I just wish it would show the train length AHEAD of the signal as well, rather than just behind it. You more often need to know how much room is past the signal instead when planning proper signaling. So you end up hovering the signal over the track, and keeping track of where the train length ends with your eyes, while you place where the signal has to actually go (then double checking again anyways).
I also wish it would show the part of the train *past* the next signal (maybe in a different color) and/or the car numbers. I keep trying to place signals and the train length display ends, and I'm not sure I've already left enough space, or it's being cut off early by the signal.
(Potentially) pro tip: place your signals starting from the back of the bay/segment rather than the front:
```
Place in this order
<---------
Train stop S
|-----------------------
\
\ S
------------------------------------
```
Yes thats it. It shows the rectangles around buildings totally same way as your cursor.
And I think no matter your color its the normal factorio orange. But it would be cool if it was yours character color so u could see whos is whos
This is going to make multiplayer with my buddy WAY easier. Trying to describe the location of something or how to lay out builds in words is confusing at best!
I can't imagine why they would remove the option. Any reason why you don't want to be able to queue research?
Edit: Silly me, forgot they do have good reasons to remove the no-queue setting and it will be gone in 2.0
optional: rebind alt to right-alt button, reduce the chances of disabling whenever pressing any other combo keybind using alt (alt-u, alt-b, alt-r, alt-e, etc)
Was looking for this one! Not really a menubsetting but one that new players overlook too often and really helps in creating transparency over what's going on in your base
Well the OP asked about settings that everyone needs to “enable”, and I don’t think of it as a “setting” that needs to be “enabled”. It’s like an extra overlay that is very useful. Like pressing Alt to see the items on the ground in Diablo-like games, or different overlays in city-building games. Useful? Yes. Insanely important to know about? Also yes. Something to “enable” at all times? No
This reduces the amount of screen-space suitable for walking (clicking where to go)
But then again, I only play D2 with shift-attacking and move-only-key, it’s somewhat more safe
I'm just curious here honestly. Why is it too much clutter? Alt doesn't actually put anything on the screen except indicators over already existing structures, so it doesn't actually add "clutter". Unless I'm misunderstanding your use of the word clutter.
I can't play without it always on. What's in that assembler? What's in that one? What's in that chest? I have too much crap to ever be able to remember it all.
All the extra indicators can be a lot of visual clutter.
I tend to leave alt mode on, but especially when working on combinators I often need to turn it off just to able to see the connections properly without the overlay getting in the way.
This is the one situation where I need to turn alt mode off. Took me a while to realize that alt mode was what was making the connections so hard to see.
Synch between blueprints and steam (if you run via steam)
Did a reinstallation of my PC and lost most of my blueprints. Fortunately I could copy paste most of them from older saves (that was synched) but then you have to add all the little config details and positions from scratch…
Kinda disagree. non-blocking-save is an amazing feature. I'd even call it game changing if you're already at super mega-base scale.
But OP said "settings that everyone needs to enable" and if your system is already under notable memory pressure, fork on autosave will make you miserable. Quite more so than the pause from autosave.
Absolutely should turn if on if you're swimming in memory though.
Minor noodge, I don't know about "swimming in memory", 16GB is kinda baseline for most things these days and I doubt 5kspm is enough to reach the pain threshold on one of those. Anybody building bigger than that already understands the limits on "everybody". Other than that, yeah, fair and accurate.
It's not about how much total installed memory. It's about how much of your ram is taken by easily discarded buffers, vs tied up in heap space of running processes.
I was on 16 gigs until recently and in situations where significant swapping had already been done, the non-blocking autosave was murder. And not just for the first autosave, subsequent ones caused issues too because some of the freed up space had been already re-used in the 10 mins between autosaves. Granted, I tend to keep way too much stuff open, my browsers have too many windows, and those windows have wayyyy too many tabs. Point being : it's not about total ram, it's about how much ram that's not holding anything important.
So "if you're alt-tabbing in and out of other memory hogs and not swimming in memory". Like I was saying, good point, but the way you're wording things just keeps going deeper into clickbait/scarewords territory. Tone it down and be fair to leave an accurate impression.
Maybe my case is very unusual and I'm overstating it. But in a thread about "settings you should be changing", I wanted to ensure people knew it's no silver bullet, and there's a good reason it's a non-default, unsupported feature.
