Rename certain terms to improve new user experience

[ktjones]

In response to Twinsen's FFF-191 stating that "Factorio has to be a good game
from the perspective of new players", here are some renaming suggestions based
on my recent experiences as a very new player (made using Factorio V0.15.37):

- rename "Inserter" to "Transfer Arm"

When I needed to remove plate from a furnace I assumed an Inserter wouldn't do
it and looked for a Remover instead.

- rename "Circuit Network" to "Control Network"

The network that handles logistics functions is referred to as the Logistics
Network. Since the Circuit network handles control functions, calling it the
Control Network seems more consistent and precise.

- rename "Assembling Machine" to "Assembler"

- rename "Steam Engine" to "Steam Generator"

I assumed a Steam Engine might also be used to pump water, drill for ore or
pull freight. If it's only used to generate electricity, calling it a
generator seems more precise.

- rename "Stone Furnace" to "Burner Furnace"
- rename "Steel Furnace" to "Fast Burner Furnace"

The Stone Furnace is named after what it's made from. So is the Steel Furnace
but I thought its name might mean that it only makes steel. And the Electric
Furnace is named after what powers it. Since both the Stone and Steel Furnaces
are powered by burning fuel, calling them Burner Furnaces and distinguishing
them by their speed seems more consistent.

- rename "Productivity Module" to "Production Efficiency Module"
- rename "Efficiency Module" to "Power Efficiency Module"

Both modules increase efficiency. Naming them by the kind of efficiency they
increase seems more precise.

- rename train schedule "Wait Condition" to "Wait Until Condition"

The Wait conditions all seem to wait until a specific event or condition
occurs. Adding "Until" to the name would make this more explicit.

- rename train schedule condition "Time Passed" to "Time Elapsed"

I thought that "Time Passed" might refer to a time when the train passed the
station.

[5thHorseman]

Rename "Logistic Bots" to "Transport Bots."

I am going to come out and admit: I did not use logistic bots for my entire first playthrough because I didn't know what a logistic was or why I would want a bot to do it.

[JohnyDL]

I'd like to add 2 more to this list

In Power "Satisfaction" should be "Power Demand" and "Production" should be "Power Supply"

Since the bars total tell you how much is Demanded or Available to be supplied and the green bar tells you % of which is fulfilled(satisfied)/used(produced) rather than naming it after the green bar. People generally understand Supply and Demand imo better than production and satisfaction.

[Rseding91]

- rename "Inserter" to "Transfer Arm"

Not likely... The names are Factorio names - to change them would be the same as asking to change the names of characters in something like Overwatch - it's just never going to happen.

[JohnyDL]

Rseding are there locale plans couldn't this just be a 'simplified english' locale language pack thing rather than changing for everyone. You know like Minecraft has Pirate but no-one actually calls a piston "old block pusher" or whatever it is

[Jap2.0]

Rseding are there locale plans couldn't this just be a 'simplified english' locale language pack thing rather than changing for everyone. You know like Minecraft has Pirate but no-one actually calls a piston "old block pusher" or whatever it is

Ah yes, that old Minecraft easter egg .
I think having a "simplified English" language is actually a pretty good idea. One or two of those changes might be okay, but most of them simply are too much of a change for long-time players (like Rseding said), or I wouldn't consider worth it.

[JohnyDL]

Honestly if there was a Locale pack like that I'd mix and match it together, I like inserters and the names of entities but making the GUI clearer would be something I'd want to do if I wanted to let someone else play on my computer

[5thHorseman]

The worst thing I can think - far worse than having misleading terms now - is for every new player to be using different names for everything than we do when asking us questions.

[Loewchen]

- rename "Steam Engine" to "Steam Generator"

That would be an even worse name, a Steam Generator is a device that produces steam, not power from steam.

[Escadin]

I'd like to add 2 more to this list

In Power "Satisfaction" should be "Power Demand" and "Production" should be "Power Supply"

Since the bars total tell you how much is Demanded or Available to be supplied and the green bar tells you % of which is fulfilled(satisfied)/used(produced) rather than naming it after the green bar. People generally understand Supply and Demand imo better than production and satisfaction.

It took me a good 100 hours to get used to these terms. Up until then I always had to figure out from context which one is supposed to be which every time I took a look. I know there is more information to them than just supply and demand but that information is mostly irrelevant to me.
If renaming terms is really a thing then this is the prime candidate.

[Escadin]

- rename "Steam Engine" to "Steam Generator"

That would be an even worse name, a Steam Generator is a device that produces steam, not power from steam.

How about steam power generator?

