Another title for this thread would be "How to count exactly how many produced items were made?"
I know the machines themselves have the amount produced if you hover your mouse on it; but I don't think this information is available to the circuit network, is it?
If not, what would be the options? And how would you implement (cheaper better)?
Thanks a bucket!
113050 Plastic bars
Re: 113050 Plastic bars
You are correct, the number of product made isn't available to circuit network.
There is the production tab ( hotkey P is default i think) that is not precise for 113050 it would show 113k but it would carry over if you upgrade or remove some assembly machines.
Otherwise i think it will be your task as player to make sure you are summing up products from every place that make them with circuit network. I'm saying this because one way to "count" item produced could happen by reading the content of every inserters after every single machine, or you could count how many item pass through a single belt, that could yield the same result with a little delay, in a furnace array that would be less precise, but way cheaper to only do the counting in a single belt at the end.
The way i see the "counting" work with circuit conceptually is "reading" a quantity overtime, and making a sum of the variation that occured. So for an inserter, you could wire it and set to "read hand content", and use "pulse" mode . In such mode everytime anything is picked up by the inserter it will send a pulse, not sure how familiar with circuit, you can store those pulse in an arithmetic combinator doing a dummy operation like "each + 0 output each ", i'm describing this setup from the wiki :
https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Circ ... _/_Counter
Doing this on a belt works similarly, a belt can be set to "read content" and "pulse" too. I think those would be the necessary logic to "count" and be able to read the result later. The arithmetic combinator can be replaced by fancier mechanism to reset, or maybe some additionnal combinator could be required, if you have to sum different inserters they could share the same arithmetic combinator but it may be easier to have different ones for organisation or measurement.
I can't think of a mod that would provide such option directly/precisely but some have item counters , not sure if you consider mods could be valid options.
There is the production tab ( hotkey P is default i think) that is not precise for 113050 it would show 113k but it would carry over if you upgrade or remove some assembly machines.
Otherwise i think it will be your task as player to make sure you are summing up products from every place that make them with circuit network. I'm saying this because one way to "count" item produced could happen by reading the content of every inserters after every single machine, or you could count how many item pass through a single belt, that could yield the same result with a little delay, in a furnace array that would be less precise, but way cheaper to only do the counting in a single belt at the end.
The way i see the "counting" work with circuit conceptually is "reading" a quantity overtime, and making a sum of the variation that occured. So for an inserter, you could wire it and set to "read hand content", and use "pulse" mode . In such mode everytime anything is picked up by the inserter it will send a pulse, not sure how familiar with circuit, you can store those pulse in an arithmetic combinator doing a dummy operation like "each + 0 output each ", i'm describing this setup from the wiki :
https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Circ ... _/_Counter
Doing this on a belt works similarly, a belt can be set to "read content" and "pulse" too. I think those would be the necessary logic to "count" and be able to read the result later. The arithmetic combinator can be replaced by fancier mechanism to reset, or maybe some additionnal combinator could be required, if you have to sum different inserters they could share the same arithmetic combinator but it may be easier to have different ones for organisation or measurement.
I can't think of a mod that would provide such option directly/precisely but some have item counters , not sure if you consider mods could be valid options.
Re: 113050 Plastic bars
Thanks mmmPI
I'll take a look at those combinators.
No, using mods right now is not an option. I'm playing strictly vanilla for this specific game.
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The problem with counting by looking into inserters is that they are many. It is really hard work to link all of them. So, this solution is not that a good approach.
The other solution, looking into the belts, I'm not sure.... It seems, how can I put it? "unreliable"? But maybe this is the better way. I don't like much the idea of losing control of the real number when we redesign some belts, for example. That is difficult to achieve.
Chests are no good when they are emptied by another inserter.
There should be a way to grab that number of an item in the whole production. This is Factorio, the game screams for automation and control. I guess a "feature request" would be to allow red wires to read the number a machine has produced, maybe? But lets not go to wishful thinking. Practical solutions would be better.
If you guys have any other ideas on how to count items, that would be great. Also, if the game is played correctly, the begin of the game we don't have access to red / green wires, and items that I want to count will already be running free on the belts everywhere. So there is that.
Thanks anyhow. This is just an amazing game and it brings us the best of our "puzzle solving" efforts.
