Quick Adjustable Inserters

Quickly adjust inserter pickup and drop positions in world using a single key bind, SHIFT + F.

Hover an inserter, SHIFT + F
Hover the desired pickup position, SHIFT + F
Or hover the inserter and SHIFT + F to keep the current position
Hover the desired drop position, SHIFT + F

Stop adjusting an inserter by pressing SHIFT + F anywhere else, or instantly switch to adjusting a different inserter.

(If you are using SHIFT + F for another mod already, the community suggested ALT + SPACE or middle mouse button - maybe with a modifier - if you have it free.)

No Belt Stacking Support

Due to my lack of time to properly understand and implement belt stacking support (because my house/home got flooded), this library cannot estimate throughput when belt stacking is involved in any way.

(This sentence is copy pasted from Inserter Throughput Library, since it is maintained by me and QAI uses it.)

Place and Adjust

While having an inserter in hand/cursor, place it and instantly adjust it by pressing SHIFT + F instead of the usual left click.

Known Issue: Sometimes the inserter will be placed facing the wrong way. The mod tries its best to get it right, but there are cases that simply cannot be handled. Pipette an existing inserter (or entity with direction) and it will face the right way the next time you place an inserter again.

Mirrored Inserters only

There is a map setting (off by default) to restrict how inserters can be adjusted. WHen enabled the pickup and drop positions (tiles) must be exactly mirrored/opposite of each other in relation to the center of the inserter. Basically if you like a bit of adjustment, but being able to make inserters pickup and drop on 2 adjacent tiles is too over powered, this setting might just be for you.

Pipette copies Vectors

This is an opt in feature (a mod settings) to make smart pipette (Q) remember the pickup and drop vectors of the inserter that got picked, and applies these vectors to newly placed inserters. This stays in effect so long as the inserter is in hand/cursor.

Inserter Direction

While adjusting an inserter there are 4 big selection boxes on the outside of the adjustment grid. Hovering them and pressing SHIFT + F changes the base direction of the inserter while keeping the pickup and drop positions the same. This is useful to have consistent inserter directions for predictable copy paste and placement behavior.

Disabled by Script

Inserters are disabled by script while being adjusted, which works nicely with place and adjust. They won't start moving until adjustment is complete.

Inserter Throughput Estimation

This mod shows estimated inserter speed. By default only while choosing a drop position, but this can be changed in the mod settings.

It is using the Inserter Throughput Library, see there for technical details. If you are a mod creator yourself and one of your mods would benefit from inserter speed calculations and estimations, I'd recommend to take a look. The library also helps with ghost support.

Ghosts Support

This mod supports ghosts. Quite a bit went into it, but for you it's just that simple. It supports adjusting ghost inserters and throughput estimation works with ghosts as well.

Balancing

As a modded player there's some degree of balancing that you put upon yourself, to make the game and features fit for you. Many people consider adjusting inserters to be very over powered or they simplify the challenge of arranging setups properly too much. These are very valid concerns.

But what if you just wanted to be able to do some of the following?

only change the drop position ever so slightly within a tile (aka changing the drop offset, aka near/far inserters)
only change the range of inserters between 1 and 2, or maybe 3, keeping the drop offset unchanged and having inserters always swing 180 degrees
change inserters between cardinal directions and diagonal

Well with the settings this mod provides all of those restrictions are possible to be enforced. Simply by disabling some of the technologies through startup settings, as well as through the map setting to only allow mirrored inserters (180 degree swings).

The default settings are the least restrictive and therefore most powerful.

Compatibility

This mod handles all kinds of weird inserters. Not to say all of them, but a lot. Like diagonal inserters, off center, off grid or non square inserters. It can also co-exist with other inserter adjustment mods.

The technologies this mod uses are the same as Bob's Adjustable Inserters, but if it isn't present this mod provides its own technologies with the same names. This is not a dependency.

Smart Inserters

Smart Inserters has notably different settings, technologies and behavior. If it is enabled there are a few things to note:

(Note that this list may be out of date due to updates to SI which I've not had the time to look at.)

Smart Inserters will be the primary mod while Quick Adjustable Inserters will just be an addon. The technologies and related settings from QAI will be hidden and disabled, SI taking the lead
QAI handles long inserters differently than SI. For example with vanilla long handed inserters and a current range of 1, QAI allows you to pick positions 1 tile away from the inserter, while SI allows you to pick tiles directly adjacent to the inserter. I much prefer QAI's handling of this, so I'm not changing it
(note: once QAI has more key binds then...) The 2 mods have a very similar set of key binds, however the exact behavior may vary, especially in the more unusual setups. There's a notable difference in drop offset handling as well
SI does not allow having an inserter pick up from and drop to the same tile while QAI does. This may have been added as quality of life or to reduce UI complexity (both in code and to the user) or because of a different design decision, however for QAI it would be an increase in complexity in UI and code, and I see little gain from it
SI does not have a "Mirrored Inserters only" feature, so enabling it in QAI may be a bit awkward
Aside from those differences you can expect QAI to behave very similarly to SI in terms of which features are unlocked and when

Overall I personally am not a fan of a few of the design decisions in Smart Inserters, however I've added handling for most of them anyway because it is not my place to decide what other people may enjoy. That means if you enjoy SI you can add QAI and have fun with both mods.

Settings

All settings have tooltips/descriptions so there should be little confusion. Here's just a summary of what this mod contains.

There are settings ...

for when to show inserter throughput estimation
to show the default drop offset within tiles
for place and adjust to also pipette the inserter once done, to continue placing more inserters
for pipette to copy vectors, see section a little bit higher up

A map setting ...

to only allow mirrored inserters. The pickup and drop positions/tiles must be at the opposite sides of the inserter, see section higher up

As well as some startup settings ...

to choose which technologies should even be available (if Bob's Adjustable Inserters is present it will use its settings, but this mod adds 2 more settings so they'll unfortunately be split between the 2 mods in the settings list)
to normalize default inserter vectors, to make modded inserters more consistent

API

More range

The mod automatically detects more range technologies, they simply have to follow the naming pattern "long-inserters-"..number where number does not have any leading zeros. Technology hidden and enabled state and dependencies along side handling the settings for long-inserters-1 and long-inserters-2 would be 100% up to other mods.

Note that higher technologies should either not be created or be hidden and or disabled if one of the lower levels has been disabled through the settings bobmods-inserters-long1 and or bobmods-inserters-long2.

Remote

The mod provides a stupidly tiny remote interface called "qai". It's documentation is done through annotations so take a look at the end of the control.lua file, or unpack the mod and use intellisense if you're using LuaLS and FMTK.