[eradicator]

I'd like to add 2 more to this list
In Power "Satisfaction" should be "Power Demand" and "Production" should be "Power Supply"

Except satisfaction and demand mean different things. If it is "demand" then why does the "demand" bar turn red when it goes down? Why is a lower % of demand bad? Because the bar shows satisfaction and not demand. The german translation had a discussion about this a while ago. It is very important that the behavior of the satisfaction bar makes sense with the new wording, which for demand it does not. Also according to this list demand (506), produce(444), production(696), satisfy(1209) and satisfaction(1702) are all amongst the 2000 most common english words (for reference "yes" is only place 743.) so even if "demand" was appropriate wording your case of "better" understanding would be too marginal to be relevant.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

- rename "Steam Engine" to "Steam Generator"

That would be an even worse name, a Steam Generator is a device that produces steam, not power from steam.

How about steam power generator?

How about... "Steam powered turbo generator" and while we're at it we'll also rename the steam turbine to "Turbo alternator". .

[bobingabout]

A steam engine converts air pleasure produced by steam into drive force. The steam engine in the game does that.
The steam engine in the game produces electricity.
An electric generator would convert drive force into electricity.

The most accurate name for the machine would be "Steam engine electric generator", it's like a 2 in 1 entity.

Inserter... It's a mechanical arm.

Assembling machine is already widely known as an "Assembler", it's like a nickname for it, everyone knows what you mean.

I dig burner furnace name change. the tier 2 though... Burner furnace MKII?

modules.... would that also mean you want the Speed module to be a Speed efficiency module?
Efficiency module... might benefit from a name change, Productivity, not so much.

[JohnyDL]

I'd like to add 2 more to this list
In Power "Satisfaction" should be "Power Demand" and "Production" should be "Power Supply"

Except satisfaction and demand mean different things. If it is "demand" then why does the "demand" bar turn red when it goes down? Why is a lower % of demand bad? Because the bar shows satisfaction and not demand. The german translation had a discussion about this a while ago. It is very important that the behavior of the satisfaction bar makes sense with the new wording, which for demand it does not. Also according to this list demand (506), produce(444), production(696), satisfy(1209) and satisfaction(1702) are all amongst the 2000 most common english words (for reference "yes" is only place 743.) so even if "demand" was appropriate wording your case of "better" understanding would be too marginal to be relevant.

The whole bar is the energy demanded when the green bar is less than 100% full you're still demanding the energy of the black bit of the bar even if it's not being fulfilled/satisfied.

This is why I say it's confusing, the word is used 2/7ths as often (as far as can be determined from writing I think in general speech it's far less than that, I recall orders of magnitude more instances of supply and demand being discussed in person than satisfaction) and its used in a completely different manner most of the time. Supply and demand are usually used in the context of goods and services "the price is so high cause there's not enough supply for the demand", satisfaction in how happy people are "are you satisfied with your meal?". I suppose that could stretch to how happy the machines are but it's not intuitive in the same way. Imo

The only time I ever use satisfaction in the manner it's used in factorio is when someone asks what it means and I explain the power supply and demand translation.

As you say looking at it from the perspective of the bar's behaviour production and satisfaction kind of make sense but to native English speakers I think the change in language would be intuitive. If the same is not true in German or French or Chinese then the concept can be a different name in those locales.

Personally I'd like to see my potential supply and demand displayed anyway guessing I need 2x the power based on a red satisfaction bar isn't in my opinion the easiest thing to do 1.6/2.3MW demand (or satisfaction) and 1.6/1.6MW supply (or production) and 2.3/2.3MW demand (or satisfaction) and 2.3/4.1MW supply (or production) would make sense and be easier. The bar being an easy visual indicator and the numbers being helpful in knowing how to fix it. The names could then indicate the numerator or denominator without the same mix up you think swapping the name in German would cause.

[eradicator]

The whole bar is the energy demanded when the green bar is less than 100% full you're still demanding the energy of the black bit of the bar even if it's not being fulfilled/satisfied.

The word has to describe the green part of the bar though. That is how bars work. The user does not assume that the "empty" part of the bar is more important than the filled part. Someone on reddit described satisfaction as "the percentage of demand being fulfilled". Thus if satisfaction is defined in relation to demand, then you can not simply replace it by "demand" you'd have to call it "fulfilled demand".

This is why I say it's confusing, the word is used 2/7ths as often (as far as can be determined from writing I think in general speech it's far less than that, I recall orders of magnitude more instances of supply and demand being discussed in person than satisfaction) and its used in a completely different manner most of the time. Supply and demand are usually used in the context of goods and services "the price is so high cause there's not enough supply for the demand", satisfaction in how happy people are "are you satisfied with your meal?". I suppose that could stretch to how happy the machines are but it's not intuitive in the same way. Imo

The word frequency was supposed to illustrate that all those words are so common that there is barely any difference in understanding. Unless you're saying that you understand the meaning of "demand" 7/5th better than the meaning of "yes". I'll have to concede that the usage context is different though, but "to satisfy a condition" is also a commonly used concept. E.g. "Does your new appartment satisfy the conditions you set yourself as a minimum standard?" It's not always about "happiness".

