keep certain inventory items from being used as ingredient

[tamanous]

TL;DR

It sucks to craft copper cable all over again, because I built .. lets say electric circuits.

What ?

I'd like to have the option to mark certain items/areas of the inventory/the whole quickslotbar to be never used as ingredient for hand crafting.

I wonder why I didn't find it in the frequently suggested section. Didn't find it in fff 191, too, though "deplet{ion}" of items is mentioned.

Why ?

Whenever you handcraft, for the recipe you:
first use items that are already in your inventory and
second craft what is missing.

That finally leads to quickslot items being removed again and again. Copper cable and chests for example. I think this bugs many players (except those hunting for lazy bastard ..) and would be a truely factorio-feature, because it further automates the (hand) crafting process.

[Koub]

This has already been suggested, and the answer is : what's the point to keep your let's say copper cables in your inventory just in case of potential future use for something when they are useful now for crafting circuits ? You can always craft copper cables again later on, if you need them.
[Edit] Some previous suggestions on the subject :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6586
viewtopic.php?f=71&t=4802
And some of the links in this link collection post around handcrafting and queuing : viewtopic.php?p=79095#p79095

[tamanous]

Thank you for your time. I apologize for not finding that.

[mp0011]

However, losing all Your (useful and needed right now) pipe section just because I made some Underground Pipes is annoying and very common.
I have lot of raw plates in inventory, so UP should be crafted from it, not all my pipes - if I have it in belt or hand.

[Koub]

Thank you for your time. I apologize for not finding that.

Don"t worry, it's OK, mauybe did my post make me sound like I was upset, but I wans't

However, losing all Your (useful and needed right now) pipe section just because I made some Underground Pipes is annoying and very common.
I have lot of raw plates in inventory, so UP should be crafted from it, not all my pipes - if I have it in belt or hand.

To be honest both points of view are totally valid, and there is not one solution that makes sense where the other doesn't.
However, I think there are statistically more chances where using products from you inventory is OK for you than there are chances of it bothering you. It's just that you only happen to notice it only when you'd have prefered keeping your components for something else.

[Mendel]

Just had an idea.
Im not sure if this works or not since I cant test it right now.
But you could try putting pipes into logistics trash slot and test making underground pipes then, will the pipes be used for crafting then?
I think having similar slots that will not be touched by bots would be useful in some cases or you could maybe use them in cases where you dont have bots nearby.
I mean having special slots that will not be used for crafting.
just food for thought.

other workarounds:

1 Have pipes/copper wires/whatever in chests in many places around your factory
2 (mod needed) have a factorissimo in your inventory and have chests with pipes/copper wires/whatever) inside that factorissimo, place factorissimo down and go in to fetch items.
3 have bots deliver you pipes/copper wires/whatever as needed (duh)
4 manually always craft pipes first before crafting underground pipes
5 just dont handcraft them, automate them always and fetch them from the assembler when needed

[5thHorseman]

However, I think there are statistically more chances where using products from you inventory is OK for you than there are chances of it bothering you. It's just that you only happen to notice it only when you'd have prefered keeping your components for something else.

I can tell you that 100% of the time without exception, crafting same-tier (for belts) meta-items (items made up of items that are themselves useful, like belts and pipes), using up the item to craft the meta-item was against the ideal. I don't carry around extra belts and pipes, so the few I have are likely slated for something else. Now, it's not really a big deal to queue up 5-10 underground pipes, and then 50 regular pipes afterward. Same with belts, so it's not a problem so much as an annoyance.

Upgrading can be tricky. I frequently find as I'm upgrading yellow arms to blue, I tend to fill up on yellow arms in my inventory and am happy to use them to craft more blue arms (or, as is more frequent, dump them into a chest that feeds a blue arm factory), and same with belts. However, sometimes I *like* using the yellow arms and I'd almost never want to turn a blue into a purple. Yellow belts though I'll happily grind into red ones.

tl;dr I prefer it the way it is, with minor reservations.

[tamanous]

Thank you for your time. I apologize for not finding that.

Don"t worry, it's OK, maybe did my post make me sound like I was upset, but I wasn't

No worries, I didn't get you that way. I just searched for other keywords and after finding no results, wrote this suggestion. I could have had looked further, so my bad .

---

Thanks for your idea for the workaround, Mendel. I think putting everything in a chest and shift-click it back would work too, but that is really not the way I would like factorio to handle the crafting queue

[...]
Upgrading can be tricky. I frequently find as I'm upgrading yellow arms to blue, I tend to fill up on yellow arms in my inventory and am happy to use them to craft more blue arms (or, as is more frequent, dump them into a chest that feeds a blue arm factory), and same with belts. However, sometimes I *like* using the yellow arms and I'd almost never want to turn a blue into a purple. Yellow belts though I'll happily grind into red ones.

Yep, I often experience me wanting to use that yellows as resources for greens, but only because I crafted/requested many more than I would possibly use, just to speed up the queue. Neverever did I want my quickslot items to disappear from quickslot.

[Roxor128]

How about being able to set a filter on a particular inventory slot so that the item count in that slot can only change via manual intervention.

Nothing goes in or out of that slot without you specifically doing inventory management on it.

[ssilk]

I found this mods useful:
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/kij336/autocraft
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/binbinhfr/HotCraft
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Qon/HandyHands