Escape Key functionality and "clear item from hand"

[JareX]

I have a lot of frustration while trying to do some thing in factorio:

1) I have an item in my hand but I dont want to place it.
- If I left click I place it
- If I right click I will try to mine ore or nothing will happen
- If I press escape the option menu comes up, and when returning to the game I'm still holding the item.
- I'm forced to place the item in my invetory to "clear" it from my hand
2) I have a blueprint in my hand
- If I left click I place it
- If I right click I will try to mine ore or nothing will happen
- If I press escape the option menu comes up, and when returning to the game I'm still holding the item.
- I'm forced to place the blue print in the game or in my inventory to "clear" it from my hand

3) I press ctrl+c but changed my mind and don't want to copy anything
- If I left click nothing happens and the copy cursor is still there
- If I right click nothing happens and the copy cursor is still there
- If I press escape the option menu comes up, and when returning to the game the copy cursor is still there
- I'm force to copy something and THEN cancel it somehow.


I accidentaly found mashing key in frustration that the "Q" key actually does what I want. It clears what I have in my hand. but that doesnt make sense at all.

Please make the escape key clear anything from my hand and clear any copy or paste function. Only then open the main menu.

thanks.

[MiniHerc]

I wish more people bothered to check the controls / keybinds before playing a new game. There's a lot of important stuff in there...

[JareX]

I know, but I have 350 hours of gameplay and just recently discovered that.

What about new players? how are they suposed to know?

Q makes sense only to experienced players of factorio.

[bobucles]

Escape is the universal "I'm mad and can't find the cancel" button.

[Darinth]

I wish more people bothered to check the controls / keybinds before playing a new game. There's a lot of important stuff in there...

To be real blunt saying 'go check your keybinds noob', which is exactly what you just said, isn't helpful. This is a recurring problem and one that I think that this point should probably have some tweak to the game fnuctionality. You can't change people, but the game can be adjusted.

If this particular hotkey isn't in the NPE, it should get added in somewhere. If Wube doesn't want to add the escape key as a alternative to the q key, add a notification that pops up when they hit escape with something on their cursor. 'Hey, you have something on your cursor. Did you know you can hit the 'q' key to drop it or cancel your action?' Obviously there should be a key that does this, but like most people I by default went to the escape key as well. It wasn't until I was looking at the forums and stumbled upon this that I realized I'd missed or forgotten a keybind. I even went through them at one point, but simply didn't remember or notice that the q key was a really useful thing. It took me a week just to adjust to the idea that q would get stuff off my cursor.

[Tekky]

I have nearly 2000 hours of Factorio playing time and even I recently also once tried to press ESC to clear the hand. It took me about 5 or 10 seconds to realize that I had to press the Q button instead.

I am sure that a newbie would have had a much harder time to realize his mistake.