As you say looking at it from the perspective of the bar's behaviour production and satisfaction kind of make sense but to native English speakers I think the change in language would be intuitive. If the same is not true in German or French or Chinese then the concept can be a different name in those locales.

The german thread commend was meant as an example to show the importance of the connection between GUI element behavior and wording. Not to continue that German-language discussion in here. Also i'm not too sure if factorios main audience is "native" english. Would be interesting to get some statistics about that ^_^.

Personally I'd like to see my potential supply and demand displayed anyway guessing I need 2x the power based on a red satisfaction bar isn't in my opinion the easiest thing to do 1.6/2.3MW demand (or satisfaction) and 1.6/1.6MW supply (or production) and 2.3/2.3MW demand (or satisfaction) and 2.3/4.1MW supply (or production) would make sense and be easier. The bar being an easy visual indicator and the numbers being helpful in knowing how to fix it.

Doesn't the demand structure change during outages because every entity attempts to charge its internal buffer at full speed? So every assembler that doesn't do much work normally would still count as a full-demand assembler and thus skew those numbers.

Finally i don't think that forcefully "dumbing down" the english translation (yes, it still is a translation - of abstract concepts to common words) to some imaginary level of "easier to understand for common users" is a good idea, because this has no lower limit. Think about why "simple english" on wikipedia is a seperate language and has not completely replaced all english articles.
If you only have one of two words available (because of GUI space) then adequately explaining some things is simply impossible, and every wording you chose will always "confuse" someone. Why not add a tooltip to the Electric Network info instead?

[JohnyDL]

This is why I say it's confusing, the word is used 2/7ths as often (as far as can be determined from writing I think in general speech it's far less than that, I recall orders of magnitude more instances of supply and demand being discussed in person than satisfaction) and its used in a completely different manner most of the time. Supply and demand are usually used in the context of goods and services "the price is so high cause there's not enough supply for the demand", satisfaction in how happy people are "are you satisfied with your meal?". I suppose that could stretch to how happy the machines are but it's not intuitive in the same way. Imo

The word frequency was supposed to illustrate that all those words are so common that there is barely any difference in understanding. Unless you're saying that you understand the meaning of "demand" 7/5th better than the meaning of "yes". I'll have to concede that the usage context is different though, but "to satisfy a condition" is also a commonly used concept. E.g. "Does your new appartment satisfy the conditions you set yourself as a minimum standard?" It's not always about "happiness".

Haha no I'm saying that purely on usage you can't determine that. Yes has 1 meaning and is one of maybe the first 50 words an english native learns and in toddlerhood it's probably one of the top most used words along with "no" "mommy" and "daddy", it means "Yes" Synonyms include "Correct" and "Affirmative" and "Agree", saying that it's as comprehensible as a word that's got 4 syllables and multiple meanings is wrong. More than one of the meanings of satisfaction could apply to this situation and that leads to conflicts and confusion. A counter example is according to this list "set" is the 189th most used word but set according to the oxford english dictionary has 21 distinct definitions and 42 variants not to mention 34 phrasal uses and 3 definitions from sett which many people drop the second t not realising this is wrong. Simply saying that it's obvious because it's a common word is meaningless if multiple uses in multiple ways conflate the use of the word, the use in factorio is one of the uncommon ones, for me, and I assume many others.

The whole bar is the energy demanded when the green bar is less than 100% full you're still demanding the energy of the black bit of the bar even if it's not being fulfilled/satisfied.

The word has to describe the green part of the bar though. That is how bars work. The user does not assume that the "empty" part of the bar is more important than the filled part. Someone on reddit described satisfaction as "the percentage of demand being fulfilled". Thus if satisfaction is defined in relation to demand, then you can not simply replace it by "demand" you'd have to call it "fulfilled demand".

Actually in English and in the context of "Supply and Demand" the notion of the green bar and black bar being taken together is fairly common, Supply unused is still supply and demand unsatisfied is still demand. I'm kinda thinking this is something that's commonly taught at early high school in maths/statistics class even if people don't come across it in later life (at least in england).

The german thread commend was meant as an example to show the importance of the connection between GUI element behavior and wording. Not to continue that German-language discussion in here. Also i'm not too sure if factorios main audience is "native" english. Would be interesting to get some statistics about that ^_^.

I totally agree with you that GUI elements should match with what they're showing and for me the labeling of the bar Satisfaction and Production was simply put confusing and bad labeling because it labeled the bar and the following value it so when taken in it was as the whole not just the green bit.

Doesn't the demand structure change during outages because every entity attempts to charge its internal buffer at full speed? So every assembler that doesn't do much work normally would still count as a full-demand assembler and thus skew those numbers.