I'll take a look at those combinators.
No, using mods right now is not an option. I'm playing strictly vanilla for this specific game.
---
The problem with counting by looking into inserters is that they are many. It is really hard work to link all of them. So, this solution is not that a good approach.
The other solution, looking into the belts, I'm not sure.... It seems, how can I put it? "unreliable"? But maybe this is the better way. I don't like much the idea of losing control of the real number when we redesign some belts, for example. That is difficult to achieve.
Chests are no good when they are emptied by another inserter.
There should be a way to grab that number of an item in the whole production. This is Factorio, the game screams for automation and control. I guess a "feature request" would be to allow red wires to read the number a machine has produced, maybe? But lets not go to wishful thinking. Practical solutions would be better.
If you guys have any other ideas on how to count items, that would be great. Also, if the game is played correctly, the begin of the game we don't have access to red / green wires, and items that I want to count will already be running free on the belts everywhere. So there is that.
Thanks anyhow. This is just an amazing game and it brings us the best of our "puzzle solving" efforts.
Re: 113050 Plastic bars
It is also possible to "read" the quantity in a chest over time and sum up the variation, it is a bit more complex combinator usage because the chest doesn't get config settings to act as a pulse generator. You need to generate pulses from a chest, which one can do by "read the quantity" and "read the quantity with a very short delay", a delay that last the time of 1 pulse. I can develop if you are interested but as you say and i agree it can be an "unrealiable" way to count item produced, if an inserter take away some iron from a chest and put it on a belt, then maybe that belt loop around and another inserter is putting that same iron on the chest over and over, you would end up counting time, not iron, this is another purpose
The same risk of counting several time the item, or missing some item that can happen on belt is countered with more wiring, to all the inserters, which can be done in some blueprints with robots to make it less work, but that comes even later in the game than circuits.
To me this is a similar problem of keeping track of exact number when redesigning belts, if there is "some place" where the counting is done, this is like asking student in a class to leave the room and count 1 for the first student, and then increment by one for every student, 2 3 4. Except it's not student in a room it's item produced but like student it's important to have a precise count. If you redesign belt, it's like the teacher that need to stop counting for a minute, to keep the number accurate you need to stop at precise number, and keep track of that number, and resume at that exact number while not allowing any item/student, to slip through the counting procedure. ( closing the door/ cutting the belts/ the power, and counting every single item that comes up until the counter stops).beco wrote: ↑Sun Jan 14, 2024 2:15 amIf you guys have any other ideas on how to count items, that would be great. Also, if the game is played correctly, the begin of the game we don't have access to red / green wires, and items that I want to count will already be running free on the belts everywhere. So there is that.
If you need to keep track of things without circuits, you would need to do such things with a pen and paper i think, same as if you really want to account to everything that player could manually produce. I'm not sure what is the purpose, mods could do such things or console command for the purpose of tracking achievement, but that is not gameplay things and i figure not what you're after either.
I think from a gameplay side of things you can "know" how many item were manually crafted if you look at the achievement tab, for the "lazy bastard" one, i don't remember exactly how it is shown but it is made so that you know if you have failed it or not, so that can give you indications early game, but it's not as precise as to tell you which particular item were manually crafted, and for 113050 that would be a lot of pen and papering to do.
I think to keep the count accurate before and after circuits a combo of pen and paper early game, and "unreliable" circuit contraption introduction when possible is the way to go but i also think those are unsettling answers, my mind kept going at it like it's not good solution, but i couldn't find elegant one, it is difficult to work backward such as somehow use the blueprint item to tell you what is built on the map, and thus what was made and consumed for the construction of the factory, because of things that get wasted if you remove an assembly mid cycle, or if you shoot ammos and got some things destroyed.
The counting precisely all items in general is more difficult than in some situations. like only the science pack, you can find from your current tech level and if modules were used, and you didn't move the lab unless they were all empty.
TL DR :
Disclaimer 113050 plastic bar that's 113K plastic even for circuits, one does not read easily large number even with circuits :/ , it's possible to subtract 113000 so as to read the 50. There would be other usage of combinators ( or mods) required to display every digits of large numbers that's also a puzzle in itself which you CAN and NEED to do with circuits, whereas it's (unfortunately) not possible to see more precisely the numbers from the production tab, to my knowledge , and also not possible to get those numbers if not by some exhaustive wiring made even worse if one requires more precision and handling more cases.
