Add wildcard to upgrade planner

[KenchForTheBench]

TL;DR

Add the ability to upgrade every entity of a given type to another entity of the same type in one line in the upgrade planner (e.g. every belt becomes blue).

What ?

Instead of this



be able to do this

Why ?

The added value for the base game is admittedly limited since there is a limited number of entities with different tiers (only belts and assemblers if I remember correctly). The main selling points are :

• QoL : less entries in the upgrade planner => fewer clicks => less time "wasted".
• Clarity : the intent of the planner is more apparent (in my opinion).
• Scalability with mods.

The last point is really what motivated me to suggest this. In my current modded playthrough (BobAngels+) there are 5 tiers of belts (+ loaders) and countless tiers of different machines or pipe types (more than 10).

[ssilk]

Nice idea, very nice explanation.

I had often the case, that I don’t want to upgrade straight to blue belts, because it is too expensive in that stage. And with mods there it could be, that an upgrade is not unique. So I guess it has only very limited use cases.

[wilku103]

Nice idea indeed, for making it easier to code, we could switch from/to tabs, so we first set what we wanna change it into, then set what we want to be changed

[ickputzdirwech]

Nice idea indeed, for making it easier to code, we could switch from/to tabs, so we first set what we wanna change it into, then set what we want to be changed

I can’t say if this would indeed make this easier to code. But I don’t think it would be necessary to change the order. Why would it be a problem if you would have to select the wildcard first? And you don’t even have to.

[ssilk]

Ah. You mean if you leave the source row empty and if the target has a group it works like a wildcard?
Very good idea, but I want visual feedback (an icon with the items, that are in the list or something like that).

[wilku103]

I can’t say if this would indeed make this easier to code. But I don’t think it would be necessary to change the order. Why would it be a problem if you would have to select the wildcard first? And you don’t even have to.

if you didn't change that then you would have "change from *" to... game cant specify what because you didn't specify what is this, so it would show you everything and you would need to pick from, then game needs to check if you can use that, if you first use "change to" then game can check what can be upgraded to that. i.e you want to upgrade all belts to blue, so "change from *" to game cant decide, if you switch them, "change to blue belt", then you have 3 options, "yellow belt, red belt, *"

[ickputzdirwech]

if you didn't change that then you would have "change from *" to... game cant specify what because you didn't specify what is this, so it would show you everything and you would need to pick from, then game needs to check if you can use that, if you first use "change to" then game can check what can be upgraded to that. i.e you want to upgrade all belts to blue, so "change from *" to game cant decide, if you switch them, "change to blue belt", then you have 3 options, "yellow belt, red belt, *"

Ah ok, I think i misunderstood how you imagine this to be implemented. You want one wildcard for everything. I thought you meant one wildcard for every fast replaceable group like "Any belt", "Any chest" or "Any inserter" (and I would prefer it that way).
My new understanding of your idea doesn't change my earlier statement though. You will have to do all these checks anyway. You are just changing the order of them (which might of course improve performance by a tiny bit).

Why would it be a problem if you would have to select the wildcard first? And you don’t even have to.

You mean if you leave the source row empty and if the target has a group it works like a wildcard?
Very good idea, but I want visual feedback (an icon with the items, that are in the list or something like that).

No, I meant that you don't have to select them from left to right. You don't have to select "from" first and then "to" just because they are arranged that way. If you want you can select the target item before the source item. The upgrade planner supports both ways around already.

[jodokus31]

You want one wildcard for everything. I thought you meant one wildcard for every fast replaceable group like "Any belt", "Any chest" or "Any inserter" (and I would prefer it that way).

Actually, you wouldnt need a dedicated wildcard for each fastreplaceable group, because it could be determined by the group of the target, implicitly. On the other side, it could help to be better understandable.

[wilku103]

Ah ok, I think i misunderstood how you imagine this to be implemented. You want one wildcard for everything. I thought you meant one wildcard for every fast replaceable group like "Any belt", "Any chest" or "Any inserter" (and I would prefer it that way).
My new understanding of your idea doesn't change my earlier statement though. You will have to do all these checks anyway. You are just changing the order of them (which might of course improve performance by a tiny bit).
"to" just because they are arranged that way. If you want you can select the target item before the source item. The upgrade planner supports both ways around already.

huh, haven't thought about one wildcard for every category, most of the times i think about wildcard, wildcard means anything (so also everything), but as jodokus said, it probably could increase readability, or the other way around, it would need another tab, because we have some groups in vanilla, and with mods it could really clog menu, imagine we have wildcard belt, wildcard splitter, wildcard underground, that's already 3, then add assembly machines, inserters and much more

[ickputzdirwech]

I don’t think it would be that much clutter to add one wildcard for every fast replaceable group. You could also reduce the number of wildcards if they are only generated for groups with three or more entries (so for example not for vanilla furnaces). I would make it always the first element in the row.

I think the menu needs a reorder in general. Right now it just follows the order of the items which is certainly helpful if you are used to that order but isn’t perfect for all cases. For example all chests are in the same fast replaceable group but they are split between two rows. Belts, undergrounds and splitters on the other hand can’t be upgraded with each other but are in the same row. I would therefore also suggest to make one row for every fast replaceable group.

But I would be happy with any kind of implementation.