Nope the demand is still there it's just unsatisfied if the demand wasn't there the bar would always be full green and never go black with shortages. I'm not sure it it came across in how I said stuff but 1.6/2.3MW Demand is "the amount actually used by the energy system"/"The amount the system would like to use if there were unlimited power" or conversely with 2.3/4.1MW supply "the actual amount of power being made"/"the total amount that could be made if there were an infinite demand" the numbers that mean those things are already worked out or the green and black bars wouldn't display, just tell them to the user.

Finally i don't think that forcefully "dumbing down" the english translation (yes, it still is a translation - of abstract concepts to common words) to some imaginary level of "easier to understand for common users" is a good idea, because this has no lower limit. Think about why "simple english" on wikipedia is a seperate language and has not completely replaced all english articles.

I don't think that this is "forcefully dumbing down" for the case of supply and demand, it may be a common concept but that doesn't make it a simple one, though there is clearly "dumbing down" for other suggestions in this thread (hence why I suggested a simplified english locale). Personally I think supply and demand is a better translation. I'm trying to think of an example.... okay french "j'ai mal a la tete" literally "I have a pain of the head", my suggestion is akin to saying it would be better to translate "j'ai mal a la tete" to "I have a headache" than "I have a concussion" which is possibly a less precise translation in a number of ways but the first option is understandable almost universally.

I think this happened because the concepts in the other language are understood in different ways than in english. Take the German word "schadenfreude" translates as "the pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune" but if I were trying to translate in the other direction english to german and I didn't know the word schadenfreude existed in German, that the concept was a singular word almost universally understood I might try to explain the words "the pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune" in a similar length, completely ignorant of how it might have been better to say it.

If there is no comparable concept to "Supply and Demand" in Dutch or Greek or Somali or whichever language was the original for the word then the alternative definition might not have come up as an option or even if it did it might not have been understood in the same way due to a language barrier. It's kind of like the Ancient Greeks described the sky as Bronze because Blue wasn't a colour to them there was no adequate translation of blue in ancient greek, instead they considered the sky to be shiny like bronze and that was a close enough concept, so because of a lack of a word there was no understanding of the concept or the concept was understood in a different way. Even if there was an ancient greek scholar learning a language with the colour blue they either might not get it or they might use it wrong or they might just not worry about it thinking it an odd word that wasn't important

If you only have one of two words available (because of GUI space) then adequately explaining some things is simply impossible, and every wording you chose will always "confuse" someone.

It's not like either word I'm suggesting is longer than what we have already, so a longer explanation isn't needed. It would be if its "Demand Fulfilled" or "Supply Used" but I'm saying that literally isn't necessary in english because it's almost a tautology, the one word is enough without the department of redundancy department getting involved and adding the second word. I think the people it will confuse are people either who haven't come across the concepts of supply and demand before probably children and it's an opportunity to teach them about capitalism and/or people who're playing in a second language in which case it's an opportunity to use words that might have a benefit to them in real interactions with native speakers rather than something that will only lead to further confusion down the road, given that a new concept has to be learned anyways isn't learning the more useful one better?

Why not add a tooltip to the Electric Network info instead?

I wouldn't say no to more tool tips and more information in factorio though so my question is: why not both?

[eradicator]

@JohnyDL
You're still trying to justify replacing "satisfaction", which is a function of "demand", with "demand" itself. To me what you're saying is on the same level as proposing to replace "acceleration" with "speed" because they're "similar enough" and "speed is a better understood concept". I can not agree with that assertion at all.

Actually in English and in the context of "Supply and Demand" the notion of the green bar and black bar being taken together is fairly common,

Maybe if they're displayed as one combined bar. But we're dealing with 4 values on two bars here. Each bar showing a relation ratio:
"Current Production == Utilization"(colored) to "Production Capacity == Supply"(black) ratio
and
"Consumed Energy == Satisfaction"(colored) to "Required Energy == Demand"(black) ratio
And when there's only one label on a bar like that it usually describes the colored, more important, part.

I totally agree with you that GUI elements should match with what they're showing and for me the labeling of the bar Satisfaction and Production was simply put confusing and bad labeling because it labeled the bar and the following value it so when taken in it was as the whole not just the green bit.

And for me satisfaction was immediately obvious and very good wording. While i consider "Demand" plainly wrong and not just "confusing", like i said above.

"the amount actually used by the energy system"/"The amount the system would like to use if there were unlimited power"

I merely stated the fact that brown/blackouts actually increase that second value because of the energy buffer system that factorio employs and the fact that the values on the energy graph are averaged current values and not maximum values. Just becaues an inserter can constantly consume 100W that doesn't mean that it on average does. I can agree that two numeric values per bar would be nice though, but they need to be meaningful :<.

