Friday Facts #289 - Character GUI

[IronCartographer]

One thing that i would really like to see is the ability to save a configuration for the Logistic Tab. With its increasing amount of functionality its a pain to set it up for every multiplayer map i join.

Unfortunately this is complicated by mods, just like the blueprint library and toolbar filters. It's reasonable to have unknown entities use question mark placeholders within infinite-storage of blueprints, but for UI elements with clear boundaries and finite allocation...the prospects of cleanly unifying profiles across saves are much more grim. ...What am I saying? Requests and trash slots are infinite in the new plan!

[DrFluffeh]

Has anybody thought of a toggle for the logistic requests? It would.be useful for when you empty your inventory to move full chests, laying down large amounts of concrete, or for when you just don't want robots flying all over you when you're trying to build or design something in your base. Also on the note of building while in the logistic network, having the construction area of the personal roboports be a different colour than that of the logistic network's area would be great as well.

[mrudat]

Do we have a mockup for setting logistics requests? I would imagine a pop-up with request / trash sliders, and an apply/cancel button.

Can we have options to have default trash amount set to say, one stack more than request amount.

It would be nifty if we could have a request of 'able to build this blueprint twice', and that one thrice.

[factoriouzr]

I am so glad you are finally merging the requester and trash slots. Thank you!!
I also like the colour coding of the requester slots and their meaning and that the requester slots will be infinite. Good Job!

Some requests for improvement:
-Please make the default beahaviour when adding a new request so that it automatically sets the minimum and maximum to the same value or make it an easy toggle that can be on by default in options
-please make the slots draggable to reogranize them
-please make the research queue draggable to reogranize
-please make the research queue infinite
-please make the research queue automatically queue up all prerequisite researches if you add a research further down the chain
-the buttons in the top right for search, close are way too small and might be hard to click
-i like the darker colour of the GUIs but it's not obvious which tab is selected. Your eyes are automatically drawn to brigther tabs as they stick out more, so having the active tab dark is opposite to human nature. It just blends into the background and you can't easily tell which tab is selected
-please improve the blueprint library and GUI so it works properly when using the library directly without storing any blueprints in player inventory. I know this is a feature you are working on, but the current system has so many quirks and issues that it makes me want the full version sooner


Are you not going to be able to see your current weapons in the bottom right anymore? I hope that feature isn't going away as it's extremely useful.

Thanks for all the updates. Looking forward to when they are put in the game.

[Tsevion]

Looking pretty cool. Two requests come to mind:

1. Logistic Request Toggle. Additionally the color system adds a great way to avoid the question of "Why aren't my logistic robots working?". Simply add a color (blue, greyed out) that indicates Personal Logistics Disabled (And says as much when hovered over).
2. Add keybinds to open the character sheet with each specific tab open. They don't necessarily even need default bindings, but for power users this would save time.

[mrudat]

Can we get some sort of indicator in your inventory for the slots occupied by logistics requests? It would be helpful if there was a visual indicator that you've requested more stuff than will actually fit. I'd suggest setting filtered slots, but that would annoy people who like to arrange their inventory themselves.

Does the mock-up suggest that we will be able to request more stuff than we have logistics request slots for, or will the request UI fill with request slots as they're unlocked? If not, will this work like sending requests to a chest via the circuit network; the biggest requests get satisfied first?

Perhaps for the request amount, we could have exactly "50", "50-\n100", "50-\n∞", "0-\n100", and either "0-0", or a trash-can icon?

I think that I'd like to have the equipment grid as a separate tab, rather than a popup window, similar to the car/train UI; perhaps with an icon to point out that it's the grid associated with the armour you're wearing.

[badtouchatr]

Generally, I like the new GUI changes very much. One concern though: Are the Weapons slots on the Character tab going to ONLY be visible here, and not in the lower-right part of the screen, as they are now? Because if so, I think a lot of people will miss this.

Also, I think these are both great ideas:

For the colors, how about green for robots on the way, and there is enough items to fill request, yellow for bots on the way but not enough to fill request, and red for no bots on the way, not enough to fill request.

edit:
another thing that would be really, really helpful would be a toggle to turn off/on logistics. Currently, I frequently find myself in scenarios where I don't want anything delivered at the moment, but I don't want to clear the slots, as I will want them delivered again soon....

[adam_bise]

Awesome, love the logistics tab.

[factoriouzr]

If I had to guess, one reason this may not make it to vanilla is that is discourages end game divestment from the character as builder and supplier. The "ideal" end game scenario is for the player characters inventory to be composed mostly of blueprints and most if not all building to be achieved via ghost placement. At least, that's what I feel compelled to strive for as it provides the most flexible and streamlined feel.

I put the time into making sure I can place ghosts and blueprints from map view anywhere in my base or outposts, and a train will "magically" appear with all of the supplies for bots to fulfill the requests. If personal logistics were made "too powerful", I may not have bothered...

