Search in crafting recipes should search in ingredients, too

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alefu
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Search in crafting recipes should search in ingredients, too

Post by alefu »

When searching in the crafting window, the search terms are only matched against the recipe titles. I would love to find recipes with matching ingredients, too.
Sometimes you want to know what those advanced circuits are needed for, to plan the layout of your factory...

I guess this is mainly a problem because I currently play with Bob's and Angel's mods and therefore have many more recipes than in a vanilla game, but it is a valid request for vanilla, too.

Another change I suggest would be to switch from "OR" to "AND" logic when multiple search terms are entered. When I enter "steel plate", I want to find, well, "steel plate" - so everything that has "steel" AND "plate" in it's name, not everything that has "steel" OR "plate in it's name.

Thank you very much for this great game, and sorry for any grammatical or spelling errors.

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Re: Search in crafting recipes should search in ingredients, too

Post by DukeAl »

I would agree that the search function is pretty useless in its current state. Please include the ingredients.
Same goes for the research window. If it would include the effects in the search it would make way more sense.

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Re: Search in crafting recipes should search in ingredients, too

Post by alefu »

There is a new mod called "What is it used for?" that kind of solves this problem, although ingame support would be superior and the mod does not adress research as DukeAI suggested.

Another suggestion for easy search for ingredients: When having an item at the mouse cursor and clicking the search icon of the crafting menu, it should directly search for recipes having that item as ingredient and recipes that produce given item.

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In_Rust_I_Trust
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Search Function Tweak

Post by In_Rust_I_Trust »

I had an idea that the search function could be changed to search for more things, and display them a little differently.

I can only find objects by typing the name of them, but this doesn't really fit in to play with the reasons people might use a search engine.

I might try searching for green circuit boards to be able to select green circuit boards, but I could also be searching for any recipe that happens to include green circuit boards as a reagent.

Essentially, being able to use the in-game engine as an information resource rather than needing an external wiki. The research selection page already seems to have a great UI for this. Just mimicking the image of the object, and showing the images of the component objects.

I imagine this would be separated into two sections of a scrollable text section. The first section would be for the "these are the object names that you might be looking for" section, sorted by relevance as in search engines, and the second would be in the the "here are the objects that need this ingredient as a component in their makeup". It would help with planning factory layouts.

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[QoL] Make the search for recipes match product names

Post by valneq »

I realized that the search function for recipes only matches the recipe names. For vanilla this may sound like a non-issue because all the recipes are named after their products, right? Wrong!

Especially the chemical recipes in the oil processing pipeline have multiple products, and names that do not (always) reflect all their products.
This is becoming very confusing (for new players) who up to this point may have always looked for the product icon, or searched for the product name. Up until oil processing this method works, but oil processing is the first where this intuition about how the recipes work indeed breaks.

Below is an example of a late game state where I search for heavy oil among my recipes.
From searching for heavy oil, it is not clear how to produce it. In contrast, you can search for pretty much any other item or fluid and you will find a recipe for it. Either because the recipe name is the item name, or because the product name is explicitly mentioned in the recipe name.
heavy.jpg
heavy.jpg (78.55 KiB) Viewed 4112 times
While I am aware that the next update of the icons will deal with the oil processing icons, the current icons are not very informative about the products for oil processing:
oil_processing.jpg
oil_processing.jpg (103.75 KiB) Viewed 4112 times
But I think the current state of vanilla translates very well over to modded games. Overhaul mod packs like Angel's & Bob's or Pyanodon's have rather complicated recipes. And their names or icons do not always reflect their products.

In Angel's, several recipes list all products in the recipe name string just to have the search function find the recipe when players search for a product. However, the tooltips for the recipes already list all of the ingredients and all of the product so listing it again in the recipe name is really just a workaround for the search algorithm.

Currently most people playing heavily modded games rely on third party mods like FNEI just to find out how to craft a specific item. Considering that vanilla has a search function for the recipes, this sounds redundant.

I would like the recipe search in vanilla to search for products in addition to recipe names. Maybe just match primary products (which I believe may be defined internally for the different recipes). If other people think this makes searching obnoxious, maybe have this as an additional option next to fuzzy search. And if this becomes an option in the settings, maybe make an additional option to match ingredients, too.

