Factorio Forums

TL;DR

In the late game (and especially in heavily modded games), the personal logistics pane can get quite extensive. When dealing with large logistics request setups, three ideas come to mind to improve the functionality: save and restore, being able to move requests, and blinking ala the crafting menu where an exisitng request is.

What ?

A screenshot from a game I have presently (with only about half being shown): This causes a few things that would be really nice to see improved. I searched the boards for a few keywords and didn't quickly find these, but apologies if I missed something.

1) Being able to save / restore logistics requests.
As you can see, there are a LOT of logistics requests, and I TRY to keep things kind of ordered. Having a function to export/import this list would be helpful. I'm playing on a hosted multiplayer server, and we wipe the world every so often, and re-setting this up takes a lot of time and I inevitably miss a lot. I would see this implemented as something akin to the Blueprint export-as-string functionality, with an export and import button added somewhere (maybe just to the right of the "Personal logistics and auto-trash" checkbox), like this mock-up: 2) Being able to re-arrange logistics requests.
Right now the only way I have to move things around is to delete the existing and re-set it elsewhere. While middle-mouse-button clears off the main item bars, right-mouse-button clears from the logistics requests, so it's a little inconsistent. In addition, in other UI elements (i.e. assemblers, etc.), you can shift-right-click to copy and shift-left-click to paste onto another. It would be handy to have the same functionality inside the personal logistics requests, except obviously would need to be a cut-and-paste instead of copy-and-paste.

3) Not being able to find an existing request easily.
With this many logistics requests, it gets hard finding something that's already in it. The UI currently only offers this: (The red background, and a floating text this item already exists), and the default positioning covers the logistics pane. It would be handy if this worked similar to the crafting menu - the window for selecting a new logistics request comes up over the RIGHT third (over the crafting pane), and if you mouse over an item already in the logistics requests, it blinks in the yellow background where the item is in the Logistics pane.

Why ?

The personal logistics pane gets a lot of use in later games of Factorio, and having to reset all of these items every single time seems like needless rework - we have blueprints to avoid rework between games for constructions, and this seems to be in the same mentality. The other two seem to be improvements to the existing UI that don't break other things (that I'm aware of), and improve the UI experience.

Thanks!

All of that has already been requested in several forms. I wished you had searched for it. I’ll add the links later , I need to hurry yet.

Heh, I did give it a try, just didn't hit the right things apparently:

Keywords: Logistics save - gets a thread "Persistent toolbar and logistics settings" which is to save out to an .ini, which isn't what this is about. It gets another thread "Save (import/export) 'preference' info between saves" which is similar but a) saves everything and b) never had any form of response, and a couple pages of other threads not relevant. For what it's worth, having the logistics requests independently exportable would be handy for sharing with other people on the same server, as well.

Keywords: Logistics string - gets the same "Persistent toolbar and logistics settings" thread, and a few other threads not relevant.

Keywords: Logistics blueprint - gets the above thread, and 8 pages of a bunch of other things due to common keywords.

Keywords: Logistics move - the thread "Allow reordering logistics requester slots" is close, but goes into an auto-sort (which is NOT desired), and a click-and-drag, whereas I'm suggesting using the existing mouse shortcuts from the assemblers.

Keywords: Logistics blink - gets 5 results, none relevant.

So - sorry for the duplication. I did try, but apparently didn't find the right terms. Consider this a +1 for those other requests then?

Heh, and after getting some coffee and coming back to this, my next idea for search terms, "logistics highlight", came up with a few matches on that idea. So, sorry again for the dupe.

Ok, it’s not easy to find. sad that you didn’t post your findings, either.


For 1) I point to this post:
viewtopic.php?p=519898#p519898
There is also a mod:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/PersonalL ... portExport


For 2) it was hard.
I point to the links in that post:
viewtopic.php?p=530544#p530544

A similar mod:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/player_re ... ing_layout


For 3) same post as above
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=87710 Mouse-Over Item in Inventory Highlights Logistic Request (Hovering Logistic Filter Slot)


You know you can search with “*”, like “personal logistic* highlight*”?

And one more thing: please one suggestion per thread. It helps to keep the discussion focused.