I wouldn't say no to more tool tips and more information in factorio though so my question is: why not both?

Sure both if someone comes up with a good wording that is universally regarded to better translate the concepts that are shown into english. And until then the tooltip would be a stepping stone.

given that a new concept has to be learned anyways isn't learning the more useful one better?

Given the opportunity, isn't it better to teach them the less common concept? Because obviously they have a higher chance to learn the more common concept somewhere else. I've personally learend about a lot of uncommon concepts from games. And i'd know a lot less if all of those had been replaced by something i already understood just because someone complained that they had to *gasp* ask about something instead of it being immediately obvious. And isn't factorio, and aren't games in general, supposed to be about figuring stuff out? If you really want to go the road of that kind of argument...


You mentioned a german word "schadenfreude" to demonstrate the discrepancy between a concept and the ability of a (any) language to concisely describe said concept. And i think the problem here is that english simply does not have a word that is both concise and common to describe the concept. So unless you want to drop into the realm of inaccuracy you'll have to drop one or the other. In "buisiness language" it is common to talk about "meeting a demand". But if we nominalize "meet" into "meeting" the meaning completelly changes. And besides during a brownout you're not meeting the demand anymore so the label would be wrong again.

[JohnyDL]

@JohnyDL
You're still trying to justify replacing "satisfaction", which is a function of "demand", with "demand" itself. To me what you're saying is on the same level as proposing to replace "acceleration" with "speed" because they're "similar enough" and "speed is a better understood concept". I can not agree with that assertion at all.

I disagree with this as well I'm not talking about a rate of change. I'm talking about stock taking in a shop. This is a much more apt description, I sell crisps, I can store upto 20 bags of crisps, and 17 people come in each day to buy them my supply is 20, my 'production' in this case is 85% because I have to buy 17/20 more to refill to full, my demand is 17 and my satisfaction is 100% because I fulfill all the orders. As a shopkeeper what's more important to me? is it my % or is it my raw numbers? Well the % is important if I'm doing too badly on my % then I'm spending money I don't need to on product and storage that goes to waste, but those raw numbers mean a whole lot more if I'm at 20 with my raw numbers I can maybe buy myself a bag of crisps once a week with my proffit, at 20,000 I can possibly pay my rent.

Actually in English and in the context of "Supply and Demand" the notion of the green bar and black bar being taken together is fairly common,

Maybe if they're displayed as one combined bar. But we're dealing with 4 values on two bars here. Each bar showing a relation ratio:
"Current Production == Utilization"(colored) to "Production Capacity == Supply"(black) ratio
and
"Consumed Energy == Satisfaction"(colored) to "Required Energy == Demand"(black) ratio
And when there's only one label on a bar like that it usually describes the colored, more important, part.

this is a fundamental misunderstanding I'm taking the words supply and demand together cause it's easiest to explain the concept of them together but on graphs of supply and demand they're different take this

images

or

or

Its fairly common to see supply and demand graphed against each other or next to each other

the black bits of the bars in factorio are mutually exclusive and represented by the red and blue shaded area in the first image you never put them on the same bar.

Either supply and demand are on the same scale and next to one another so you can see the difference by comparison which wouldn't be terribly useful in factorio, or you have them like factorio's bars where the maximums are displayed and the % used fulfilled is highlighted

"the amount actually used by the energy system"/"The amount the system would like to use if there were unlimited power"

I merely stated the fact that brown/blackouts actually increase that second value because of the energy buffer system that factorio employs and the fact that the values on the energy graph are averaged current values and not maximum values. Just becaues an inserter can constantly consume 100W that doesn't mean that it on average does. I can agree that two numeric values per bar would be nice though, but they need to be meaningful :<.

Unless I've misunderstood something somewhere but I think the sum of the internal buffers is that amount the system would like to use if there were unlimited power and full useage, each tick an assembler or anything else tries to fill its buffer to full, the speed limit is the size of the buffer per tick, so the internal buffer emptying or not is simply not relevant to that calculation. Demand doesn't accelerate as it outstrips supply.

given that a new concept has to be learned anyways isn't learning the more useful one better?

Given the opportunity, isn't it better to teach them the less common concept? Because obviously they have a higher chance to learn the more common concept somewhere else. I've personally learend about a lot of uncommon concepts from games. And i'd know a lot less if all of those had been replaced by something i already understood just because someone complained that they had to *gasp* ask about something instead of it being immediately obvious. And isn't factorio, and aren't games in general, supposed to be about figuring stuff out? If you really want to go the road of that kind of argument...

