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This simply has to have been brought up before but I was wondering what the general response was. Is there any chance we will see something along these lines at any time?

To be specific, what I'm talking about is a new control mechanic for the core game which makes rotating belts easier and allows us to mirror blue prints. Could be done via a special modifier key (default may be shift). While you're holding it belts are automatically rotated to face the direction / axis your mouse or your feet (WASD) are moving.
Same key with a blue print selected could be used to mirror a blue print on the axis which is orthogonal to your movement-input direction. So imagine you have a train station blue print with the loader on it's left side. You hold shift and move your mouse to the right and the blue print automatically changes in such a way that the loader is now on the right hand side of your station.

But I'm sure there are other methods to implement this. I'm not really trying to make a suggestion here either. All I want to know is whether such a thing has been considered by the devs what the working theory on their stance over it is.

Lot's of people / bots lurking but no ideas, eh? Perhaps it hasn't been brought up before after all...

About belts: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-160

Enhancement to the belt building mechanics, so building by dragging makes continuous belt.

Maybe there is hope?

While this would be convenient there are some mechanics that make this not feasible currently.

Things like not being able to control what side of the belt a inserter drops things on out of a station would lead to balancing issues and having to make a separate version for each direction anyway.

Also refineries and chem plants not having mirrored versions would be problematic when trying to connect to an existing system.

We are in a better place now since stations are the same vertically and horizontally but there is still a ways to go.

Sidenote: there are some mods that have this functionality and have mirrored patterns for the ref/chem plants and might make this easier.

Mooncat wrote:About belts: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-160

Enhancement to the belt building mechanics, so building by dragging makes continuous belt.

Maybe there is hope?

I had hoped for something a little less... vague

hoosh wrote:While this would be convenient there are some mechanics that make this not feasible currently.

Things like not being able to control what side of the belt a inserter drops things on out of a station would lead to balancing issues and having to make a separate version for each direction anyway.

Also refineries and chem plants not having mirrored versions would be problematic when trying to connect to an existing system.

We are in a better place now since stations are the same vertically and horizontally but there is still a ways to go.

Sidenote: there are some mods that have this functionality and have mirrored patterns for the ref/chem plants and might make this easier.

I understand the belts + inserter issue. I'm wondering maybe this is something they might want to fix along the road anyway, like they did with horizontal / vertical train size except it will probably be simplier. Just make inserters behave symmetrically and always place items on the same side of a parallel belt nomatter the direction the face. No need for new models or rescaling.

I don't really understand the refineries / plants problem though.

Pardon my paint skills.
Black is pipes
Grey is underground pipes

This is a rough cracking setup. This shows how the pipes on the bottom are mirrored but the chem plants wouldnt be. Since you cant reverse the left-right on the chem plants you are unable to mirror them as all your inputs and outputs get flipped on the other side.

Its not a huge deal but it is problematic if you are trying to maintain a design or standard throughout your base.

I see. Well this is another problem indeed. Turns out rotating blueprints is not that trivial after all...

Like someone before already said: there are some mods that can rotate or mirror blueprints, like

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/killkrog/KBlueprints

or

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Choumiko/Foreman

Moved to Suggestions.


See also viewtopic.php?f=80&t=37517 Blueprint-Mirroring, BP-Shifting, -Programming, -Iteration, -Editing, Ornaments and Recursion