View overhaul and collection of ideas

[JackGruff]

Intro

I have mentioned some of these things before in other threads but I thought I would collect all my ideas in this one (which is also in the correct sub-forum). Some things have been said before by others but need repeating for context.

Basically, the overarching idea is new views (like the production and electricity network views). All of them should be merged into one tabbed collection. You press a key and a view pops up, the default network is shown or the last you were on. At the top will be tabs of the other networks. From one place, the user can switch between all collections of statistics quickly. Think of some RPGs, you can press "i" to bring up your inventory, but that same screen also has buttons to go to your stats, magic and whatnot, and they can also have their own keys to bring them up immediately.

Logistic network

This could feature information such as...

• the number of bots in flight
• notifications of any manual intervention that is required, such as for bots that are stuck and unable to complete their orders
• any deficiencies in the network, bots that are queuing to long for charging
• statistics of orders, how many orders there are, what is being ordered and how much. The user could, for instance, compare the current count of orders with the amount of bots to find how many more bots he needs if there aren't enough to fulfil all orders at once.
• statistics of chests: counts of items (similar to what is seen when you mouse over a chest). Make it so that the ordering of such data does not change quickly, sometimes the counts of some items in the system are close yet change rapidly, this makes them bounce around very quickly and is annoying.

Mining

Includes...

• How many miners are active
• How many miners are idle
• How many of each resource (coal, copper ore, iron ore) is available to the miners

One more thing, the wiki states these as the networks: Transport, Crafting, Logistic, Circuit, Liquid, Electric, Railway. So perhaps you might want to rearrange some things to match, such as calling the production view "Crafting" and then putting all my points for Mining also under it.

I have not mentioned Circuit and Railway because I'm not a heavy user of these (yet, anyway). But I am sure you guys can think up of tons of things to stick in them. As for Liquid, no idea.

Summary

• All views are placed in a single collection of tabbed panels
• Each view embraces two things
  • statistics
  • feedback/notifications

[Avarant]

I agree... I think it's becoming more necessary, especially once liquid mechanics go in.

With everything that's already in game, I use up the majority of ground space, so I imagine adding a whole liquids network would need to be at least partially buried underground. This would be helped a lot by having an alternate buried-utilities view.

[immerhungrig]

I think that you should need a special building or robot that collects the information for the statistics like the bookkeeper in Dwarf Fortress. I think that it is difficult to imagine that a furnace is sending the information about his production wireless to the player. Maybe something like a factory control station where the player can view the statistics and can decide which information he want to collect. Every pice of information the station collects needs more energy or robots. And of course there should be a wireless device to access the statistics, but it has a limited range which the player can extend with transmitting mast or it works only in the range of robot stations connected to the control station.

[ssilk]

Hm. Yes I think this last idea is worth thinking.

Because I mean, that different logistic networks are very useful. But in a whole they build another network. They are like islands, which have needs and overflow. And this is also very important for multiplayer: both players can deliver automatically, if the logistic networks knew each other.

Lets assume this: We have two logistic networks and won't connect them, because they are 1000 tiles in distance. But I need to tell the other network, that I need now something, which only can be produced over there. So instead of logistic bots we have logistic train stations, which request it on the one side and deliver it on the other.