Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Put multiple items to a single quickslot, scroll through them like a blueprint book

What ?

Blueprint books allow players to scroll through multiple blueprints on one quickslot. This is bonkers convenient and feels amazing.
Let's do that, but for individual items (inserters, power poles, belts, train things, etc)

Why ?

This differs from blueprints because placing individual items in-game behaves differently than blueprints. In the case of trains, there are automatic orientations for signals based upon the rail's orientation. Also, splitter ghosts cannot be placed on pre-existing belts. I'm sure there are more.

Here's an example of vanilla blueprint book behavior



And a mock representation of the idea (note, individual item blueprints do not behave the same as placing objects as noted above)



It could be implemented the same way blueprint books are, just with another class of planner (so to speak).
This would allow sharing between players and saves much like the current BP book system.


--PS
Incidentally I just found OSHA Hot Swap that provides similar functionality. Best devs/modders ever.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/osha_hot_swap

First: the image links above are broken. Can you fix it yourself or should I do it for you?

To the suggestion itself: in other words the fast replaceable entities (belts, inserters etc.) should be placed in one slot.

I like this idea…

+1
And it should pick the last used item. Sounds interesting.

Another idea is to have fully custom "placable books" instead of "Blueprint books". So you can customize the content like having a book for placing flamer defenses that will have flamer, both pipes, some walls, etc.

I reread this and I think this is a really cool suggestion. Because it points to the power of “for what could be quick replacement items also useful”. And quick replacement into the quickslots are something that jumps into the face.

And it feels there are more ideas into that direction.

I reread that again, and I think that

- the quickslots are a place where I can create not only one level of hierarchy but unlimited. Like a blueprint-book.
- there is no difference between a bp-book and an item in the quickslots, which is practical, if you have for example some bps for building walls, then the logical extension are also wall items…


More specific:
- select a quickslots
- pressing e “opens” this slot and you can edit this slot like a bp-book.
- you can create “sub-slots” (hierarchy), put in blueprints /-books, put in (ghost)items
- you can delete, move, drag/drop slots etc.