Production and Electrical Network GUI Improvements

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Tergiver
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Production and Electrical Network GUI Improvements

Post by Tergiver »

TL;DR
Add peak values to the graphs. Swap production and consumption panes on one of them.
What ?
The Production and Electrical Network GUIs should show the peak value for the period being graphed, for both production and consumption.

The Production GUI has production in the left pane and consumption in the right pane.
The Electrical Network GUI has consumption in the left pane and production In the right pane.
Swap one of them to be consistent.
Why ?
I am often wanting to know what the peak value on the graph is. This is true for both Production and Electrical Network. What was my peak consumption wattage for the past 1m? 10m? What did my iron plate consumption peak at over the last 1h?

This could be as simple as displaying the peak in the upper left or right corners of each graph pane (good enough for me), or as complicated as showing a 'proper' graph scale.

The swapped consumption and production panes result in moments of confusion. I may have been looking over power, then looking over production wondering why my consumption values are so high; Because I was looking in the wrong pane.

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eradicator
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Re: Production and Electrical Network GUI Improvements

Post by eradicator »

I never even noticed that the graphs had different production/consumption order, honestly i barely ever look at the right one of the two graphs on either window, and i've played a few hundred hours. From a (somewhat advocatus diaboli-ish) pov i think it makes sense tho. Users usually read GUIs the same order they read text, so in this case from left to right. And while for electricity the consumption (left) is more important because you want to know things like "what machine is the biggest energy hog", on the production view the production (left) is more important becaues when most users look there they want to know "how much am i making" because that's the larger of the two values. So swapping one of them would mean that now the less important part of the graph is now on the more prominent left side.
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Tergiver
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Re: Production and Electrical Network GUI Improvements

Post by Tergiver »

eradicator wrote:...So swapping one of them would mean that now the less important part of the graph is now on the more prominent left side.
I concede that those are good arguments for leaving it alone. I might be in the minority when it comes to moments of confusion from their current order.

I still want to see the high-water mark on the graphs!

JohnyDL
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Re: Production and Electrical Network GUI Improvements

Post by JohnyDL »

Why is more important on the left an issue? I hadn't ever noticed the inconsistency and I don't think many people will notice the change there.

The peak makes sense to some degree and kind of doesn't in other respects, if the peak in production is possible because of a backlog of items due to previous inactivity the artificial peak doesn't make sense, a more sustainable way of looking at it might be able to see the minutely or hourly or daily average lines, you can currently look at the last hour on average easily or last 10 hours but being able to see what the average of 10 hours for 10 hours ago could still be useful and isn't shown/visible/calculable.

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Re: Production and Electrical Network GUI Improvements

Post by Xeorm »

I would love to read the peaks as well. My production designs are built around the idea of capacity more than average amount so it would make plenty of sense to worry about that amount.

Panes where they are are good though. It does confuse me occasionally when I remember what they represent, but it's rare now that I think of them like that. I don't look precisely for electrical consumption, I look for whichever it was that showed me what I wanted to know. Which is so conveniently located on the left, where it does make sense to be.

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