Furthermore, this change would make it more in line with the current search function for technologies which already searches through the stuff that is unlocked and not only the technology names, see here:
heavy_tech.jpg
heavy_tech.jpg (131.83 KiB) Viewed 4110 times

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I would like to search the crafting menu by ingredients.

Post by midknightwraith »

It is quite frustrating to try and learn the build heirarchy in reverse. It is good to be able to search for a thing. It is also equally helpful to be able to search for the stuff a thing can be crafted into. And that regardless if you have the ingredients and/or technology for it, so you can plan better.

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Re: I would like to search the crafting menu by ingredients.

Post by Koub »

Also a similar previous suggestion, albeit only requesting the search to include recipe products : viewtopic.php?f=6&t=85218
Koub - Please consider English is not my native language.

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Re: I would like to search the crafting menu by ingredients.

Post by MassiveDynamic »

This is pretty cool. I think it has everything you want.

https://factoriocheatsheet.com/

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valneq
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Re: I would like to search the crafting menu by ingredients.

Post by valneq »

I think that this issue is manageable in vanilla. When you play overhaul mods that add unreasonableinteresting levels of complexity, you can always add one of
  • FNEI
  • Blueprintbook
  • What is it really used for?
Or go all in and plan entire production chains with
  • Helmod
  • Factory Planner

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eradicator
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Re: I would like to search the crafting menu by ingredients.

Post by eradicator »

Am i the only one that remembers that "Recipe explorer" was once a drafted feature? I thought it was also briefly described somewhere but i can't find anything.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-277
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-282
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Re: I would like to search the crafting menu by ingredients.

Post by ssilk »

Cool suggestion: Eatable MOUSE-pointers.
Have you used the Advanced Search today?
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Re: I would like to search the crafting menu by ingredients.

Post by NotRexButCaesar »

valneq wrote:
Sat Oct 17, 2020 3:11 pm
I think that this issue is manageable in vanilla. When you play overhaul mods that add unreasonableinteresting levels of complexity, you can always add one of
  • FNEI
  • Blueprintbook
  • What is it really used for?
Or go all in and plan entire production chains with
  • Helmod
  • Factory Planner
Don’t forget “Recipe book”:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RecipeBook
—Crevez, chiens, si vous n'étes pas contents!

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valneq
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Re: I would like to search the crafting menu by ingredients.

Post by valneq »

AmericanPatriot wrote:
Sun Oct 18, 2020 5:41 pm
valneq wrote:
Sat Oct 17, 2020 3:11 pm
I think that this issue is manageable in vanilla. When you play overhaul mods that add unreasonableinteresting levels of complexity, you can always add one of
  • FNEI
  • Blueprintbook
  • What is it really used for?
Or go all in and plan entire production chains with
  • Helmod
  • Factory Planner
Don’t forget “Recipe book”:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RecipeBook
Damnit, I did it again! I meant Recipebook and I wrote Blueprintbook.

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Re: Search Function Tweak

Post by ickputzdirwech »

I am in necro mood today.

This is the same suggestion as 33669
Mods: Shortcuts for 1.1, ick's Sea Block, ick's vanilla tweaks
Tools: Atom language pack
Text quickly seems cold and unfriendly. Be careful how you write and interpret what others have written.
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ickputzdirwech
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Re: [QoL] Make the search for recipes match product names

Post by ickputzdirwech »

A similar suggestion but not the same: 48078
It’s about searching the ingredients as well.
Mods: Shortcuts for 1.1, ick's Sea Block, ick's vanilla tweaks
Tools: Atom language pack
Text quickly seems cold and unfriendly. Be careful how you write and interpret what others have written.
- A reminder for me and all who read what I write

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ickputzdirwech
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Re: I would like to search the crafting menu by ingredients.

Post by ickputzdirwech »

This is the same idea as this one: 33669
Mods: Shortcuts for 1.1, ick's Sea Block, ick's vanilla tweaks
Tools: Atom language pack
Text quickly seems cold and unfriendly. Be careful how you write and interpret what others have written.
- A reminder for me and all who read what I write

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ssilk
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Re: Search in crafting recipes should search in ingredients, too

Post by ssilk »

merged a ton of threads
Cool suggestion: Eatable MOUSE-pointers.
Have you used the Advanced Search today?
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I still like small signatures...

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