Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Instead of clicking on a green arrow to open the rail planner, click anywhere on a rail and drag in the desired direction.

What ?

With rails in my hand, I want to click and hold on a placed rail, drag (or move) in the direction I want to build more rails, and release to open rail planning mode in that direction. I don't mean dragging to place rails continuously like you can with belts (or straight rails), since I imagine that would be awkward and imprecise with curves. Just streamlining the existing rail planner a bit.

Why ?

I find I'll often click the wrong arrow when placing rails by hand, especially if I'm zoomed out or moving quickly while doing so. Now I'm stuck building the wrong direction until I press Q and click another arrow, perhaps multiple times, which can be frustrating. A minor issue, but in my opinion click-and-drag would be more elegant than separate GUI elements, and could presumably be implemented alongside the current arrow system for players who prefer that.

Pressing R to reverse build direction while the rail planner is active might be similarly helpful.

Oh, yes, that is such an hassle.

I fully agree, would be very nice and user friendly to have such abaility, great idea

Yes please

Especially that you cannot rotate into the other direction, because you already press shift is really annoying.