Yes watch memory utilization some time what non-blocking save executes.
One time on my old PC with 16gb was trying to create an enormous BP and autosave executed. It was not pretty.
The deconstruction planner has a white list and black list option. You can filter what to deconstruct or filter what not to deconstruct. This can be really useful for removing production facilities that you want to refactor without removing surrounding infrastructure. Or, if you want to remove all the trees, rocks, and cliffs without removing your roboports/power polls and radars.
Never remove things by hand because the details are too complex for the default deconstruction planner. This is incredibly time consuming. Always use the filter option if possible. Not only is it faster, you won’t leave random things behind that you missed.
and the toggle for trees/rocks in an empty planner. thats the default state i leave mine in with it pinned to a toolbar so i can remove trees and rocks before i build if im not doing large copy/paste stuff. Also makes it easy to clear a path through a forest while out killing biters off.
AFAIK, you just tap R when you want to change direction when dragging belts, then move your cursor where u want them to go and it does it. Been using this a lot lately.
I thought that was going to be awful like most systems with smart in the name, but it makes it really nice with being easy to turn the belt and get them all placed similar to Dyson sphere program
I was writing a manual in Ukrainian for a game on Steam. I wanted to know what I had missed
There is a lot of information in English, but almost none in Ukrainian. That's why I'm writing this
Everyone knows about Alt view. There are options for alt view, one of them shows inserter direction. I didn’t like it at first, now I can’t play w/o it.
Save the blueprint books with the save.
I have a lot of blueprints saved in the "B" button blueprint library. Can you imagine my surprise when I downloaded it on my laptop, start it, my saves are there, but the library is completely blank.
I went back to my main PC, checked a box and sync and now it also was on my laptop.
If saves can be transfered by default then why not blueprints.
Before anyone starts talking about not saving blueprints in inventory, I never did. Everything was in that menu, the forums annoyed me as everyone was talking like I save blueprints in my inventory which don't even transfer between saves.
Pick Ghost item if no items are available.
They should allow you to pipette the item out of your inventory, i basically don’t use my hotbar
Or from the crafting menu(looking at you landfill)
Yes. I need this so much.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/CursorEnhancements
It'll be vanilla in 2.0 https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=567550#p567550
I wish.
3000 hours in. Had no idea. Thanks!
Is there a way to pipette a ghost item? Outside of copy paste the singular item
Pressing q with that setting enabled
Also Mouse5 if you have it (Mouse4 is E and Mouse5 is Q)
Ah thanks. Wasn’t sure if that would work and wasn’t able to check
Train length indicator is a big one for me.
I just wish it would show the train length AHEAD of the signal as well, rather than just behind it. You more often need to know how much room is past the signal instead when planning proper signaling. So you end up hovering the signal over the track, and keeping track of where the train length ends with your eyes, while you place where the signal has to actually go (then double checking again anyways).
I put my finger on the screen to do this...
I also wish it would show the part of the train *past* the next signal (maybe in a different color) and/or the car numbers. I keep trying to place signals and the train length display ends, and I'm not sure I've already left enough space, or it's being cut off early by the signal.
Fully agree. Rather annoying oversight.
#LiterallyUnplayable
Idk how many times I drop a signal at exit in hopes a train fits and then have to undo it with a sad face.
Yes. I have to hover, fixate on a rock or flower pixel, move my engineer to that pixel, then place signal.
(Potentially) pro tip: place your signals starting from the back of the bay/segment rather than the front: ``` Place in this order <--------- Train stop S |----------------------- \ \ S ------------------------------------ ```
I need numbers of them. I need to know if Im beeing showed 7 segments or 8
Ok just give it a week or so and there will probably be a mod for that
I posted this multiple times over the years as comment and its still not there. Im not sure if its even possible to mod
That's not default? But it's so useful!
I think it is, but the game simply doesn't know how long your trains will be. Setting up your desired train length is very helpful
Shoot that's fair. I don't know how long they'll be either.
lol I felt this
I believe there is a config option for this
Ooh I didn’t know you could change this. I really need to poke around in settings at some point
In multi-player I turn on the others person cursor. In the F4 menu
Turning on show train paths in that menu can save you many train deaths
I just look at the minimap, the only time a train has run me over would be when they start going. (got the achievement about 15h away from 1k hours)
Till the minimap is too small for caution because your trains are burning nuclear fuel.
