Factorio Forums

Hi all, GREAT game, fairly new player here, first post!

I have been playing around with the hotkeys to optimize my play, and I believe I have stumbled onto an issue when MULTIPLE actions get mapped to the same hotkey. As far as I can tell, the first action that got mapped to the given key 'wins out' and the second action is ignored. The workaround of course is to manage my hotkeys and ensure any key I map isn't used elsewhere...easier said than done though, with so many actions to scroll through!

I was hoping a future release could enhance the hotkey mapping activity, by intelligently checking for other mapped keys when a user tries to map something and prompting "Are you sure? This will unmap other action XYZ.", like other games do.

Yes, but also No. It is normally a Usability problem in games to have multiple actions for a single key combo - Factorio has dozens (hundreds?) of Actions, more than Keys exist on most keyboards. Changing the Default key bindings to eliminate duplicates is itself a task; nevermind the thousands of Players’ muscle memory. Removing this feature would lead to an even Bigger usability problem!

It is Useful to have Unrelated actions which are Context independent use the same Hotkey. As an Example, I changed “Close Window” from the default of “E” to “Enter”…. Which is also used for “Enter/Exit Vehicle”. This works well for me when entering text into boxes, and only rarely does pushing “Enter” twice lead to me dismounting from a Tank/Spidertron.