"Products Finished": Preserve Across Quick-Replaces

[airbreather]

TL;DR

Preserve the "Products finished:" counter value when quick-replacing a furnace, assembling machine, and/or anything else that works like those things.

What ?

When I go to quick-replace a furnace with a different level of furnace:


Its "Products finished" counter (new in 0.15) gets "reset" to 0:


I propose that the replacement's "Products finished" counter should keep counting up from the previous value. This feels similar to how inserters seem to keep at least some of their metadata (logistic network connection, filter settings) when quick-replacing them.

Why ?

When building out a base that survives for a "long" time (for me, anyway), evolving outward without fully replacing the original stuff, I usually seem to find myself with my first "serious" furnace setup still diligently smelting away. After upgrading to Steel Furnaces, losing the counters of items smelted since they were Stone Furnaces feels sad, for some reason.

[Rseding91]

It was decided during 0.15 playtesting that the produces produced wouldn't preserve across fast-replace because it's no longer the same machine. You changed it by changing the machine.

[BenSeidel]

+1.
Keeping number of crafts when quick replacing is more logical than setting it to zero because:
1) While technically the machine has been changed, the quick-replace acts more like an in-place upgrade (in terms of user experience) not a remove and replace
2) machine craft counts are not kept when you put the machine into your inventory.

It is also nice to know how many of an item a "build" has made, not an individual machine. This way you can see that your top green circuit build has produced 50% more circuits than your bottom build, highlighting an issue with the setup. If you could fast-replace the machines then you could use the count over the entire lifetime of the build, instead of having disparate numbers because of the order of the upgrading.

Edit:
Additionally, It also makes me sad.

[foodfactorio]

hi i would also like to suggest an option for Upgraded buildings to have a chance of retaining the value if possible?

(this would at least be very cool for buildings that we manually upgrade via quick-replace.... but i guess would be cool too for any that are upgraded automatically via bots and blueprints)

i would also like to suggest the name become Production Cycles (as mentioned on this thread) as i think this wording represents more accurately what it is actually counting: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51227&p=340692#p340692


one step further, could simply be to have 2 lines of text, to show:
"Production Cycles: Now:" xx
"Production Cycles: Old:" xx

Now: could show the amount of Production Cycles the current building has made.
and
Old: could show the amount of Production Cycles that any previous version of that building had made (and maybe could be obtained by getting the "Now" value on.fast.replace, and storing it as old + any existing old value (cumulative)?

[curiosity]

This is one of the more underrated suggestions. It's not a specific instance of the entity that's important to the player, but its meaning, which is its place and role in the factory. Preserving the count will match the meaning instead of a technicality.

It is especially relevant with the upcoming Quality mod, which will probably see the buildings being quick-replaced more than usual and across a longer playtime.

[Stringweasel]

+1

This can be argued to be one of the places where gameplay comes above realism. I've also many times looked at my machines' numbers produced, being frustrated that the number was reset at some point due to an upgrade. Big numbers are nice to look at, and it makes you feel connected to your factory.

[protocol_1903]

+1 qol upgrade, you will then know which assemblers made the most green chips