Re: 113050 Plastic bars
With slightly too much time on my hands, I created a small factory and tried to count the several materials.
The ore was counted by reading the belt(s) in pulse mode, because the miners work without inserters.
Every other material was counted by reading hand content pulses of the output inserters.
My observation:
- it's a chore to keep track of inserters, when you start rebuilding/redesigning your factory and moving stuff around
- belt reading is a good choice, as long as you have a clear separation between outgoing belts from producers and incoming belts for consumers.
The counting itself is trivial. You need one single decider combinator and optionally a constant combinator, if you want to have the ability to reset the counter to 0.
I had to use some kind of visualization, so the Nixie tube display. With plain vanilla Factorio without mods, you can read the circuit directly, but as soon as values exceed 1000, you get 1K, 1M, etc, so it's not an exact display.
The ore was counted by reading the belt(s) in pulse mode, because the miners work without inserters.
Every other material was counted by reading hand content pulses of the output inserters.
My observation:
- it's a chore to keep track of inserters, when you start rebuilding/redesigning your factory and moving stuff around
- belt reading is a good choice, as long as you have a clear separation between outgoing belts from producers and incoming belts for consumers.
The counting itself is trivial. You need one single decider combinator and optionally a constant combinator, if you want to have the ability to reset the counter to 0.
- Screenshot 2024-01-14 143753.png (1.49 MiB) Viewed 521 times
I had to use some kind of visualization, so the Nixie tube display. With plain vanilla Factorio without mods, you can read the circuit directly, but as soon as values exceed 1000, you get 1K, 1M, etc, so it's not an exact display.
Re: 113050 Plastic bars
You guys gave me a lot of "food for thought" that I will try to implement in some ideas and post a feedback here later.
Thank you Tertius and mmmPI;
On a quick note, since I had no time to a more elaborated answer now, I just want to note that this last "Friday Facts" is very interesting.
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-394
It says that the new yellow machine (assembly 3?) will be able to connect to the circuit network. That is in my opinion a game changer in this regard.
Thoughts?
PS. I tried it today, to no avail; but it seems it will be available in a future version.
Thank you Tertius and mmmPI;
On a quick note, since I had no time to a more elaborated answer now, I just want to note that this last "Friday Facts" is very interesting.
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-394
It says that the new yellow machine (assembly 3?) will be able to connect to the circuit network. That is in my opinion a game changer in this regard.
Thoughts?
PS. I tried it today, to no avail; but it seems it will be available in a future version.
Re: 113050 Plastic bars
You too hahah i'm still left wondering why you would want to know precisely the number of plastic bar produced to the single unit precision. It never occured to me that this would be quite difficult, i'm always using the production tab , with "all time" to see such numbers but never really wanted more precise numbers.
I was under the impression that also the lower level of assembly would be able to connect, but maybe i got that impression from reading the comments, those FFF have started back again like a countdown toward the announced "space age expansion" after some time of silence and hard work ^^.
I had played with the https://mods.factorio.com/mod/crafting_combinator mod, which was doing something similar but implemented a little differently, especially regarding changing receipe mid cycle, or what would become the extra ingredients that were inserterd before the receipe was changed.
If you consider the possibilities that would be unlocked by the feature annouced in the FFF, would that be a game changer for counting item produced ? , i'm tempted to say yes and no, in a way instead of counting at the inserter or in a belt, it would allow to count everytime a receipe is finished. So it would reduce the number of wire needed if you had more than 1 inserter outputting item. It would be more precise than counting from belt, there would never be any item "not counted". But it would still require some kind of incremental counter whose history would need to be managed in the same way, since the assembly wouldn't output the number of craft it has ever done, but rather 1 1 1 1 1 everytime an item is made so the logic would be similar and still difficult to keep track of every item from every place.
I think the future feature will be easier to use than the mod which was already requiring minimum circuit once bots are available. When you are still at the belt tech, it's a bit tricky to manage the not yet processed input that are outputed. But once you get it working, hopefully it can makes mall super compact with all the "same" machines but changing receipe so as to meet some request, no more need for 1 machine per receipe even those very rarely used !