Factorio Forums

What?
Give some graphical indication that an inserter will not work when pointing away from or towards a cargo bay. Even though the cargo bay extends the hub and looks very similar, making the hub look like a larger container building, it is not accessible by inserters.
Maybe info could be added explaining what's wrong, on the inserter information panel.

Why?
It would be less confusing to players when they try to extract/insert items from the cargo bay and it doesn't work. I didn't see this explained anywhere, but eventually remembered it having been mentioned in a FFF post.

There's already a lack of the usual indication (white box corner outline) that things can be inserted there.

But I guess that still isn't enough (and I have been caught with it myself with the landing pad being one-way only).
Maybe adding a red X would be a good idea, specifically for these potentially confusing cases ?

>white box corner outline

Ah - is that the optional rendering of pick up and drop off positions of inserters? I don't have that graphic enabled but I guess if I moused-over the inserter I would have seen it.
Perhaps the cargo bay sides could indicate no insertion/extraction somehow - compared to the hub sides (would be cool if the hub opened small access ports
when an inserter was placed, but that's probably too much of an ask, and no other buildings do that).

BlueTemplar wrote: Tue Nov 05, 2024 11:18 am white box corner outline

I didn't even know that white outline existed until I checked just now.

I think part of the problem is that so many things that "hold" items in some way, like assemblers, chemical plants, etc, can all be inserted into or grabbed from, even though they're not actually chests or cargo wagons. Another thing that definitely adds to it, is that cargo bays and the platform hub are both very light grey, and also just big squares instead of distinct shapes, which makes the white outline not stand out as much.

Do we need an equivalent of Iondicators for that corner box ?