Graph all the things!

[robhol]

Over the past few hours in game, I've been sort of wishing for a way to view graphs of several different values. The game itself provides electricity and production stats, of course, but if you want to graph something like the contents of a tank or inventory, you're more or less out of luck. Still, I really feel it could be useful.

My idea is this: a machine is connected to a circuit network. Through its interface, it lets you specify which signals to track. The graph is made available from the interface itself, as well as a "central" UI like eg. trains.

I'm not sure if this is moddable, but if it is, I might lend a hand. I know some Lua, but very little about the Factorio-specific modding.

[deepdriller]

This might also prove useful in testing circuit setups and remotely showing failures in the production line. I approve.

[ssilk]

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19987 More Game Information (Statistics, Monitoring, Graphs)

[AntiBlueQuirk]

I'd like to add support for this idea as well. Just recently, I was imagining that graphing circuit networks would be incredibly useful in many cases. The way I think this would work is to have a "Recorder" building with an circuit input. Clicking on it would bring up a screen like the production graphs, except the values recorded are those that were recorded from the circuit connection.

Myriad Uses:

• You could attach one to the belts leading out of your circuit factory and track its production over time, separately from your overall production.
• You could attach it to mines and oil fields to monitor their slow inevitable decline into uselessness.
• You could attach it to your crude output tanks to monitor the change in their ratios.
• You could attach it to a section of belt to monitor its compression.
• You could attach it to a roboport to track your logistics network contents.
• You could attach it to train stations to monitor when trains are arriving, and what they unloaded.
• I'm sure some people would even take to feeding arbitrary inputs into it and using it as a makeshift display.

Basically, such an entity would let the players break down their production graphs into subgraphs exactly how they want (which is a feature I'd like to see anyway), or even make production graphs of custom values like usage ratios and whatnot. If such a feature were implemented, it would be nice if Recorders were renamable, as well as clickable from the map view, like trains. Some upgrades to the graph views would not go amiss either.