Roboports should output missing materials to circuit network / Roboports emit signals with missing blueprint items

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into older topic with the same suggestion.

[NotRexButCaesar]

Just bringing this to the top so it will be more noticed. I think it would add a lot of interesting solutions, as well as a few useful/QOL solutions.

[TheRaph]

Sometimes the logistic network of an outpost has the need of certain items (it is shown as alert right next to the shortcuts).

What if you could connect a roboport to a circuit network and read out this needs? - You could send a train to that outpost with exacly the needed things - fully automated (and automation is what factorio is all about).

So please add a 3rd checkbox to that circuit-connection-box "Read missing items" - that would be great.
Alternativly you culd just use existing "Read logistic networks contend" and put negative values on the red and green wires. (so you can calculate existing - missing items)

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into older topic with same suggestion.

[Edit to answer TheRaph] : First thing is that I have read most of the posts in most of the sections of the forum (or skimmed through them at the very least), since I started moderating, 5 years or so ago. And I add an extra attention to new threads. At work, I 've been receiving around 150 mails every day for over a decade, and I face the same issue. My brain seems to have adapted to this situation and came up with a specific way of working. While I can't remember everything, I have a good way of indexing things in my head, and knowing what are good keywords to make a search and narrow down things to a few tens or hundreds items to check.

The more a concept seems to make sense from the average player's point of view, the more suggestions on this subject will be posted. The first step for me is to remember something on that global subject was posted. Or, when something seems so obvious that it just can't be the first suggestion on this. And then, an advanced search in the appropriate subforum with a few keywords that MUST be somewhere in a previous thread - if it really exists. Usually works. For example, for this specific case, I searched "roboport circuit", in "Ideas and Suggestions" subforum, only showing threads. First match was a hit .

The only issue is when suggestions are made in non specific threads (like in the FFF or release announcement threads), or in global multi suggestion threads like "here are all my suggestions on how to make the game better". I don't really care the latter : if someone doesn't make the effort to make a usable contribution, it's usually the sign that the poster doesn't try to make the game better, just more suited to his/her playstyle. The whole point of all this forum is on the contrary to make the best game possible for the majority of its audience, and there is enough to do with the meaningful contributions.

[TheRaph]

[Koub] Merged into older topic with same suggestion.

I now see why my searching for "needed items" not match "missing materials" ...

I admire you moderators for finding what belongs together - I'll never understand how you do that ... did you remember every toppic or use you kind of an in-brain-thesaurus?

Good job man

[ssilk]

Cannot speak for Koub, but for me it’s a mixture between rememberance (there was already something, you do only begin to search, when you think it was already discussed yet), Factorio jargon (also very important to know the right keywords), notion, intuition, remembering, some tricks and luck.

Some tricks: for example it might be so, that you find something, which is quite similar, but not exactly. What then makes sense is to search for articles, which link to this article. How? Just use the article number, like “87903”. You’ll normally those articles, which reference that one. That’s the reason, why I try to set up links to similar articles and being thankful to those, who also do.

[Jap2.0]

What then makes sense is to search for articles, which link to this article. How? Just use the article number, like “87903”.

...How in the world did I never realize this?

[myridium]

Has this really not been implemented yet?
It's not even a quality-of-life improvement, it's pretty much a necessity to automate construction projects. Sounds like it would be pretty easy to implement with a radio button.

[ssilk]

Sounds like it would be pretty easy to implement with a radio button.

Cool idea: implementing radio button to make things work.

I tried it: i made a plug-in for my IDE, which simply says: “implement wanted feature automatically”
If I put this button to “on”, I can watch my IDE implementing any feature I want.
This button spares me a lot of time...

Seriously: if you would have read the thread, you would know that this is not that easy to count the needed items at any time.

[ptx0]

Seriously: if you would have read the thread, you would know that this is not that easy to count the needed items at any time.

there's the little yellow alert in the bottom right where missing items are being scanned for, if that could be exposed in a circuit it'd be so nicccee

[ssilk]

This number is not the real one: only correct for small blueprints in one network. For many bps at the same time in different networks it is randomly or never correct. For very big bps it is never correct (always too low).

But if we had that number splittend by robotic networks, it would be sometimes correct in the best case, too low or nothing in the worst. I would go along with it (could use that somehow for automation) because it is much better, than never something.

[ptx0]

This number is not the real one: only correct for small blueprints in one network. For many bps at the same time in different networks it is randomly or never correct. For very big bps it is never correct (always too low).

But if we had that number splittend by robotic networks, it would be sometimes correct in the best case, too low or nothing in the worst. I would go along with it (could use that somehow for automation) because it is much better, than never something.

100% my thoughts on it, even if just available via mods interface

[ssilk]

Well, I would prefer to have always the correct numbers. And the https://mods.factorio.com/mod/GhostScanner mod works quite well, but uses just a lot cpu.

I read the description again, what it does:
reads entity ghosts
reads tile ghosts
reads item requests (modules) from ghosts
reads item requests (modules) from built entities
reads items required for upgrades
reads cliff explosives required (can not account for optimization by construction bot logic)
reads number of logistics cells (can be turned off in map settings)

Because I found that to be always correct I would like to have exactly that.

PS: I would add, that it reads also the deconstructed items on option and outputs it as negative.

Edit: there is also https://mods.factorio.com/mod/missing-circuit

[ptx0]

Well, I would prefer to have always the correct numbers

good luck, even the alert isn't correct.

[ssilk]

The mod is. Please read this thread.

[myridium]

Sounds like it would be pretty easy to implement with a radio button.

Cool idea: implementing radio button to make things work.

I tried it: i made a plug-in for my IDE, which simply says: “implement wanted feature automatically”
If I put this button to “on”, I can watch my IDE implementing any feature I want.
This button spares me a lot of time...

Seriously: if you would have read the thread, you would know that this is not that easy to count the needed items at any time.

The game already calculates the number of ghost items in a network internally, in order to assign logistic bots to complete construction. The internal mechanics of computing the number of items that need to be constructed is already complete. Likewise the developers have evidently already implemented a procedure for creating radio buttons that access internal properties of the logistic network (e.g. circuit readout of items present in logistic storage). It is a fair assumption that this feature request is probably *relatively* simple to add given the code infrastructure we can infer is already present in the game. In fact there's already a mod for it, https://mods.factorio.com/mod/GhostScanner, which I think illustrates this is easy to accomplish in the current API and just needs GUI elements to interface with the feature (which the mod provides). See the source code, https://github.com/Yousei9/GhostScanner, which is relatively small (I think about 1000 lines in total? I haven't browsed every file) especially when you consider it is partly reinventing the wheel. The developers could audit the code and incorporate it, cutting down the required work even further.

[ssilk]

The game already calculates the number of ghost items in a network internally, in order to assign logistic bots to complete construction. The internal mechanics of computing the number of items that need to be constructed is already complete.

No, it works incomplete. Please read the thread.

And you can watch this yourself: if you place a very big blueprint (more than 10000 entities), you can see, that the blinking “area of constructions”, that miss items “wanders” through the blueprint like a scanner: line by line is scanned from left to right, from top to bottom. The needed items come into a queue for the robots and the amount from that queue is presented in the alarm. The queue has a limit, the oldest entity in the queue is removed.i

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/GhostScanner, which I think illustrates this is easy to accomplish in the current API and just needs GUI elements to interface with the feature (which the mod provides).

Ghostscanner is the best example, why this is not in the game yet.

When you turn the numbers for maximum counted items up to more than 10000 in the preferences of ghostscanner and I place such a big bp, Factorio gets really, really slow. That is not a fail of ghostscanner, it is just so, that there is no API for that (because not needed internally, I explained above why) and so ghostscanner needs to scan the area with expensive methods to evaluate the right numbers.

This is a suggestion with very good gameplay value, but also very high effort for implementation.

[aaron311]

I, too, would really like this feature. But as stated in this thread, after thinking about the problem and looking at various mods:

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/GhostScanner
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/logistic-signals

I have also come to the realization that this feature:
A) is NOT at all easy to implement
and
B) would definitely require some thought as to what exactly was being "counted" in the output signals (i.e. just missing construction requests? missing logistics slot requests? etc. And what if the user of the output signals wants some subset of these values?)

----

My current approach is to sum the output signals from GhostScanner and two different scanner units from logistic-signals to produce a combined set of 'needs' signals. Of course, this has HUGE negative performance impacts on large files but seems to work well enough for temporary 'outpost' bases.

Another approach I've used is to eliminate GhostScanner and rely entirely on missing logistics requests from the logistic-signals mod. This massively increases performance but of course missing items for construction requests aren't handled. But, you can work around this by creating buffer chests that request some of each item in the game (thus, those requests get detected & satisfied, and once they are satisfied, the construction requests can kick off using the contents of the local network).

All this is to say is - perhaps a partial solution of 'output logistics requests that can't be satisfied' would be 'good enough' as an interim solution? Not sure how feasible / how much easier this is, but just an idea.

----

TLDR: +1 for feature, understand it's hard to do, and maybe consider a partial implementation?

Keep up the good work

Best regards
Aaron

[NotRexButCaesar]

would definitely require some thought as to what exactly was being "counted" in the output signals (i.e. just missing construction requests? missing logistics slot requests?

Just the "X items are missing construction material" alert items that are in the bottom right, but per network rather than global. Without actually looking at it, I don't think it would be too hard to implement that as a circuit signal.

And what if the user of the output signals wants some subset of these values?)

Then the user can filter them out with the combinators.

[Bertus]

TL;DR

To make onloading a construction train easier it would be nice to have a signal that contains all the entities of ghostst that cannot be placed because the entity is not available in a chest.

What ?

See TL;DR: Attach a wire to a roboport and you can select on the roboport that you want this singal (like you can select "read logistic network contents" and "read robot statistics").

Why ?

Makes selecting stuff to unload from a construction train in an outpost that is being built much easier.