Count Items: in or on Transport / in Devices

[ssilk]

Coming from this suggestion viewtopic.php?f=6&t=32309 Logistics bot cargo should count as contents of network.

TL;DR
Items which are ...
- placed on belts
- carried in inserters
- carried in assemblers, burners, furnaces, miners, beacons, ...
- loaded into trains
- carried by robots
- and also fluids in refinery, assemblers, pipes, chemical plants...
- eventually also for items on ground, entities and ghosts
... should be countable. Which means in general

a) There are statistic screens for that (Therefore added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19987 More Game Information (Statistics, Monitoring, Graphs) )
b) The information can be used for circuit network.

More explained
Belts, logistic robots and trains can be seen as "rolling storage". And all of them can carry an astonishing huge amount of items, that needs to go into your calculations.

We have currently the logistic network info, which counts, how much items inside a logistic network are in logistic chests.
The same kind of info can be added to belts, robots and trains. But - because of the nature of this, that nobody needs all information - they have different ways to generate that info.

Info for belts, inserters, pipes, and other devices with internal stacks and slots
Because you will never need know, how much items are laying on all belts or carriend in inserters this needs to be counted locally. For that we need a device with an areal effect, like roboport, beacon etc. (but maybe smaller, just the size of a combinator maybe) and for every device or belt in range (and maybe also on ground, that is optional) the items are counted.

The device has a switch where you can click, what type of device you want to scan:
- belts (default on)
- inserters
- pipes (without fluid tanks - I think they should behave as logistic chests in that point)
- assemblies, refineries, furnaces, miners, burners, chemical plants, beacons (the modules in the slots are counted, too. This is eventually very useful when we are sometimes able to automatic switching of modules in devices).
- items on ground (very optional - maybe you want to see how much alien eggs are in that area).
- entities on ground (very optional, but that counts all non-moving entities in range, that have an item representation).
- ghosts (very optional; that constellation can control the construction progress of blueprints or increase production/request of needed items to rebuild a destroyed entity).

I think the default size of the range should between 100x100 and 200x200. Eventually the size of this area can be configured, making it smaller or rectangle to cover very long belts or avoid overlapping, because eventually the areas of two counting devices cannot overlap (performance and programming reasons).

The device shows statistic infos when you click on it (as electric network) and the current numbers can be taken out for circuit network.

Info for trains
For trains we have two scopes, that makes sense:
a) Trains in a station. You want to count the current number of items on every single wagon.
That is NOT part of this suggestion.
See viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28483 Get train content as signal from train stop
or viewtopic.php?f=6&t=31705 Mapping of Train(stop) properties as CN-signals )

b) All Trains not on a station and in automatic-mode: You will see the cargo of all trains on the map in automatic mode!
For me this means: The number of items are not always 100% exact. This is mainly due to performance reasons: The numbers are actualized in the moment, when the train starts from a station or each 5 seconds (balancing!). This means in general: You see the number of loaded items in the moment, when the train is not longer waiting at the station.
So the scope for this is much, much larger than for belts, which makes sense. So I think that information should be global (not local).
Simply place the train-item-counter-device anywhere and all items will be counted. You can place as many of the devices as you want.

Rest of functionality is as above: Click on it to see statistic, connect to circuit network to use information.

Info for bots
I think the scope is - due to logical reasons - limited to the same area as for the logistic network.
And I think we need to distinct between logistic- and construction-bots.
For that we have two devices, one for logistic-info and one for construction-info.

If installed it counts the number of items, the specified bots currently carry.

Rest of functionality is as above: Click on it to see statistic, connect to circuit network to use information.