Factorio Forums

When a factory is very large, especially if it has many locations, it would be useful to have something like a pager.

I would want to know when a raw material starts to run out in a distant outpost, and not only discovering it when all my buffers at the main factory are empty and production grinds to a halt.

When I'm far away from the main base, I would still want to know if the delicate balance slowly shifted away so that something clogged or the production of a high-level item slowed down drastically because the resource flow is a little smaller and their usage became imbalanced.

We could integrate this warning system into the game with a pager-like system.

1. Get a nice-sounding name for it, and add it as a research topic
2. Have a building, something like a radio tower. It would be connectible to the circuit system as an end device. Whenever it receives a signal, it transmits a message. Each radio tower can have one message, editable just like you can edit the name of a train stop.
3. Have an item, something like a pager, which can display a message sent by a radio tower.

Whenever the condition triggers, the radio tower send the message, and if you have the pager in your inventory (or armor slot?) you will receive the message.
Examples:

- Iron mine 3 running out
- No more alien artifacts in main base
- rocket silo constructed

you can use the circuit network combinators and lights for that

There's also the resource monitor mod.

ratchetfreak wrote:you can use the circuit network combinators and lights for that

What if I'm very far from it?

johanwanderer wrote:There's also the resource monitor mod.

True, but a custom warning message (sending the output of a circuit network) could be much more flexible than just showing the amount of raw ore in a deposit.

I am pretty sure there IS a mod which lets you define a specific warning in textform via chat.

Val wrote:

ratchetfreak wrote:you can use the circuit network combinators and lights for that

What if I'm very far from it?

you shouldn't be far from you base...

if the base is a long ways away you can run a single wire to every outpost and use a A signal to select the "current" outpost and have each outpost send its data back to base as desired