Factorio Forums

Posted: **Wed Aug 12, 2026 12:54 am**

TL;DR

If you have 0 of a certain item in your inventory, and have a ghost of that item in your cursor, picking up that type of item should convert the ghost item in the cursor to a regular item.

What?

When you have this

: 08-11-2026, 17-29-43.png (1.83 MiB) Viewed 165 times

and you grab the furnace

: 08-11-2026, 17-30-50.png (1.75 MiB) Viewed 165 times

it should stop being a ghost

: 08-11-2026, 17-33-09.png (1.85 MiB) Viewed 165 times

Why?

Moving a machine.
The logical solution to moving a machine is to pipette it

: 08-11-2026, 17-36-17.png (1.96 MiB) Viewed 165 times

delete the machine

: 08-11-2026, 17-37-09.png (1.05 MiB) Viewed 165 times

and place it elsewhere

: 08-11-2026, 17-37-51.png (1.64 MiB) Viewed 165 times

But if you don't have an extra copy of that machine in your inventory, the process becomes:

ghost pipette it

: 08-11-2026, 17-39-45.png (583.46 KiB) Viewed 165 times

place a ghost

: 08-11-2026, 17-40-00.png (699.1 KiB) Viewed 165 times

delete the other

: 08-11-2026, 17-40-23.png (754.52 KiB) Viewed 165 times

drop the held ghost

: 08-11-2026, 17-40-57.png (664.22 KiB) Viewed 165 times

pipette the ghost

: 08-11-2026, 17-41-13.png (1.43 MiB) Viewed 165 times

place

: 08-11-2026, 17-41-31.png (978.9 KiB) Viewed 165 times

This is silly. If you don't have any of the item in your hand, and you *pick up* the item you had a ghost of, I feel it's pretty fair to assume you want to place the thing. If not, shift key.
Of course this isn't an issue when you have other machines of that type in the vicinity. But *especially* with the introduction of quality, it has become much more common to have only one machine of a certain type and certain quality in a convenient proximity.

It's a mild annoyance that makes building feel just a little bit worse.

Factorio Forums

Ghost item cursor should unghost when picking up the first of that item

Ghost item cursor should unghost when picking up the first of that item

TL;DR

What?

Why?