Force machine recipe based on item or ghost in hand.

[anything42]

When interacting with an assembler or other crafting machine, there is a "gear" icon that you have to click on to open the set recipe dialog and change the machine's recipe.

If the player has a item or a ghost in their hand, then they should be able to e.g. Shift+Click on the "gear" icon to set the machine's recipe directly. This would skip the set recipe dialog and set the recipe based on the hand-contents.

In general it may make sense to support super-force recipe-setting via Ctrl+Shift+Click without needing to click into the machine and interact with the "gear" icon since this icon only exists when a recipe is already set.

Examples:

When setting multiple machines to different qualities, the player could Alt+Scroll through qualities and then "force-set" recipes to avoid tedious interactions with the set recipe dialog.

The player would be able to, e.g. know what they want to craft from the Factoriopedia, and then use the Pipette Tool (Q) to select what they want and then "force-set" recipes based on the ghost in their hand. Especially with more-complex mods this would make it easier for the player to set recipes without needing to search through large set recipe dialogs.


Edit: To summarize discussion further down the thread, it would be useful to be able to be able to set machine recipe based on an item or ghost in hand by:

• hovering over a machine (without interacting with it) and then pressing a keybind, e.g. Alt+Z, or clicking with some modifier keys pressed
• interacting with a machine that already has a recipe and interacting with the gear icon (or else the resulting dialog)
• interacting with a machine that doesn't have a recipe set and interacting with the checkbox area of the dialog

An edge case is what should the behavior be with an empty hand in the "keybind" case. I think it would be reasonable to clear the current recipe.

[TauPlays]

Unless I misunderstood you, there currently is something similar already in the game: you can Shift+Right Click on an assembler with a recipe already set and then Shift+Left Click on any other assembler (including holding down and dragging across multiple assemblers) to copy over the recipe. This way you only need to go into the "gear menu" once for any set of recipes.


I agree with the Alt+Scroll idea for qualities though: I have tried a few mods to add that, and its a QoL game changer.

[Stargateur]

what if this item have multiple recipe ?

[anything42]

what if this item have multiple recipe ?

I would expect this to do the same thing that "Set Recipe" does when using the circuit network.

This should also work for recipe signals (which are different from finished product signals). For example Pyanodons has many alternative recipes, but it also has a mod setting that adds new signals for every recipe.

[FasterJump]

I would like to follow up on OP suggestion, as I often find myself with a ghost in hand and having to browse the machine recipe tabs to select that exact same icon I have in hand (ghost item).

Would there be any downside to this QOL feature? I would really like to have a developer thought, and really hope there is still tome for this minor, yet life changing, QOL feature.

Now that mixed payloads are part of 2.1, this became my number one wish!

[sben]

+1 on this - this would be a great QoL improvement that I wanted to request myself.

The only part I disagree is

In general it may make sense to support super-force recipe-setting via Ctrl+Shift+Click without needing to click into the machine and interact with the "gear" icon since this icon only exists when a recipe is already set.

This would prevent the player from setting the recipes to buildings/tiles, since the assembler would be super-force overbuilt.

Instead, set the recipe to the default recipe for the hand contents on [Shift + Left-Click]:

• Eg. if holding green circuit, set the recipe to green circuit.
• as with the "Set recipe" circuit setting, try selecting the best matching recipe if the default one is not available (eg. set foundry to casting pipes if holding pipe in the hands)
• And if not holding items but a recipe in the hand (eg. the empty heavy oil barrel recipe), then apply this recipe directly.

If the hand is empty, keep the current behaviour of copying the recipe from the [Shift + Right-Click] selected building.
If the hand contains a blueprint, keep the current behaviour of placing it, even if it consist of only one entity (eg. applying the recipe from the assembler in the blueprint).

This would be both a cleaner and more flexible solution.

[anything42]

For Ctrl+Shift+Click I believe my thought was that this would be right click rather than left click to distinguish force recipe setting from force building since in general I would expect "force set recipe" to be distinct from "force build".

But I don't have a strong opinion since I'm expecting this would be remappable and I haven't had a chance to use this feature and get a sense of how it feels. I would be happy enough if this feature were adding without any binding (and I would probably end up putting this on a mouse button anyway).


An alternative idea for handling the "no recipe set" case is to allow Shift-Click to work on the disabled confirmation button in the crafting dialog.

Or an even wackier idea, maybe Alt-Z should "drop" the hand contents into the recipe slot which I think is semi-intuitive and less likely to cause conflicts.


I would be weary about overriding the normal [Shift + Right-Click] -> [Shift + Left-Click] flow since I can see that leading to confusing outcomes.

[FasterJump]

It wouldn't need a shortcut. We would just "click" to drop the held ghost into the machine, setting its recipe.

[sben]

It wouldn't need a shortcut. We would just "click" to drop the held ghost into the machine, setting its recipe.

This would likely cause unintentional recipe resets.

Consider the drag to move map behaviour on the remote viewer: people are sometimes clicking without actually moving the map. Double-clicking before starting to drag, changing mind and deciding not to drag after having clicked, or just release-and-click again after reaching the wanted map position, etc.

What if you aren't even in the remote viewer, but think so? Drag has no effect here, so it might get registered as normal click (I don't know how how is this handled by Factorio internally / if this would be possible).

Once having accidentally changed the recipe, the ingredients land on the output lanes, causing a mess that must be cleaned up manually.

[FasterJump]

The way I see it, it would only update the recipe if the item/ghost is dropped in the checkbox area.

06-13-2026, 15-31-45.png (250.9 KiB) Viewed 313 times

[sben]

The way I see it, it would only update the recipe if the item/ghost is dropped in the checkbox area.

06-13-2026, 15-31-45.png

I now see that I misunderstood the intended implementation a little bit.

I was thinking of this feature making possible to set recipes without ever opening the assembling machine interface.
But I see that even if the interface needs to be opened once, it would be a huge QoL change of not having to browse through all items.

[anything42]

To summarize, it would be useful to be able to be able to set machine recipe based on an item or ghost in hand by:

• hovering over a machine (without interacting with it) and then pressing a keybind, e.g. Alt+Z, or clicking with some modifier keys pressed
• interacting with a machine that doesn't have a recipe set and interacting with the checkbox area of the dialog
• interacting with a machine that already has a recipe and interacting with the gear icon (or else the resulting dialog)

An edge case is what should the behavior be with an empty hand in the "keybind" case. I think it would be reasonable to clear the current recipe.

[FasterJump]

Currently, it is working for circuit (constant combinator), filters (inserters), etc..

In this screenshot, I can "drop" the held ghost (or item) in the circuit slot, but I cannot drop it in the recipe slot (because there is no recipe slot, really I would like to drop it in the bug UI on the left but it doesn't work).

06-13-2026, 20-28-10.png (349.01 KiB) Viewed 245 times

 
I even tried to drop the held item/ghost in the search bar, to no avail.

06-13-2026, 20-31-35.png (82.77 KiB) Viewed 240 times

 
Associated with the Ctrl-scroll shortcut to change quality of held ghost, it's very practical (and would be even more if it worked with machine recipes). I think that this would be a massive QoL improvement for players who like to pipette ghosts/items to set signals/recipes.