Factorio Forums

Posted: **Tue Aug 23, 2016 5:53 am**

While receiving some help from siggboy with a combinator contraption, he linked me to a thread to show me a "Schmitt Trigger". Within that thread there are multiple posts stating how we should have a Combinator Sub-Forum, as searching through the other subforums and all the posts is a bit too much when trying to find specific combinator logic. Even if someone has posted what you are looking for, there could be hundreds of other posts after it, and without reading through the whole thread you may not ever find it. I personally would love to have a combinator only sub-forum. It would aid all of us greatly in showing off combinator builds and learning the logic from other's builds.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28899&start=50#p189329

Posted: **Tue Aug 23, 2016 12:29 pm**

Hm. I know.

This is the topic you should point to:
viewtopic.php?f=55&t=28032 Idea: New Sub-forum for all combinator related topics!

It falls in my authority and I'm normally not so indecisive, but in this case I shifted it for some weeks now.

The reason for this is, that I counted about how much posts would fall into that new combinator category (I took about 100 posts and made a list in my head) and it was a bit low to make an own board out of the number of posts yet. Well, that might change of course in future, but it has another big problem: Most posts include, interesting other categories. Like energy, belt magic, etc. The biggest problem was, that I was many times (more than 30%) not able to put the posts in one category. And a side-problem: If we make a board for combinator problems only, why not also a board for belt problems. And so on. I think - and this is also an aspect of this - that most interesting problems in Factorio could not be shrinked to combinator only. Most times the problems are mixed. It makes no sense to build a combinator-array that regulates power without some more or less realistic setup, that needs power.

In other words: We where a bit too enthusiastic; It makes not so much sense to make one new sub-forum only for combinators. (*)

So my current idea of this is (see last posts of the linked thread), that we should implement some kind of tagging system in Show your Creations instead. Simply marking your subject with keywords like "[comb]", "[enrg]" etc. or combinations of that, to make them searchable.

My plan was to look then a while, if that works for Show your Creations, make eventually changes and then use the same rules for other boards.

I had no time (or better to be honest: not enough enthusiasm

) to announce that change.

If someone likes to speed things up, he can formulate such a sticky-article that explains the new rules and I will look, what I can do.

(*) I see some very specialized stuff like Schmidt-trigger etc. not in the forum. I think the wiki is much more useful for such things, cause such designs would not change much over time.

Posted: **Tue Aug 23, 2016 6:34 pm**

Thanks for the reply, ssilk. I whole-heartedly agree with you about the Wiki, the only thing about that is the speed with which we update it. It's great that it's public and anyone can edit it, but most people either won't think to do that, or they would want to but don't have the time (they might have the time but they spend it playing this amazing game instead of writing about it

). I'll try my best to update the wiki when I can, with information found on the forums.

As for the tagging system, that's a good idea, but I have two questions about it:

Would the search function filter titles out from individual posts within a thread? So maybe the main thread posted is called "[comb] [powr] How to turn steam on or off at night with combinators!" but later, someone replies to it with a post that has the title "[comb] [train] Unloading demanded materials from train using combinators". Now i realize that the second post there should just start a new thread, but if it uses the same combinator logic that the OP used in his steam controller, then I can see how the user might want to post his train implementation in the same thread, as it shows another use for the same logic.
Will the search function be able to handle people not putting spaces between the tags? For example, a topic is tagged as "[powr][comb]" (with no space in between). I search for "[comb]", will the search algo pull up that post seeing as how it is technically "one word"?

