Interface option to select digits of precision when abbreviating numbers

blizgerg · Post by **blizgerg** » Thu Jul 04, 2019 5:38 pm

TL;DR

What ?

I think an option would be nice to allow selecting a maximum number of fractional digits to put in the display. For example, 1234 with 2 fraction digits would then get displayed at 1.23k instead of just 1k. There may want to be more than one option for different contexts as the game does use fractional digits in some contexts and not in others.

Why ?

It is annoying at times that a number like 1234 will often simply get abbreviated as 1k.

Post by **Koub** » Thu Jul 04, 2019 7:17 pm

Very related :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=62110
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42894

slippycheeze · Post by **slippycheeze** » Fri Jul 05, 2019 12:21 am

FWIW, I find that the best balance seems to be maintaining three digits before the magnitude, and stepping every three, so the progression is roughly:

1.23
12.3
123
1.23k
12.3k
123k
1.23M

...etc, when dealing with increasing quantities into these sort of ranges in a range of resource oriented games. Maybe stick with the full value before starting to abbreviate at 1M, maybe not, depending how important the difference of ~ 10k would be. (IMO, in Factorio, minimal.)

It balances accuracy with conciseness, and gives the greatest accuracy when it matters the most - when you are just wiggling around the next magnitude.

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