Circuit Network Information 2.0 - Open Your World

[Meddleman]

Is there any major reason why many of the late-game advanced buildings do not allow connection to a circuit network, even if just to measure or read their contents, essentially sending the same content information into circuit wires which I see in my sidebar-window when I hover over said buildings?

Such That This:

Unbenannt1.png (999.86 KiB) Viewed 6980 times

Could Become This:

Unbenannt2.jpg (210.44 KiB) Viewed 6980 times

Currently the following "advanced" buildings in Vanilla [16.42] still do not allow connection to the circuit network to at least read their contents

• Steam Turbine, N.Reactor - "I want to measure current steam content/fuel content to flip a power-switch or control seperate centrifuge setup inputs for making less or more reactor-fuel/nuclear bullets/nuclear rocket fuel."
• Electric Smelter, Assembling Machine 2/3, Centrifuge - "I want to read contents of this machine to control an inserter inputting/outputting items from/to a belt or box."
  (Such precise control might allow a line of smelters to reach 100 internal plates before ore-input is diverted to other places. Hell, I dunno, maybe circuit-controlled filters for requester chests can be controlled by the smelters themselves depending on if it's idling or not.)
• Beacons - Okay, no, I'm just messing with you, this is the least useful thing to output content data for.
• Research Lab, Rocket Silo, - "I want to signal bots to pickup/move more resources/research packs only once said resource is completely used up."
• Chem Plant, Oil Refinery. - "I want my Programmable Speakers to blare an alarm once yield for this patch/pumpjack falls under X.X/s ".
• Mining Drills, Splitters - "I want to control a belt/splitter to activate/change its output filter depending on what signal it receives."
• Gun/Flame/Artillery Turrets - Need I say more?

It seems like a very obvious addition to have in the game since it already displays this information to the player. The micro-managers among the playerbase would love such an extra dimension of control.
Unless it would result in an unacceptable UPS drop from extra signalling not typically handled by the game-logic, I personally cannot fathom any discernable disadvantage from having this in the base mod, but am open to critique.
I seem to remember many versions back being able to attach a signal wire to a stone-smelter, but that was a while ago.

It should also be worth noting that while researching the circuit network is not required to research end-game tech, it sits rather comfortably amongst the starter tech, available right after "Electronics" as one of the first Red/Green techs accessible to research, so perhaps the number of buildings that could be added the list of "Read Contents" could plausibly be even longer.

• Yes, there are mods which deal with a few of these issues in different ways but usually requiring extra entities.
• Yes, this has been suggested before
• ...in various formats.

Anyway, hit me up for critique, support, grievances, worries, confusion or just plain "yeah, but...."

"HASHTAGS" FOR SEARCH:
building connect connection circuits circuit network furnace signals signalling missing smelter wires wire green red read content measure measuring measurement content contents

[Tekky]

I agree that it would be nice if it were possible to connect more types of entities to the circuit network.

In my opinion, being able to connect nuclear reactors, splitters and smelters would be most important.

[LazyDev]

I like this idea as it, for example, can allow to set up manual rules for inserters to either change their filter property to retrieve an item that the building needs (For example, an assembly machine) or change the stack size.

[EditorRUS]

It appears to me that the Devs want to make the game as minimalistic as possible.

They will only implement an idea IF:
1. It cannot be reproduced using already existing features
2. It's a QoL improvement that cannot be implemented with mods.

Most of those things you mentioned CAN be created, albeit in a very roundabout and stupid way and I bet implementing this will be a QoL improvement AND as you mentioned there are already mods doing it.

Steam Turbine, N.Reactor - "I want to measure current steam content/fuel content to flip a power-switch or control seperate centrifuge setup inputs for making less or more reactor-fuel/nuclear bullets/nuclear rocket fuel.
Steam Turbine: Track changes in the pipe's steam content.

N. Reactor: Same thing, directly count fuel cells that are inserted by the inserter.

Electric Smelter, Assembling Machine 2/3, Centrifuge - "I want to read contents of this machine to control an inserter inputting/outputting items from/to a belt or box."
Timed inserters.

Research Lab, Rocket Silo, - "I want to signal bots to pickup/move more resources/research packs only once said resource is completely used up.
Not sure what you need that for, but timed inserters yet again.

Chem Plant, Oil Refinery. - "I want my Programmable Speakers to blare an alarm once yield for this patch/pumpjack falls under X.X/s.
Automated pumps and a derivative calculator on a Storage Tank.

Mining Drills, Splitters - "I want to control a belt/splitter to activate/change its output filter depending on what signal it receives.
As much as I hate this solution, you can make a line of those things and control them directly.

Gun/Flame/Artillery Turrets - Need I say more?
Same as before: count usage.

[golfmiketango]

Hey, I think this is a brilliant idea and simple. Unfortunately, I think it's too simple: it still doesn't enable us to (easily) track flows of items through a factory because these types of entities are prone to nom-ing up your items and materializing new items. Therefore I would say, if this is done (and imo it should be!) assemblers/smelters/boilers/etc should really have two checkboxes: (1) output contents and (2) pulse on production. Where, for the latter, we could pick a circuit network channel which would recieve a pulse each time the assembler finished building/burning/synthesizing/etc according to its recipe/behavior.

[Optera]

Some entities I'd love to see made smarter in base game are:

Beacons:
enable/disable

Furnaces:
read content, enable/disable

Assemblers:
read content, enable/disable, set recipe

Rocket Sile:
read launched rockets, read inventory & progress, enable/disable

Yes, I know everything except the beacon on/off has already been implemented by mods.
But for a Megabase, where you may want to monitor and control a smart furnace cluser consisting of several thousand furnaces, mod scan overhead becomes unbearable and only a native C++ implementation would provide acceptable performance.

[eradicator]

@OP:
Mining drills and by extension pump jacks are already circuit connectible.
@"Is there any major reason why..."
If i had to guess i'd say performance p;.

Assemblers:read content, enable/disable, set recipe

Wasn't there recently a thread about how input starving is the way to go for that in megabases? Sure, it's roundabout and not instant. Setting recipe sounds like one of those "too powerful" features.

I think it would be nice to be able to have an option on the power switch that simply turned off (i.e. active=false) all buildings connected to an electric subnet (i.e. without the performance penalty of actually having no energy). That way you don't have to put a wire on several hundred furnaces, inserters etc. You can still use the wires on inserters for something else, and it's sufficiently "fuzzy" (can't switch off beacons and keep the furnaces unless you have a really awesome design) to be not too OP. More like a performance optimization of the power switch than a new feature :/.

[Optera]

When I last requested beacons having an built in on/off switch there still was the option to turn them off with an inserter removing their modules. I had my smart smelters built on starved input and inserters removing beacons modules.

Sadly current Beacons will still drain power even with their modules removed making an option to turn them off explicitly more valuable than ever.

[Christoph8]

Checking to see if anyone has a solution to this. Starting up a nuclear facility with a lot centrifuges for reprocessing. Because it takes so much 235 to reprocess I don't want my dumb inserters to keep pulling all the 235 off the line. I want them to only pull 40 and stop then wait till the centrifuge off loads. If only I could read the contents of the centrifuge this would be easy. Since I can't I've beating my head against the logic wall trying to figure out a way only consume 40 x U-235 at a time.

Any thoughts?