That is really useful information, thanks.

That's good to know, thanks. That does improve the situation when using a few of the entities like Text Plates, but I worry about the overhead of adding millions of constant combinators to a scene if they are used for zones. I think it's likely that someone will at some point think it's a good idea ...

So this is weird.

find_nearest_enemy will find enemy units, spawners, worms, but also enemy gun turrets and radars, but not other enemy structures like assembly machines.

find_enemy_units will find enemy units, spawners, worms, but NOT enemy gun turrets or anything else not biter-specific.

Not sure if it's any use, but saw a post while back where someone was trying to do something similar to what you're doing (I think?): GIF: https://gfycat.com/NeighboringEvergreenConey Topic: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=25599 Github: https://github.com/msu320/turrets_API As ...

I'll be doing some testing on this, but does surface.find_nearest_enemy() return just units, units and turret, units turrets and unit-spawners, or any entity of an enemy force (such as enemy assembly machine)?

Are there any other side-effects of doing that?

So it seems to me that without the ability to set the smooth orientation of a turret, and without the ability to tell whether a unit is attacking in order to consume ammo, my only option that will actually work is to do everything with scripts... Frankly, it seems like a horribly inefficient solutio...

Yes, although now that I think about it's only the ghost version version actually needs that combinator slot so there could be another 'square' entity for a placed blank that does not need to be swaped on construction.

Thanks for the help on the ghost signal setup.

Another use case can be seen here:
viewtopic.php?f=93&t=34935&p=217749#p217749

Currently letters are using the constant combinator type because it has the least unwanted side effects, but still has an undesired UI.

Why is the entity type for the letters a constant combinator? Wouldn't it be simpler for the entity to be a decorative or a doodad type? As far as I can see there is no reason to need to be able to click on the letters and see the constant combinator GUI. They were originally the simple-entity type...

Have you tried or Types/CollisionMask

An now you can type in a message and placing blanks will place down the message characters/symbols in sequence.

Text Plate Blanks have been implemented now. Instead of making letters just make some blanks. With the blanks on your cursor you can choose what to put down using the UI. It saves on inventory space.

I've seen the recursive blueprints mod, it looks good but it's quite different from what I was thinking. It is what let me know that my idea was probably possible. He actually has quite a few mods that would pair well with Programmable Warfare but this is not that right thread for that discussion. A...

I imagine it won't be long before someone concocts a circuit network device for printing these out on the ground based on signal inputs. I'm thinking about a couple of structures for my Programmable Warfare mod that would be able to do that. The first is a structure where you pass in an item signal...

Text Plates Name: Text Plates Version: 0.1.5 Factorio-Version: 0.14.0 Description: Text shaped metal plates for signs and labels. Letters, numbers and symbols. Iron, copper, large and small variants. License: GNU LGPLv3 Release: 2016-10-21 Download-Url: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Earendel/textp...

It would be useful information to have. If turrets track kill counts then presumably there is some kill information in there somewhere. If it would need to be triggered at a different point in the code to work then maybe an on_entity_killed event could return the killed and the killer? From that per...

Please add LuaEntity.turret_orientation :: float [RW] for turrets and vehicles.

Please add for turret, unit, player, vehicle. LuaEntity.get_target() → {entity= LuaEntity , position= Position } If no target or not a turret, unit, player, vehicle the return value would be nil. If targeting ground (shotgun/cannon) it would just be: {entity=nil, position= Position } Also, LuaEntity...

Yeah you can edit the texture, I'm just trying to help out really so you can do what you want with it.

I hadn't really thought about a link, I guess my profile on the mod portal is best, thanks.