There's "less common" and there's counterproductive. This is not a kin to should a snake be called a serpent or vice versa, or should we use precise sword names like rapier over alternatives, because clearly it's a weapon and giving a vocabulary lesson on the side is kinda sneaky awesome. It's more like a cooking game that say's "NaCl dust" instead of "Salt" yes NaCl is table salt, and dust shows it's powdered and not chunks of the stuff, but going into a shop to buy some NaCl dust thinking that's the common way people understand it and looking for that not finding it and then asking for NaCl dust would cause confusion to the person buying the salt and the employee of the store.There may be times and places where using NaCl in a game or real life is better than Salt, say a science game or buying chemistry supplies because in Science salts are any ionic bonded solid, but in the concept of food it's confusing.

Similarly in the concept of energy an "electrical supply" is a reasonable concept most people will understand, "electrical production" well that's how the electricity is made not how much electricity is made, an "electricity demand" is again a reasonable concept but "electrical satisfaction" is just confusing most people see electricity as on or off, there's either enough power to make the computer turn on or there isn't there's rarely a 50% state they'll understand, so to say an electrical device is satisfied or partially satisfied or not satisfied doesn't enter into it, it's either alive and working or it's dead as a doornail, bereft of power it rests in peace. Even with internal battery power 10% is "the laptop works the same as 100%" but at 5% it shuts down. A clock is the only time I can think of where satisfaction is obvious and most people won't see a low battery turning clock hands slower than expected as the battery unable to satisfy the demand they'll see it as a battery that is at 0%, is useless and needs replacing.

You mentioned a german word "schadenfreude" to demonstrate the discrepancy between a concept and the ability of a (any) language to concisely describe said concept. And i think the problem here is that english simply does not have a word that is both concise and common to describe the concept. So unless you want to drop into the realm of inaccuracy you'll have to drop one or the other. In "buisiness language" it is common to talk about "meeting a demand". But if we nominalize "meet" into "meeting" the meaning completelly changes. And besides during a brownout you're not meeting the demand anymore so the label would be wrong again.

The words "Supply" and "Demand" are more than sufficiently concise and common labels to describe the concept in english, no need to say you're meeting the demand or using the supply, 1 word and a shorter word than the one that's used at the moment with more utility. I also don't think you lose any additional accuracy loss a google search for the concepts couldn't correct, where as to fully understand production and satisfaction, well every youtuber basically adds it as a tutorial every time they open up the electical menu because they feel it needs explaining to newcomers, and each time they basically reference supply and demand.

But the right wording that satisfies power outages and not is "Demand met" as a label for the green bar but really that's not necessary in context demand is enough how much has been met or satisfied or fulfilled, and how much hasn't is obvious because you never say the demand is 50% unless it's in terms of supply (demand is 50% of supply) and in that case you'd have some absolute value for the supply. You'd never see Supply and Demand next to each other in terms of % of each other because well it has no grounding, so if they're next to each other displayed then they're absolute values.

And for me satisfaction was immediately obvious and very good wording. While i consider "Demand" plainly wrong and not just "confusing", like i said above.

I'm going to take a bold guess that english isn't your first language (and I might be wrong so don't take offence at the rest of what I have to say if I am). You're very fluent in it but you're viewing this through an internal translation barrier.

Shouldn't you be trying to make your own locale version more better for you if it's so bad you have to use the english one? I know a lot of games don't translate into other languages (or translate poorly) and playing in english can seem like the better version of the game (even if the game doesn't start life in english) but the english locale should be primarily written for people who don't speak other languages like the german locale should be for people who only speak german, etc. I'd never consider going onto the german thread you mentioned and saying that the words should be literal translations of supply and demand because I don't know german, I don't know the coloqualties of the language, and in german maybe the concepts that literally translate as "production" and "satisfaction" might be the right ones for the people there that don't speak other languages to get exactly what the bar means with no extra thought or effort.

I do however know english, it's my only (non trivial) language (I'm pretty sure Navi and Klingon don't count as languages ) so when the opportunity comes up to make my locale version the best it can be for people who only speak my language I'm going to be opinionated. Even if I'm wrong. My opinion is that for english only speakers the single words "Supply" and "Demand" as I've said before are enough to replace "production" and "satisfaction" due to reasons of

- "Supply and Demand" being a well known, widely used, easily researchable and generally better understood general concept that applies in the game where the "production" and "satisfaction" labels sit within electricity.
- Typing into google "production and satisfaction" or "production" or "satisfaction" won't pull up results that are near the same magnitude of usefulness in understanding their use in factorio as "supply", "demand" or "supply and demand" would
- I think more than anything else in the entire game these two words are the biggest "language being the barrier to understanding what something does" that I've came across and there are times it still makes me stop and think rather than be intuitive.

[eradicator]

@JohnyDL

I'm going to be opinionated. Even if I'm wrong.

If you're stating that as your premise, then why am i even talking to you? I'm going to write one more answer and if you don't come up with some good argument after that i'm gonna call this discussion a stalemate and move on.

