Factorio Forums

Holding down the mouse and moving the mouse, or the character while placing objects causes a delay in placing the object when moving from one available target location, to an unavailable location, until the cursor is moved over another available location.

This prevents quickly filling in the gaps in groups of buildings with non-tile placeables.

Video attached. Log is also attached, but I didn't experience a crash or any performance issues. Edit: Only reproducible with power poles so far, I checked medium and small. All three. The Large power pole is slightly different, and does not place additional poles even when moused over available space.

Also, none of them can be dragged to place multiple, although I care about this less and don't know if this was a feature or not.

That is intentional, the automatic placement can not know if it can place the pole even further apart until you reach that point.