[2.0.20] Concrete can't be "ghost picked" with quality

[Peevester]

What I'm doing: Using the 'ghost picker' where, when you're in map mode, you can click on a resource item from the build menu, and drag it into an inventory slot, either in a box, or in the input/output slots of a machine. This is to get bots to fill up that slot for you when you're not present, or the item isn't in your inventory.

What happens: For almost every item, you can ghost pick with a quality button pressed, and you will get a ghost version of that item, at the selected quality level. However, concrete will always get picked up at normal quality, regardless of the quality selected.

Expected behavior: The picker should function identically for all items that it can grab.

Frequency of occurrence: It always happens with concrete, but I'm pretty sure there's other items it happens with too.

[LCStark]

If you pick it up in the remote view, it will only pick up concrete without quality, as it picks up the tile to place (and tiles don't really use quality, placing quality tiles will remove their quality). However, if you open the machine that needs quality concrete as input, it picks up the concrete item, which can have quality:

11-20-2024, 23-54-51.png (328.31 KiB) Viewed 412 times

You can also pipette (Q) on the empty quality concrete input in the machine to put the quality concrete in your cursor.

[Peevester]

The intent in this case isn't to apply the concrete as tile, but to move it between storage boxes. I have this massive assembly line of sorters on Fulgora, one sorter per product and inventory type that I'm interested in saving. If the box that the sorter feeds is nearly full and I happen to notice*, I use the ghost pick to pull some excess material into another box, or onto a rocket inventory.

I think you're onto something that this is related to items with a dual life as tiles. I have never found a reason to build quality landfill, so I don't know how universal it is. Concrete is a common scrap byproduct, and I can't seem to get the ghost item picker to let me have quality ones. Using "Q" from a box inventory doesn't accomplish what I want, since I'm trying to move stuff to another box, and if you try to do that, you get a tile plop instead.

EDIT: Crap! I just tried to take a screenshot of this happening, and I can't make it happen. I swear this was driving me nuts yesterday, but I was able both to pipette and make a ghost item from the item menu with proper quality. Maybe close this for now.
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* Generally I leave "the great machine on Epsilon III Fulgora" quietly operating unattended unless I need something.

[LCStark]

EDIT: Crap! I just tried to take a screenshot of this happening, and I can't make it happen. I swear this was driving me nuts yesterday, but I was able both to pipette and make a ghost item from the item menu with proper quality. Maybe close this for now.

Nice and timely edit, I was just about to record a video that it is working properly for me in the exact same case.

I think it only turns from the quality concrete item ghost into no-quality concrete tile when you move the cursor out of the chest / machine GUI and into the world, but otherwise it looks to be working fine.

* Generally I leave "the great machine on Epsilon III Fulgora" quietly operating unattended unless I need something.

My Fulgora operates exactly the same way. Though I do sometimes feel like Zathras, trying to clean up some new scrap blockage.

[Peevester]

EDIT: Crap! I just tried to take a screenshot of this happening, and I can't make it happen. I swear this was driving me nuts yesterday, but I was able both to pipette and make a ghost item from the item menu with proper quality. Maybe close this for now.

Nice and timely edit, I was just about to record a video that it is working properly for me in the exact same case.

I think it only turns from the quality concrete item ghost into no-quality concrete tile when you move the cursor out of the chest / machine GUI and into the world, but otherwise it looks to be working fine.

* Generally I leave "the great machine on Epsilon III Fulgora" quietly operating unattended unless I need something.

My Fulgora operates exactly the same way. Though I do sometimes feel like Zathras, trying to clean up some new scrap blockage.

Bingo! Apparently I'm Mr. twitchy and I was moving the cursor out of the box, which instantly turns the pointer into ordinary concrete, and this DIDN'T happen when I tried to demonstrate it because I didn't move the cursor. OK, I think this is "not a bug", but I'm leaving it because there's never a bad time for a random B5 reference.