I found this very nice explanation of what "demand" in the context of electricity means. Here's an image from that article:

image

As you can see what you're trying to call "demand" is actually called "consumption". This should also explain to you why i'm saying that it's difficult to put numbers on that bar. As the average consumption in the second case is still 1KW, but during that period when they're turned on it would actually show as 10KW. I'm not sure why you struggle with the concept of an assember/etc not busy all of the time when they produce faster than their product is consumed, because that is the exact situation i was talking about. That aside i do agreed on having two numbers there. I just stated that calculating some of those numbers is more difficult than you make it seem. But i'd very much prefer having that discussion not dilute the main point of wheather "demand" is a suitable translation here. Which it is not.

this is a fundamental misunderstanding I'm taking the words supply and demand together cause it's easiest to explain the concept of them together but on graphs of supply and demand they're different take this

The fundamental misunderstanding is on your part. Like i have stated before my concern is exclusively about the wording in relation to the behavior of the bars in the GUI. In factorio the most common scenario is to have a 100% filled "satisfaction" bar next to a partially filled "production" bar. Because you have more capacity than you need. Now if we label those two "demand" and "supply" then suddenly the "demand"-bar is much larger than the supply bar. Which would indicate that you need to build even more capacity if you were going by comparison to those images you posted. But you refuse to acknowledge that demand is not a suitable synonym of satisfaction here.

Similarly in the concept of energy an "electrical supply" is a reasonable concept most people will understand, "electrical production" well that's how the electricity is made not how much electricity is made, an "electricity demand" is again a reasonable concept but "electrical satisfaction" is just confusing most people see electricity as on or off, there's either enough power to make the computer turn on or there isn't there's rarely a 50% state they'll understand, so to say an electrical device is satisfied or partially satisfied or not satisfied doesn't enter into it, it's either alive and working or it's dead as a doornail, bereft of power it rests in peace. Even with internal battery power 10% is "the laptop works the same as 100%" but at 5% it shuts down. A clock is the only time I can think of where satisfaction is obvious and most people won't see a low battery turning clock hands slower than expected as the battery unable to satisfy the demand they'll see it as a battery that is at 0%, is useless and needs replacing.

Except in factorio there very much is a state between "on" and "off" which is "not fully satisfied" and results in machines working at reduced speed. And if "people" don't know about that they need to learn it for playing the game. The most common example in real-life is probably a torchlight that gets dimmer and dimmer when the voltage slowly drops on the battery as it gets near "being empty". Also your battery example is about accumulators, which work the same in factorio.

The words "Supply" and "Demand" are more than sufficiently concise and common labels to describe the concept in english [...]

Sure, they're concise and common. Except like i said again and again i think "demand" is wrong here.

@english is not my first language.
No. It's not. I still chose to play in english. And i have done so since childhood before i was anywhere near fluent. And if i hadn't done that i'd be far far worse at it now. Just because German is my native language i don't see why that makes english less of "my locale". "My locale" is english for factorio because i chose it. The only time i care for the german locale is when i translate my own mods, because i consider it important to give everyone that choice to play in the language they want. So i translate my mods into every language i know.

English is in a very weird position though, because you (aka some ancient native english speaker) chose to make english "the international language" English has ended up having more non-native speakers than native ones. Depending on who you ask between 2 to 5 times as many. And from reading reddit/forum/etc i get the impression that there's a lot of mainland european people in the community.

And also i very much don't think that because you are a native speaker you get to speak as a representative for all native speakers. You only get to represent yourself .

I think what we need is to find out what these things are really called in the electricity industry and then use that.

[JohnyDL]

To a degree I've been thinking you're coming at this from a completely backwards perspective, as an outsider to the language you're telling me that my perception of the only language I know, the language I grew up with, is wrong until now with no supporting evidence, I've probably been a bit flippant about that and I apologize.

Because you're coming at it from an obscure angle half of my explanations are probably colliding with some language barrier, the same language barrier that makes you think the current way is better and the result is what I've thought were my reasonable explanations are not coming across entirely intact like the function of the words Production and Satisfaction do not satisfy me. So let's do this with pictures as though this is the first time I'm seeing it

This is the production which I've ringed in blue

Electric Grid production.PNG (24.17 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

I don't think it's at all clear the tiny sliver is what's being labeled? Big words iddy biddy thing that's labeled so I naturally think it's labeling the entire bar. so my interpretation of it at first glance is I need to make more power because my production isn't enough to fill the bar. NOT I have more than enough production and I'm only using a fraction of it.

These numbers don't help either I'm thinking that the numbers label the green bit

Electric Grid Numbers.PNG (25.43 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

So MY initial perspective of this is I don't understand satisfaction at all, but I know what production is and my production isn't enough. That huge black bar needs filling in so I have enough production to do all the things I need to. Okay?

