Factorio Forums

So whenever I place belts on Factorio. I can only place them in one direction. By pressing 'R' I can change the rotation of the belts. I believe that you should be able to place belts by holding control while moving your mouse. What this essentially does is if you go left, down, right and up with the movement of your mouse while holding control. You can draw a circle out of belt without the need to press 'R' and rotate its direction. Imagine how easy building a belt balancer would be by just pressing and holding control without ever rotating the belt. Or by pressing 'R' again. Traditional belt placement would remain the same and players could still use 'R' for belt placement. This feature is toggled on while holding control and having belt selected. Also when you drag your mouse across existing belt while holding control. It automatically places underground belts without the need to select underground belts from your inventory. Additionally while holding control and pressing numbers one through eight you can change the width of the belt. So instead of being able to place one belt wide you could place eight belt wide at once.

The developer mechanic behind this is once an item is placed. You essentially point your mouse to whatever side of the object you wish to rotate it. Then by pressing control you rotate the item in that direction. Ideally you could place belts sideways, then run your mouse across it while holding control and it would realign it. Another example would be holding your mouse on the side of a building and then pressing control to change the buildings rotation. However using this on buildings would create a conflict with insert item hotkeys. So I believe using this would only be practical for belt placement

Something like this ? : https://mods.factorio.com/mod/belt-brush

I also found this awesome:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BeltRouter

More mods (not tested):
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BeltLiner
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/beltplanner-patched-18
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/PickerBeltTools

And before crying that this belongs to vanilla: I don’t think this will ever get into vanilla. Factorio is a puzzle game and therefore you need to find out the best way to connect A with B yourself. That’s the whole fun. If you automate that, you remove a lot of gameplay value.

I use that mods also very seldom, when I need to bulk transport, or very long lines.