Factorio Forums

TL;DR

A keybinding with a similar function to holding Ctrl in Windows task manager, that pauses the updating of item order in the production window.

What?

This keybinding, while held down, would still allow for values and graphs to update, but would pause the sorted movement of individual items in the production list allowing them to be selected more easily, especially the shorter the chosen time window is. Items not currently in the list that are produced would be added to the end of the list until the key was released.

Why?

I frequently want to check the production window and highlight specific items per minute, but it's a short time span and i find items bouncing around all over the place. I try to click a specific item but as I move my cursor over the item and click, one items production passes another and I click the wrong item. this problem compounds now that I want to deselect the incorrect item.

Currently the best solution I use is to choose a longer time duration to minimize the chance of items trading places, but then I have to switch back to per minute afterwards. This can also have the downside of making a much longer list of items to choose from.

Alternatively I can use the search function, but even then I may have to specify quality to avoid this issue, and sometimes I'd like to highlight multiple items that I've made in the past minute. This is doable but is a lot of effort compared to just clicking the items I'd like to focus on.

I could see this keybinding also being used to pause the updating of the crafting queue to avoid canceling an item incorrectly, usually because a prerequisite item with a very short build time completes as i target the item i wish to cancel (items that have been made would still be removed from the queue, but the queue wouldn't move), and space platform inventory when a building I'd like to send to the surface is sorted after an item I'm using the cargo bay to buffer (items added during would be still show up in the inventory but wouldn't automatically sort until the key is released), but I understand both of these scenarios could also be alleviated by better automation on my part.

How about instead, a checkbox to optionally sort them alphabetically? This would keep the order the same over time.

+1
Especially when you're checking something have a similiar producing cycle (like science packs), the bouncing is really annoying even without clicking
They just don't want stick there