I might start a thread on the tagging system soon, but i'll just run some by everyone here:

Code: Select all

[circ]  = Combinators, Circuit Network
[powr]  = Power setups (POWA! UNLIMITED POWA!)
[belt]  = Belts, duh!
[train] = Trains, Stations, etc...
[build] = Production Builds  (red circuit factories, science pack factories, mining outposts, Oil processing, etc...)
[defn]  = Base defense, Methods of biter extermination (turret creep, etc...)
[deco]  = Decorative builds (would be more useful if we had more colors of concrete, or things like in 5-Dim's Decoration mod)
[misc]  = Use this if your creation doesn't fit in to any of the above categories
[mods]  = Include this with any of the above tags if what you are showing off relies on a mod / is not possible in vanilla

Any and all of the tags can be combined together if your post relates to more than one topic. Try to limit your tags to a max of three (3) tags in your title, this will reduce clutter and keep things more concise / easy to find. Don't tag your post with something that it is not related to just to get views. I am still undecided on whether there should be a "[misc]" tag or not. I personally can't think of anything that would NOT fall in to any of the other categories, the tag just seems unneeded. I put it here to see what others would think. This could be hard to enforce, but with a sticky explaining how posts / titles should be formatted, users would have no reason to NOT do that. The only thing users do by not using this system / mistreating it is disservice themselves (possibly at the cost of a deleted thread). If no one uses this system, they just make it more complicated for themselves to find what they are looking for. If the majority of people use this system, then the few who don't risk having their topic overlooked / not seen (and I personally want my topics seen).

If this system gets enough approval, I'll start a dedicated thread on it, so a mod can sticky it.

Posted: **Tue Aug 23, 2016 8:32 pm**

komrade_toast wrote:So maybe the main thread posted is called "[comb] [powr] How to turn steam on or off at night with combinators!" but later, someone replies to it with a post that has the title "[comb] [train] Unloading demanded materials from train using combinators".

Of course. The search in phpbb works on a simple word basis: Any text in an article is indexed, including the title.

Now i realize that the second post there should just start a new thread, but if it uses the same combinator logic that the OP used in his steam controller, then I can see how the user might want to post his train implementation in the same thread, as it shows another use for the same logic.

That changing of title is yet already possible, but not often used.

Will the search function be able to handle people not putting spaces between the tags? For example, a topic is tagged as "[powr][comb]" (with no space in between)

"powr" and "comb" are the two words the indexer will find, cause "[" and "]" are non-letters - as space. In other word: Space is not needed if using brackets.

I might start a thread on the tagging system soon, but i'll just run some by everyone here:

Code: Select all

[comb]  = Combinators, Circuit Network
[circ]  = Combinators, Circuit Network
[powr]  = Power setups (POWA! UNLIMITED POWA!)
[belt]  = Belts, duh!
[train] = Trains, Stations, etc...
[build] = Production Builds  (red circuit factories, science pack factories, mining outposts, etc...)
[oil]   = Oil processing, etc...
[def]   = Base defense, Methods of biter extermination (turret creep, etc...)
[deco]  = Decorative builds (would be more useful if we had more colors of concrete, or things like in 5-Dim's Decoration mod)
[misc]  = Use this if your creation doesn't fit in to any of the above categories
[mod]   = Include this with any of the above tags if what you are showing off relies on a mod / is not possible in vanilla

Very good job.

But I forgot to say, that we should use only words with 4 chars, cause the search currently needs minimum 4 chars.

And I would not allow aliases, cause that makes searching more complex.

Rest of the post is very useful. I will wait what others may add.
If we find a new category makes sense, then we just can add it.

I would also not restrict, if someone doesn't use this system. Why not?
I see that as a sign, that it isn't yet perfect enough and needs to be optimized.

Posted: **Tue Aug 23, 2016 10:43 pm**

ssilk wrote:Very good job. But I forgot to say, that we should use only words with 4 chars, cause the search currently needs minimum 4 chars.

Thank you! I went ahead and edited my post as to remove the aliases and three letter tags, I kept the 5 letter ones as they are above the 4 character minimum. As for restricting, i didn't mean we should force people to use it, that is entirely up to them. I merely meant that people should try to be as concise as possible, and only use a few tags. That would avoid extra-long titles and make finding specific posts easier.

ssilk wrote:
komrade_toast wrote:Will the search function be able to handle people not putting spaces between the tags? For example, a topic is tagged as "[powr][comb]" (with no space in between)
"powr" and "comb" are the two words the indexer will find, cause "[" and "]" are non-letters - as space. In other word: Space is not needed if using brackets.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. I figured there should be no issues, I just don't know the internals of the search algorithm.

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