press 'q' in between anyway.

In short:
+1 (i.e I support this change)

[Coolthulhu]

Bumping, the idea is too good to rot in the depths of page 9000.

Also, suggestion that would work nicely with it:
Ability to make custom hotbars with modules already inserted, configurations set, requests remembered etc.
For example, a smart inserter that upon placement is configured to only work if <5 wood on red wire.