Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Any systems in the game that only apply while controlling the player character should also apply when remote controlling a vehicle if applicable.

What?

The following changes should be made while remotely driving a vehicle to bring the experience in line with that of controlling the player character:

• Quickbar item counts should be displayed for items in the vehicles inventory

• The inventory hotkey should open the vehicles inventory instead of the ghost cursor menu (the vehicle inventory also contains a ghost cursor menu)

• The shortcuts for enabling/disabling personal roboports and exoskeletons should apply to those equipped by the vehicle (currently they always apply to the player character regardless of where your view is)

• Vehicles should be able to move items around within their own inventories without the use of construction robots, particularly for the purpose of switching ammo types quickly

Why?

Space age encourages you to use vehicles as remote control construction managers, both because the player character cant be everywhere at once and because of the addition of an equipment grid to tanks. I've personally found myself spending more time controlling spidertrons remotely than controlling the player character in the late game of my space age playthrough. The issues I've mentioned were all small frustrations I have encountered so far, and resolving these inconsistencies would go a long way to smooth out the remote view experience even more.

Adding onto this, another annoyance I've run into while remote controlling spidertrons to build on other planets is the camera bob resulting from the springiness of the legs. When using a remote to control spidertrons the wobbly movement doesn't have much of an effect, but when your camera is glued to it's head it can be very annoying. For example when laying down a row of machines by walking in a line, with a high enough amount of exoskeletons this will almost always result in the camera bobbing up or down and messing up the alignment of machines.

Trying to build a row of miners by moving in a straight line: