Seperate Overlay for Building Rarity

[Yessica_]

I suggest that in-game display of a placed building's rarity should be on a separate and unique overlay from "ALT mode."


I noticed that screenshots in FFF-375 show item rarity overlaid on top of the placed buildings. This feels visually cluttered to me, and as a player who always plays with "ALT mode" enabled, I am concerned for the increase in visual clutter.


In the above screenshot, the rarity indicator on the inserters covers most of the inserter.
Additionally, arrows from inserter directional indicators are overlapping with the rarity indicators of the assembly machines.

If the rarity icons were on a separate overlay from all the information currently contained in "ALT mode," this visual clutter could be reduced by the player.
Additionally, the rarity overlay could have expanded visuals that would otherwise be too cluttered for typical use. The icon for base rarity could be displayed on all buildings for instance, so you can visually see which buildings are standard rarity instead of only being able to see upgraded rarity icons.
This would make it easy to find that one weak wall without having to use an upgrade planner.

The new overlay could be unlocked and added to the toolbar with the research that first unlocks item rarity.
I do not mind the position of the rarity indicators on buildings, it feels clear which icon belongs to which building, but I believe the user experience could be improved. With rarity on a separate overlay, the rarity indicators could be increased in size and better centered - helpful for many 1 tile buildings near each other.

Mockup of both overlays enabled:


Mockup of only the expanded rarity overlay enabled:

[MEOWMI]

I'm not 100% sure if another view mode would be required, but it is definitely a possibility, and I completely agree that it can make alt-mode quite cluttered. Alt-mode is so incredibly convenient, that I find it genuinely quite hard to play without it on, despite how much I prefer seeing the game's actual visuals.

Thinking about it a bit more, I suppose that you would definitely want to be able to see the rarity of your buildings at a glance, so that you don't have to check entities one-by-one, but there's no question that it adds a lot of clutter. It is also true that it can overlap with other UI features, as seen in the in-development screenshot, and things like filter inserters could pose an even bigger problem (requiring even more icons all within a 1x1 space). It looks OK on item icons like the recipes and modules because the entities beneath are larger, and although it's a bit small on those icons, they seem acceptable.

The mockup looks very clean, the only think I'm unsure about is whether it's exactly the right choice to add it as a separate view.

[wobbycarly]

Alt-mode could be extended to allow the player to choose what to include/exclude, like the mini-map options.

[Stringweasel]

It would be cool to have some toggles like in the map view. The different toggles could be:

- Show recipe/item overlay (old alt mode)
- Show inserter/miner/etc arrows
- Show quality
- Show electric network (nice to have)(similar to Pipe Visualizer or Oxygen Not Included)
- Show fluid network (nice to have)(similar to Pipe Visualizer or Oxygen Not Included)

[morsk]

Alt-mode could be extended to allow the player to choose what to include/exclude, like the mini-map options.

I made a suggestion about this once in 2020. I don't know if there are others. It's here:

Choose What's Included in "Alt" vs. Always On