Update Ghost/Count in Hand When Deconstructing Buildings

[argbla]

Here's the situation as it is today:

There is a building (or two) built and you would like to move it one to the left.
You have none of that building in your inventory.
You use Q to select it before removing it. This puts a ghost in your hand, since there are none in your inventory.
You remove the building with right click while still having the ghost in hand.
You go to place the building one to the left, but you only place a ghost!
So you then clear your hand, then use Q on the ghost to select the building again, before finally being able to place it.

This happens a lot for me! Not just at the beginning of the game, it can happen whenever you run out of something.

When you want to ghost build, the norm is to hold down shift. With that being the case, it might make sense to never have a ghost item in your hand as much as a zero count of an item. You can always place ghosts with shift, and the item count will update as you get more. Having zero could be a special case that will place ghosts (it could even show the ghost icon instead of zero), or just honk at you like placing out of range does.

Probably out of scope, but after you unlock bots, the behavior of placing zero and out of range could change to automatically place ghosts. Or not, as it's arguably more consistent and straightforward to only place ghosts when shift is held.

Regardless, it's troublesome and potentially confusing for Q to get stuck in this "ghost state" rather than select items in a more consistent way.

[ickputzdirwech]

At least the first part of your suggestion us the same as 80525. I think there are good arguments for and against this suggestion. I really can’t decide if I find it good or bad

[eradicator]

I think i saw a mod or two that enables that behavior...

A quick search finds this:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/CursorEnhancements

which says in the description that it does this (did not test).

[SoShootMe]

At least the first part of your suggestion us the same as 80525. I think there are good arguments for and against this suggestion. I really can’t decide if I find it good or bad

Are there arguments other than the one in 80525 for not switching from building a ghost to placing when you change from having none of the item in hand to having at least one?

Probably out of scope, but after you unlock bots, the behavior of placing zero and out of range could change to automatically place ghosts. Or not, as it's arguably more consistent and straightforward to only place ghosts when shift is held.

The out of range part of this is the same as 90899.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/CursorEnhancements

Hmm, I'm not so sure about the other enhancements but I think "Automatic ghost transitions" would be a nice option in vanilla.

[argbla]

At least the first part of your suggestion us the same as 80525. I think there are good arguments for and against this suggestion. I really can’t decide if I find it good or bad

I'm not sure I entirely understand his point of view. Why would he have an issue with holding shift to place ghosts when he has none of an item while not having an issue with holding shift when he has the item in his inventory?