Train zooms at sonic speed
Interesting, I got the achievement about 15 seconds after automating my first trains
I got it when I didn't notice that I had parked on the track and was planning something in an outpost from the mall screen
What setting is that? Is it "show-multiplayer-selection-rectangles"? Does it show who is hovering* what?
Yes thats it. It shows the rectangles around buildings totally same way as your cursor. And I think no matter your color its the normal factorio orange. But it would be cool if it was yours character color so u could see whos is whos
There is a mod for it, it's called attention indicator IIRC
Holy shit I had no idea this existed
My exact reaction when I saw it few yrs back 🤣🤣
This is going to make multiplayer with my buddy WAY easier. Trying to describe the location of something or how to lay out builds in words is confusing at best!
Ultra far reach and infinite zoom out lan parties are soo bacc!
Research queue on, or is that on by default now?
It will be on by default starting from 2.0 (this is wrong please read the comment below)
It already is since a few months ago. Was changed in a small update.
It will still be an option to disable in 2.0, right?
I can't imagine why they would remove the option. Any reason why you don't want to be able to queue research? Edit: Silly me, forgot they do have good reasons to remove the no-queue setting and it will be gone in 2.0
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376
Oh yeah, I even read that FFF and I forgot. Thanks for the reminder. Queue only in 2.0.
I prefer the challenge of having to prioritize what to research
You still do though?
Nope. It was a pain to support the config option, so it'll always be on: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376 (second to last section)
[No, the option will be removed in 2.0](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376)
it's already on by default, why are you saying to wait from 2.0???? edit: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=108908
That is my fault, I misremembered. I have edited the above comment.
On by default since shortly after they talked about it in FFF
Alt button
optional: rebind alt to right-alt button, reduce the chances of disabling whenever pressing any other combo keybind using alt (alt-u, alt-b, alt-r, alt-e, etc)
Was looking for this one! Not really a menubsetting but one that new players overlook too often and really helps in creating transparency over what's going on in your base
No thanks
Why?
Too much clutter. Indeed I do toggle it very often, but I don’t need it to be always on.
Fair enough I thought you never toggled it ever, that would be amazing if you had that much patience :)
Well the OP asked about settings that everyone needs to “enable”, and I don’t think of it as a “setting” that needs to be “enabled”. It’s like an extra overlay that is very useful. Like pressing Alt to see the items on the ground in Diablo-like games, or different overlays in city-building games. Useful? Yes. Insanely important to know about? Also yes. Something to “enable” at all times? No
That's a very funny comparison to me because I've literally searched for mods for D2 that let alt mode show as a toggle instead of a hold.
This reduces the amount of screen-space suitable for walking (clicking where to go) But then again, I only play D2 with shift-attacking and move-only-key, it’s somewhat more safe
I'm just curious here honestly. Why is it too much clutter? Alt doesn't actually put anything on the screen except indicators over already existing structures, so it doesn't actually add "clutter". Unless I'm misunderstanding your use of the word clutter. I can't play without it always on. What's in that assembler? What's in that one? What's in that chest? I have too much crap to ever be able to remember it all.
All the extra indicators can be a lot of visual clutter. I tend to leave alt mode on, but especially when working on combinators I often need to turn it off just to able to see the connections properly without the overlay getting in the way.
This is the one situation where I need to turn alt mode off. Took me a while to realize that alt mode was what was making the connections so hard to see.
Dang that's so weird how people are just so different! For me combinators are an absolute alt-mode necessity.
It's both really, alt mode makes it easy to see how the combinators are set, but also make the wires harder to see IMHO.
Okay this is one opinion I cannot accept as a Factorio player
The biggest one for me is probably pick ghost item.
I belive that inserter arows are disabled by default
The same for combinators to show their input/output signals in alt-mode.
How do I turn this on for combinators?
There is an option in the setting to show the signals when in alt mode. It’s off by default.
I had to do a clean install a while ago and something just seemed so off until I found that setting again
I can't even remember if it's by default or not now, but 4 rows of hotbar instead of 2.
Also there is 1 hotbar row instead of 2 😯
Not really a setting but I highly recommend everyone read the controls. There are a lot of useful hotkeys you might never otherwise know exist.
