Reorder crafting

[leo_battle]

Sometimes you are crafting at item that takes a long time to craft (like a module or a robot frame) and then you run out of something. You have to cancel the module to craft the other items; losing all progress on the module.

What I propose is for the player to be able to hold down LMB on currently crafting items to change the order of what is being crafted. This would also save "progress" towards crafting. There could also be a button you can press as you click to craft an item to add it to the front of the crafting queue.

[Rseding91]

We've talked about different versions of improving the manual crafting but have specifically decided against it because it goes against the main goal of the game: to automate things.

Just don't hand craft things that take a lot of time and you never need to re-arrange things you're hand crafting (because you don't need to hand craft anymore).

[Tekky]

I also find it very annoying that I must cancel my entire crafting queue whenever I notice that I urgently need to craft one small item.

This thread is not the first time that a "queue to front" feature has been suggested. In the following threads, it has been suggested before:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=62338 Double ended crafting queue
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=49361 Rearrange hand craft queue - QOL
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41594 Ctrl+click to add to front of craft queue

The fact that a "queue to front" feature has been suggested so many times demonstrates we are not the only players who find this annoying.

This suggestion has been repeatedly declined by the Factorio developers. In this post, Factorio developer Twinsen states that the hand-crafting interface is supposed to be annoying, because they don't want to make hand-crafting too powerful. They want people to automate instead.

I fully agree with Twinsen that hand-crafting should not be made too powerful, because the goal of the game is automation. However, discouraging hand-crafting by deliberately having an annoying inflexible interface (i.e. an interface without a "queue to front" feature) does not seem the right thing to do. In my opinion, there are better ways to discourage hand-crafting. For example, in this thread, I proposed that the user should be required to be stationary in order to hand-craft.

In other words, I fully agree with Twinsen that hand-crafting should be annoying, because the goal of the game is automation. I just disagree with Twinsen about how hand-crafting should be annoying. Instead of making the interface annoying, the game should make hand-crafting annoying in a way that fits better with the game.

[Rseding91]

I'll give my same answer as the other time

What if we remove the part where the hand-crafting makes prerequisites?

[eradicator]

What if we remove the part where the hand-crafting makes prerequisites?

When you start making the game crappy on purpose i'm out :p. Especially with complicated mods you can't get rid of the occasional handcraft. Some mods use handcrafting as a "stone age" stage to give a greater feeling of accomplishment when you finally reach automation. Even in base game automation is locked behind research. And removing automated prerequisites would mean more time wasted on boring inventory management. Sometimes it's also better to carry a few stacks of material (plates, chips) when the alternative is carrying a huge variety of different products. E.g. i almost always craft filter inserters in hand, because i don't want to waste inventory slots just because i might need 1 or 2 of them later. (*sigh* end of rage. I can only hope you weren't serious about that.)

What if all new handcraftings were added to the queue front instead of the back? You still don't get manual control over the crafting order, but can make a quick inserter while handcrafting those pesky circuits (looking at you pyanodon), supporting a wider variety of modded gameplay. If you want to truly discourage handcrafting i think it'd be better to make it slower (counter-intuitively hand crafting is currently faster than assembling machine 2, machines should always be faster), or reduce walking speed, instead of making it "annoying" on purpose. I.e. use game mechanics for discouragement, not interface mechanics.

[dog80]

1 thing that would help is the option to "cancel ALL handcrafting" - because often you queue up quite some things ... then you find out "shit i need that thing right now" -- then you stop all things - craft that - and then return to normal order

[<NO_NAME>]

I agree that using crappy interface as a game mechanic is always a bad idea, regardless of you excuses.
It's like trying to increase difficulty of a platformer game by making controls glitchy and unreliable.

[EstebanLB]

Sometimes you are crafting at item that takes a long time to craft (like a module or a robot frame) and then you run out of something. You have to cancel the module to craft the other items; losing all progress on the module.

What I propose is for the player to be able to hold down LMB on currently crafting items to change the order of what is being crafted. This would also save "progress" towards crafting. There could also be a button you can press as you click to craft an item to add it to the front of the crafting queue.

Sorry for necroing, but I had to add: If you reach long handcrafting queues, then you do not understand Factorio

[Tekky]

Sorry for necroing, but I had to add: If you reach long handcrafting queues, then you do not understand Factorio

That's why I proposed in one of the many threads on this topic that having a long handcrafting queue should trigger a mini-tutorial about automation, so that a newbie player is made aware that he may be playing the game wrongly.

However, even advanced players (such as myself with nearly 2000 hours of play time) sometimes have long handcrafting queues. It is very annoying to have to empty your entire crafting queue whenever you need a single item urgently. This problem could easily be solved with a "queue to front" feature.