Factorio Forums

Rebinding the Use item keybind makes the new spidertron remote unusable when bound to Left Click
This is possibly an unintended side effect of the rebind features and not having the full list of keybinds for the spidertron remote in the list.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Change Use item to Left Click
2. Select a spidertron with Left Click
3. Try and move the spidertron with Left Click
4. Spidertron remote has now unselected the spidertron due to conflicting keybinds

I came looking for this issue, but for me it was caused by the blueprint selection controls which drag boxes, such as "Select for blueprint" and "Select for deconstruction cancellation".

If any of these controls which drag a box are bound to Right-click or Shift + Right-click, this appears to override the ability to "Right-click to send spidertron" or "Shift + Right-click to queue movement command".

When I rebound these "drag a box" controls to be on the left button, the spidertron movement commands both worked as expected.

I come from way back when Factorio's default mouse buttons were consistent with other games, where "place/interact" is RMB and "mine/pickup" is LMB, and have been rebinding the mouse buttons that way ever since the defaults were changed. With the old spidertron remote, there was no conflict, but now the spidertron selection controls seem to use the blueprint selection controls and there's no way to rebind them separately, or rebind the move controls to avoid the conflict until it's fixed.

As a workaround, we can swap blueprint box-dragging to the left button (and suffer all sorts of mis-clicks) until there's a solution for this. Such as giving spidertron selection its own box-dragging control that you can rebind separately from blueprint selection. (Preferably all of its controls would be rebindable separately from controls that do other things when you aren't holding a remote.)

Here's the specific configuration that was causing problems for me:




As I said, rebinding so that nothing on RMB or Shift + RMB would drag a box caused its movement controls to work again.

(In case it matters, I'm not running the expansion, just the current stable version.)

For me too the issue is binding "Use item" for grenades into left-click like it's always been: The regular send command doesn't do anything, but the Shift-right-click for queued movement works. Changing the keybind to right-click would fix the issue but is little harder to play.

In my opinion the remote should have a different keybind, not to share the "Use item". It does feel more convenient to use right-click to order the spider around, but for grenades it doesn't feel right.

The reason "use-item" was re-bound to right click by default is so you don't left-click to open an entity GUI and throw grenades at it instead.

Rseding91 wrote: Tue Oct 29, 2024 7:09 pm The reason "use-item" was re-bound to right click by default is so you don't left-click to open an entity GUI and throw grenades at it instead.

Having tried that at least you can't open GUI's with grenade in hand. But on spidertron the left-click clashes with left-click area selection. That is why the left-click grenades only really works if the keybindings are separated. The RTS-like unit control is always right-click move and that is very understandable even from Starcraft. But "using items in hand" is traditionally left-click in games, including Factorio in the past.

Edit: When you think about it, "Using item in hand" is also act of building belts. I guess that is where the custom comes from. Getting used to building belts with right-click would feel out of place. But it's also potential opportunity to share keybinding.

Rseding91 wrote: Tue Oct 29, 2024 7:09 pm The reason "use-item" was re-bound to right click by default is so you don't left-click to open an entity GUI and throw grenades at it instead.

Except that way back when (some years ago, way before 1.0), opening entity GUIs had been right-click, not left, using items in hand was right-click, and building new things too. They had originally been all on the same button, and then they were still all on the same button afterward, it was just the other same button (the left). Unless you're talking about a more recent change? Are you saying "use" and "mine" are both on RMB by default now (with open GUI still on LMB as it has been since that years-ago swap)? When did that happen?

I remember that the controls basically matched Minecraft, but then suddenly they got reversed because (the reason I remember reading, anyway) people were supposedly trying to left click on things to open GUIs and were deconstructing buildings instead, as if it was too hard to remember which button did what for some reason... Seemed pretty bizarre to me at the time. Trying to use opposite controls in different games would've been a nightmare, so ever since that change I've just rebound things to reverse the mouse buttons back the way they were originally. (Except apparently at some point I didn't flip those box-dragging selection controls from RMB to LMB so now they ended up conflicting on the Spidertron, or something along those lines.)

... And why would anyone walk around their base with grenades equipped in hand??? That's really asking for trouble no matter what button "use item" is on! Put those back in your pocket first! (There's a key for that. It's not like some games where you always have some item selected.) I guess some people need a refresher on their explosives safety training...

Anyway, this all seems a bit off topic, the point is that it isn't clear which key bindings apply to the functions of the Spidertron remote and you can end up in a situation where keybinds that used to create no conflict now make the remote effectively unusable and you have to hunt through your bindings trying to figure out which one(s) are responsible and experiment with changes until you find the right one(s), and then you may have to use keybinds that you're not used to and/or find uncomfortable if you want the remote to be usable.