Roll back feature: "When dragging belts, going forward and back will remove the extra belts built."

[AntiElitz]

Detailed Video:
https://youtu.be/dkbov1ZiaOk

Summary:

I think the new belt feature where dragging forward and backward removes existing belts is a bad change. It does the opposite of what you want in practice and causes a lot of problems.

Case 1: Over-dragging
Most of the time you actually want to over-drag. If you run out of belts, grab more, and keep building, you usually start dragging at max range so it connects smoothly before reversing. Before that worked fine, now it can just remove the belt instead.

Case 2: Precision
Before you could drag into splitters or belts quickly without worrying. Now you have to time the release exactly on the right tile. If you build fast you end up moving belts by accident all the time.

Case 3: Side-loading
Side-loading used to be simple: drag forward, back a bit, then forward again. Now it often doesn’t work at all and blueprints behave weird.

General
This feature just adds edge cases and breaks things. Smart belt was already complicated and buggy, and now it’s worse. There are so many small bugs with this that I don’t even feel like reporting them anymore. I’d rather have the old behavior back and working properly than this.

[thedoh]

In my opinion, I don't think the constructive act (i.e., dragging belt) should be the same act to deconstruct belt. Further, if I am dragging belt to build, why would I want to ever use the belt-dragging process to undo what I've done? We already have the ability to mine belt to remove it, as well as "undo" options to have bots do it for us. For me personally, this feature delivers negative value to me, and I don't care for it.

[Speedyquader]

+1 to this thread, please don't implement this change on the stable branch, it makes little sense and is incredibly unintuitive.

[Quezler]

+1, it was only recently pointed out to me which version added this and the few times i did run into the behavior it always had an undesirable outcome, i would imagine there will be even more voices against it once the next stable version drops, it would be very nice if it was possible to opt out of just this part of smart belt behavior.

[RedRafe]

+1, when dragging parallel belts it often deletes and disconnects sections of the belt if I accidentally keep the cursor pressed or if I'm not super precise with motion. Preferred previous versions without this feature.

[ikarikeiji]

I haven't tried this out yet since I run the stable branch, but from the way it's written it sounds like it'd be useful.

Maybe make it a setting?

[Josh9251]

+1, I don't like this feature. Please revert it. Thanks.

[Baisius]

+1. This is a breaking change for how many people have learned to build belts (ie. it's fine to start in the middle and drag back and forth across the screen). I don't understand why this feature would ever be desirable.

[raiguard]

This has been reverted for the next version (2.0.66). Thank you for your feedback!

[Quezler]

Thanks Wube, I am sure reverting it was the best choice for now.

[AntiElitz]

This has been reverted for the next version (2.0.66). Thank you for your feedback!

Awesome! I am glad the feedback is heard and I appreaciate that a lot!

[Hares]

This has been reverted for the next version (2.0.66). Thank you for your feedback!

Instead of reverting this, you should have added a checkbox or option in user settings for how smart the smart belt building is.

[Techjar]

This has been reverted for the next version (2.0.66). Thank you for your feedback!

Instead of reverting this, you should have added a checkbox or option in user settings for how smart the smart belt building is.

Seconding this

[thesixthroc]

Checkbox setting is a bad idea, belt building is a high-complexity system that needs to be fully stable before considering forking all the behavior (not to mention all the corner cases two systems would create when interacting with other systems in the game).

[WarpShuffle]

This has been reverted for the next version (2.0.66). Thank you for your feedback!

Instead of reverting this, you should have added a checkbox or option in user settings for how smart the smart belt building is.

*Normally*, I (as a developer – not from Wube but elsewhere) am actually a proponent of preferences and options to allow users to hang on to old muscle memory when new changes are introduced. In this case, however, I don't think the new behaviour (which has now *thankfully* been reverted) was worth the cost.

It never landed in stable so nobody can really claim muscle memory for the new behaviour and every permutation of preferences adds maintenance overhead and user support costs to the project so, as a Factorio enjoyer, I'd much rather have this outcome: Wube reverts it and spends their effort on other things instead of maintaining another whole user setting.

[CaffeinatedCucumber]

every permutation of preferences adds maintenance overhead and user support costs to the project so, as a Factorio enjoyer, I'd much rather have this outcome: Wube reverts it and spends their effort on other things instead of maintaining another whole user setting.

To me I feel like an optional setting to allow this is something that should be added once Factorio is feature-complete; like 2.1 or 2.2 from what I've heard. I did quite like this behavior personally (though I wish it worked with underground belts too) because I always end up placing a couple too many belts due to poor motor skills. I absolutely understand why this would be a detriment to most players though, and I—being a game developer myself as well—am very familiar with how settings like that can greatly impact maintainability. With Factorio being so close to an actual finished product though, I feel like it's in a unique situation to be able to add settings like that.

Anyways, I personally hope that this feature makes a (optional) comeback some point down the line because it definitely made the game more accessible to me.

[Visione]

Could this become an optional feature in the settings?

Because I really f***** loved this feature! And I'm so sad it's now gone, it completely fitted my playstyle.

[riking]

There's already an alternate setting (smart belt entirely disabled, bells build the same as inserters). Adding more would likely get excessive very fast.

[Visione]

There's already an alternate setting (smart belt entirely disabled, bells build the same as inserters). Adding more would likely get excessive very fast.

excessive what?

Excessive user experience? I don't see how. It's just variations of belt building, not super confusing for users.

Excessive code maintenance? Maybe, but I'm not a developer of Factorio so I can't comment on it, neither are you I presume. In most cases of SE user experience and the product trumps, not developers preferences. I say this as a developer.

[Wappinhat]

I liked the new belt change, RIP they reverted it..

Now I have to deal with accidentally moving 1 pixel in the wrong direction at corners and it will then build underground belts to reverse belt direction..