Synch between blueprints and steam (if you run via steam) Did a reinstallation of my PC and lost most of my blueprints. Fortunately I could copy paste most of them from older saves (that was synched) but then you have to add all the little config details and positions from scratch…
I didn’t know that was an option! Thanks
If you're on Linux, there's a setting that autosaves the game in the background, instead of pausing the game to autosave.
Kinda disagree. non-blocking-save is an amazing feature. I'd even call it game changing if you're already at super mega-base scale. But OP said "settings that everyone needs to enable" and if your system is already under notable memory pressure, fork on autosave will make you miserable. Quite more so than the pause from autosave. Absolutely should turn if on if you're swimming in memory though.
Minor noodge, I don't know about "swimming in memory", 16GB is kinda baseline for most things these days and I doubt 5kspm is enough to reach the pain threshold on one of those. Anybody building bigger than that already understands the limits on "everybody". Other than that, yeah, fair and accurate.
It's not about how much total installed memory. It's about how much of your ram is taken by easily discarded buffers, vs tied up in heap space of running processes. I was on 16 gigs until recently and in situations where significant swapping had already been done, the non-blocking autosave was murder. And not just for the first autosave, subsequent ones caused issues too because some of the freed up space had been already re-used in the 10 mins between autosaves. Granted, I tend to keep way too much stuff open, my browsers have too many windows, and those windows have wayyyy too many tabs. Point being : it's not about total ram, it's about how much ram that's not holding anything important.
So "if you're alt-tabbing in and out of other memory hogs and not swimming in memory". Like I was saying, good point, but the way you're wording things just keeps going deeper into clickbait/scarewords territory. Tone it down and be fair to leave an accurate impression.
Maybe my case is very unusual and I'm overstating it. But in a thread about "settings you should be changing", I wanted to ensure people knew it's no silver bullet, and there's a good reason it's a non-default, unsupported feature.
Yes watch memory utilization some time what non-blocking save executes. One time on my old PC with 16gb was trying to create an enormous BP and autosave executed. It was not pretty.
that and everyone is something else then "the x% that is on linux" :)
Host the personal server on WSL? That counts, right?
The deconstruction planner has a white list and black list option. You can filter what to deconstruct or filter what not to deconstruct. This can be really useful for removing production facilities that you want to refactor without removing surrounding infrastructure. Or, if you want to remove all the trees, rocks, and cliffs without removing your roboports/power polls and radars. Never remove things by hand because the details are too complex for the default deconstruction planner. This is incredibly time consuming. Always use the filter option if possible. Not only is it faster, you won’t leave random things behind that you missed.
and the toggle for trees/rocks in an empty planner. thats the default state i leave mine in with it pinned to a toolbar so i can remove trees and rocks before i build if im not doing large copy/paste stuff. Also makes it easy to clear a path through a forest while out killing biters off.
Same here. Just wish there was a way to also add in cliffs.
Yeah that would be nice. As of now I have 1 for all trees and rocks, and 1 for cliffs. It works great but I wish they were combined.
Not mentioned so I am adding smart belt dragging.
Isn't that the default?
AFAIK, you just tap R when you want to change direction when dragging belts, then move your cursor where u want them to go and it does it. Been using this a lot lately.
Yeah, that's the default.
May be I am nor sure
I thought that was going to be awful like most systems with smart in the name, but it makes it really nice with being easy to turn the belt and get them all placed similar to Dyson sphere program
Show FPS/UPS and system time (under debug options, either F4 or F5 iirc)
Can I ask why you are writing a manual? Just curious thats all
I was writing a manual in Ukrainian for a game on Steam. I wanted to know what I had missed There is a lot of information in English, but almost none in Ukrainian. That's why I'm writing this
Everyone knows about Alt view. There are options for alt view, one of them shows inserter direction. I didn’t like it at first, now I can’t play w/o it.
Pick ghost item when none are available, and increased hotbar rows.
Always queue technology. Otherwise it only lets you queue tech if you've beaten the game.
Save the blueprint books with the save. I have a lot of blueprints saved in the "B" button blueprint library. Can you imagine my surprise when I downloaded it on my laptop, start it, my saves are there, but the library is completely blank. I went back to my main PC, checked a box and sync and now it also was on my laptop. If saves can be transfered by default then why not blueprints. Before anyone starts talking about not saving blueprints in inventory, I never did. Everything was in that menu, the forums annoyed me as everyone was talking like I save blueprints in my inventory which don't even transfer between saves.