So my suggestion is make:

The Demand outlined in blue

Electric Grid Demand.PNG (24.45 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

The Supply outlined in blue

Electric Grid Supply.PNG (24.31 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

This means that I have a supply, a demand and some storage. So my Demand is full green what does that mean in this context? Well my first assumption is that it's green and that probably means it's good, okay? Hmmmm but my supply is green and it's got a huge black bit..... okay so maybe that green section is like the same section of energy as the demand, I mean they look the same and the numbers at the end are the same and numbers usually label quantities so let's go with that, but I've got this huge black section I don't like it, what could it mean ... it is after the bar so maybe I have more ability to supply available than I'm using, that'd be great, maybe I like that black bar after all... oh and look I have storage and it's getting more full, that's useful too.

On the other hand let's assume I'm low on power

Electric Grid low power.PNG (69.42 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

My satisfaction's in red, what does that mean? I've never heard of satisfaction in relation to power and I'm making enough aren't I? my production is entirely green. I probably don't need to worry about this right now, I'll come back later and see if it's changed.

But with supply and demand labels

My demand is red that's probably not good and the supply is a full bar, hmm I think maybe all the power that I can supply is being used by that sliver of the demand, maybe I need to make more energy.


What's your interpretation?


Moving on.
My perspective of demand here is that if you open all the taps and there was infinite available supply of energy behind it how much energy would be used per tick.

From your link

I'm not talking about how much it takes to fill the bucket I'm saying if the bucket weren't there and the pipes behind it were infinitely full how much would flow. Exactly as your link I'm using the exact same definition of demand. So each assembler, beacon, inserter, has a maximum amount they can draw from the network that maximum draw is the tap being open to full (and in this instance we can say it's equivalent to filling the buffer from empty to full once per tick) and I'm saying the maximum demand is what is the total flow of all those taps.

As for your notion that the number for what I call demand changes when there's a power shortage or based on different time scales in practice that doesn't add up either.

In the day time I get this graph

Electric Grid daytime.PNG (330.66 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

But at night I get the same numbers (my power is exclusively solar and accumulators)

Electric Grid Using accumulators.PNG (228.69 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

It's only when the accumulators are charging and acting as energy demanders rather than energy suppliers does that surplus get sucked up as extra demand charging the accumulator batteries.

Electric Grid charging.PNG (299.6 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

And whether I'm looking at 5s at a time or 50 hours at a time the value for production and satisfaction numbers are static not an 'average of the last x amount of time'

Electric Grid 50 hours.PNG (250.39 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

Even when I had the low power the maximum value looks to me about 9 to 10 times as big as the red bar labeled 165MW and 165MW*9 is near enough to 1.5 GW that it's not worth arguing about

Electric Grid low power.PNG (69.42 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

What I mean is you have an alternative locale, why make the locale good for you at the expense of making it worse for people who don't have a second choice? I realise you choose english but you chose it I don't even have a choice.

And all along I've said I can only speak for myself which is an english speaker with an english (GB) education, so I'm not even speaking for all natives cause I don't know about canadian or australian or american ways of learning these things, I have dyslexia (which isn't a secret but I haven't mentioned in this post yet) So I've had to put in a huge amount of effort to get and keep my english as good or better than other people to whom it comes much much easier. My skills are not perfect and I don't say that they are but I'm at least not the only one with my perspective as you can see:

I'd like to add 2 more to this list

In Power "Satisfaction" should be "Power Demand" and "Production" should be "Power Supply"

Since the bars total tell you how much is Demanded or Available to be supplied and the green bar tells you % of which is fulfilled(satisfied)/used(produced) rather than naming it after the green bar. People generally understand Supply and Demand imo better than production and satisfaction.

It took me a good 100 hours to get used to these terms. Up until then I always had to figure out from context which one is supposed to be which every time I took a look. I know there is more information to them than just supply and demand but that information is mostly irrelevant to me.
If renaming terms is really a thing then this is the prime candidate.

As for why you continue to argue it's for the same reason I do, because we both want the game to be the best it can be, this is why I'm opinionated, exactly the way you are. You completely mistook why I added even if I'm wrong too, that's purely me saying there might be better solutions and if there and I come across them or they're explained to me in a way that is reasonable and makes sense I'll accept them probably back the better solution than my own, I'm not pig headed saying my solution is the only one, I'm not being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn, I'm saying find a better solution than this one and I'll be happy enough with that solution. I'm not trolling you for the sake of it I genuinely believe my answer is better than the one in the game at the moment. And if I want the change then it's my job to convince any dissenting voices cause if the devs have an opinion like yours and I can provide sufficient arguments to convince you my solution is better then I might have convinced the devs too.