Distributing coal evenly by hand

[pat]

Not sure if Katherine is watching atm, but when I watch her early game videos, she'll grab as much coal as the miners have recently produced, go to a row of iron miners and/or furnaces that need fuel, and run down that row, quickly distributing the coal to power them. The only way I know to do that would be to <ctl>-left-click, to drop as much coal as can fit, or <ctl>-right-click, which will drop half of what you have. But this means that if you have 64 coal in your bag, the first miner gets 32, the next gets 16, the next 8, etc. Is this she's doing? Or is there a way to be more equitable when doing these quick drive-by feedings?

[THE kilroy]

I belive its control rightclick, will put half of selected stack in container of machine. As control leftclick put entire selected stack

[piccolo255]

Hold CTRL, hold down the mouse button (left or right), and drag the cursor over buildings.

[pat]

Originally posted by piccolo255:

Hold CTRL, hold down the mouse button (left or right), and drag the cursor over buildings.

Yes, that's what I'm doing. I don't think I'm being clear.

Let's say you lay down a row of ten boxes. Have a stack of 50 somethings in your inventory. Now run past the boxes, CTRL-right-clicking as you pass. The first box is going to receive half of your entire inventory. The next box is going to get half of what's left. The next will get half of what's left after that. Those last few boxes will get nothing.

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by pat:

Yes, that's what I'm doing.

You are most certainly not :)

Originally posted by pat:

Now run past the boxes, CTRL-right-clicking as you pass.

Don't "CTRL-right-click" as you pass. Hold CTRL. Hold a mouse button. Do not release the mouse button. Hold it down. Keep holding it down while moving the mouse over boxes. Drag the mouse over all of the boxes. Now, you release the mouse button. Do not release it before the dragging is over, keep it pressed.

EDIT: Whoops. This may not be vanilla behavior; it's been a while since I played without mods. I'm using Even Distribution[mods.factorio.com], which says it "Modifies vanilla behaviour for CTRL + Click Drag to evenly distribute the items over multiple buildings." I don't remember what was the original, unmodified behavior for CTRL+drag.

[The Undead Watcher]

Thats how that works, dont need any more control since you'll advancing past the manual stage(should be your first goal!)

[pat]

Originally posted by piccolo255:

I don't remember what was the original, unmodified behavior for CTRL+drag.

It is as I described. Each destination get's half of what the previous one got.

[THE kilroy]

To be clear, its not half of inventory, its have of what you have in your cursor, so if you had 4 machines and 4 stacks, and then you control left click(whole stack) you would place all of your hand in machine 1, then the ui would refill your hand from the inventory, then you have full stack again so each machine would get 1 stack.

It does evenly distribute, as long as you have more than enough.

[pat]

That's the problem. In the very early going (like the first several minutes), you're trying to get as much out of your machines as you can. So you run over to your coal miners, grab that 27 tons and bring it back to the iron miners.

[piccolo255]

As an alternative: if you CTRL-right-click on a building with an empty cursor, you can take half of the materials there back into your inventory. Then redistribute them into other buildings.

[The Undead Watcher]

Originally posted by pat:

That's the problem. In the very early going (like the first several minutes), you're trying to get as much out of your machines as you can. So you run over to your coal miners, grab that 27 tons and bring it back to the iron miners.

Tons, implying that you've overdone it. Usually i start with 6 Iron Miner/Smelter, 2 Copper(s) and
a 6 coal chain. Should switch to an early base ASAP, otherwise it will slow you down, not mention that you'll produce sh!ttons of Pollution while doing so.

[KatherineOfSky]

Hi Pat, I am distributing halves, and indeed it is uneven. However, I make several trips and trying to vary my feeding pattern so it all evens out.

[Warlord]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

Hi Pat, I am distributing halves, and indeed it is uneven. However, I make several trips and trying to vary my feeding pattern so it all evens out.

Yep. By the time a stack of coal in a miner runs out, you've usually advanced to electric miners and inserters auto-filling your dedicated smelter array anyway.

[pat]

Originally posted by The Undead Watcher:

Tons, implying that you've overdone it. Usually i start with 6 Iron Miner/Smelter, 2 Copper(s) and
a 6 coal chain. Should switch to an early base ASAP, otherwise it will slow you down, not mention that you'll produce sh!ttons of Pollution while doing so.

No, I wasn't implying anything. It just says 50 coal. I didn't imagine it meant 50 lumps of coal. Coal is generally measured in tons, or perhaps train car loads. I have pollution (and biters) turned off. Not really sure what you mean by switching to an early base.

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

Hi Pat, I am distributing halves, and indeed it is uneven. However, I make several trips and trying to vary my feeding pattern so it all evens out.

Ah, ok. You probably have a better intuitive understanding of how much coal is in your inventory and in each furnace/miner's intake container. You do it so fast that I figured you must have some sort of automated method to distribute everything.

[Lacisum Utama]

Its a mod you are looking for. Not entirely sure the name. I was just thinking about installing it as well

[The Undead Watcher]

An early base gives you acess to red and green science, some automation regarding building mats(Belts, Inserters, assemblers, Miners) so while you're researching all the green and red Tech, you can go work on your main Factory. Usually i just BP the early Mall Factory that CoS uses(used?)

Like i said, you don't wanna get caught up on manual labor for too long. Automate as much and as early as possible. Just saves you a bunch of time, but you decide how to play