Bilka wrote: ↑Wed Oct 04, 2023 11:39 am
18 (?)
Just a quick grep over my current install, to get an idea how many recipes are affected, but I failed to note the
"total raws" and "consumed by"
and any other row that could get influenced by other prototypes. I didn't mention it explicitly in my last post, but I was thinking about an outer base / space-age tab and an inner one for normal / expensive; not a single set of tabs for base / expensive / space-age / expensive+space-age. So each mod could have had it's own enabled / disabled tabs… but thinking this a step further, that's a set of checkboxes to enable each mod, maybe a persistent version of the quality toggle the
rimworld wiki uses.
Based on the FFF, the quality also introduces the recycler. So if there was an infobox row like "recycles into", that would be affected as well. And that's not just for each quality, but also affected by expensive mode changing recipe ingredients. Now, I don't know if this is a thing, but if space-age affects recipes then that will also interact with recycling, expensive mode and total raws to create even more combinations. The one thing preventing an explosion of combinations here may be whether some of the expansion mods depend on others, but that's another topic that's to be seen.
You might know more than we do
. From the FFF, a recycler simply gives 25% of the build cost, with some interface for modders in case multiple recipes produce the same item. Based on that I wouldn't mention the recycling results in every info box; maybe a line "Can (not) be recycled" (including a link to the mechanics page), and only make the recycling recipe explicit in the case of multiple production recipes. Overall, that's one line in the info box; I wouldn't introduce a mod tab/checkbox for that. (Although, it could also control the display of the additional qualities, since those come from the same mod.)
Both with quality and elevated-rails there will also be effects on the technology infoboxes to integrate any added/changed researched. So all that will need tabs or extra pages or icons or something.
(For "consumed by" see above.) Maybe I was assuming a separate tech for bridges there. That tech page would then be exclusively for the elevated-rails mod, so we could skip the elevated-rails mod tab, and instead mention it's mod exclusive near the top of the page. But, of course, it bleeds over into the "allows" section of the techs leading to it, which makes this another case of "consumed by".
Overall, I now think the safest option is a checkbox per mod, persistent across refresh and maybe hidden in some configuration menu/dropdown within the info box, makes the most sense. That approach will work regardless of how complex each mod is.
(If we were to continue my initial approach of considering quality and elevated-rails to be "simpler mods" that mainly add prototypes and maybe a mechanic or two, but don't rearrange things introduced by the other mods, overlaying the mod icon onto the icons in the "consumed by"/"allows"/… sections (similar to the yellow dot for newly researched recipes ingame) could work to keep the combinatoric explosion manageable. But having tabs or checkboxes for one half and icon overlays for the other feels inconsistent.)
With my example sentence I was thinking of the inserters putting things into space on the platform animation in FFF 373. That's the kind of information that would go on the overall inserters page, but the question is whether it should be an extra section or a sentence with a marker or an extra page or.... Definitely more FFFs needed here.
Oh, I missed that when reading the FFF. I blame reading it on mobile, great for text but terrible for complex pictures/animations. As presented there it's a single sentence, e.g. "When using space-age, items put on the ground on a moving space ship will slowly float southwards." (but note that I'm known for delivering the shortest text possible in any writing exercise), or a small paragraph. Currently, a dedicated page feels like overkill, but depending on future FFFs…
mmmPI wrote: ↑Tue Oct 03, 2023 1:58 am
It's hard to propose ideas to organize information when you don't have the information yet btw
Agreed! I likely would have made this thread much closer to expansion release but the conversation came up on discord, so I wanted to at least brain dump the various ideas I already had. And it gives more time for someone to walk in here and come up with something revolutionary :p
Agreed as well. And you, Bilka, alluded to future FFFs often enough that there's surely a few interactions/headaches to come.