The devs may disagree, tho.

Yeah I guess they might, and maybe that is a risk for some players. But that's not how I've experienced things.

I build the same way as you describe, but I like to use logistic requests to keep small numbers of a wide range of items with me. Which varies depending on what I'm doing, hence the desire for presets. I like to be able to start designing a new base component at any time, wherever I am, and not have to wait for trains to arrive. When I am ready to build it at scale, then everything is done automatically by bots supplied by trains.

So for example all my outposts/modules have a supply station, serviced by a supply train that brings bots, inserters, logistic chests, walls, turrets, radars, repair packs, etc. A big list of items. They're set up so that once the train arrives bots are unloaded and automatically added to roboports. Then the construction bots can start building using the supplies of the train.

All my outposts are built from blueprints, and primarily built automatically. However I always do the first part of building each outpost myself, using my personal roboport. At a minimum I need to build the rails, signals, power and roboport infrastructure, inserters and chests for the supply station, and the combinators needed for supply station enable logic. I can't rely on existing logistic networks for this because I am now making sure to keep each logistic network small and separate - in earlier games I did have much bigger networks, but now I am keeping them small, focused and with short bot travel distances.

Once that initial building is done the station will turn on and a supply train will automatically head over, and then the rest is built automatically. Though I also carry some turrets with me so that the outpost is immediately defended. And if I stick around my bots will often also build some of the other entities, which the outpost's logistic bots can then reimburse to me once the supply train(s) first arrive.

Generally I like to carry with me 1 or 2 stacks each of quite a wide range of general building items. Belts/undergrounds/splitters, inserters, rails, chests, power, roboports, beacons, modules, drills, assemblers, furnaces, combinators, lamps, landfill, cliff explosives, etc. Plus combat stuff (grenades, nukes, fish, etc). And of course the 200 construction bots I use with my 4 x personal roboports. I'm usually averaging about 100 slots used at any one time (out of 120 max at late-game.)

I keep all this with me both so I can kick off the building of new outposts as I just described, but also so I can start designing and building new base components wherever I am. Like a new type of outpost, or improving an existing design. Usually this is also supported by my personal supply train which carries most items on board. Wherever I am expanding to I put down a BP of my personal supply train station and then send one of my personal trains there, and it then unloads a variety of item types into logistic chests and deploys some logistic bots which then service my personal logistic request slots. Then I can go building and designing anywhere in that area without having to keep going back to the train too often, and without having to immediately build rails so the train can follow me everywhere I go. If I need a large amount of an item - like a huge amount of landfill to fill in a lake - I will call in a specialist train. But for general purposes, my personal supplies are usually enough.

So it's never seemed to me that my use of logistic request slots was stopping me from using trains, or implementing automatic re-supply, or making heavy use of BPs. Because I'm always limited by my inventory size, use of logistic requests doesn't feel like it stops me wanting to build the best possible designs. It feels like it supports me in doing that.

And therefore expanding the concept with multiple presets just seems to me like it would be even more convenient. I feel that if a feature is going to exist at all, it should be as usable and powerful as possible. Kind of like the quickbar, which went from being max two rows of 20 slots in earlier versions to providing 100 slots with up to four visible rows in 0.17. Once the devs turned it into a pure UI element it made sense to make it as powerful as possible.

But I take your point - maybe other people will see it differently, I don't know.

Anyway, even if the devs do agree it would be useful, it may not be a high priority given it can already be done by mods.

I do pretty much exactly what you do in all the ways. I agree as well that all this supports me in doing what I want to do and is not a reason not to improve my designs or not to use blueprints.

What is the purpose of putting down a personal supply blueprint for your train before putting down the outpost starting blueprint? I always do what you said in setting up the rails, chests, etc for the outposts and then have the supply train automatically go there (since there now is an outpost that is low on needed resources). I then put in a single logistics bot (or more if I want to build it faster), and that logistics bot will load up 50 logistics and 50 construction bots into the network and then my outpost will be built. I also have trash slots in the outpost and supply trains to take unknown and extra items back to my main base to avoid bottle necking the storage at the outposts. This way I can be supplied and trash things at any outpost and my automation will take care of keeping everything neat and moving items back to my main base that are not needed at the outpost.

I see the step of putting down another blueprint to supply yourself as an extra unnecessary step that doubles the time to build the outpost. I'm curious what your reason for using it is as we play almost identically. Even if you build multiple outposts in the same area, you can just build the first and then supply from there as I do. Do you have a mod to deploy logistic bots or do you have to prime the system with at least one as I do?

[factoriouzr]

One thing that i would really like to see is the ability to save a configuration for the Logistic Tab. With its increasing amount of functionality its a pain to set it up for every multiplayer map i join.

That's a very good point

[factoriouzr]

For the search function, I think this should always be enabled by default and as you type it should just search without having to click the search button first. This is true in the inventory screen (though maybe there are keybinding conflicts?), but for sure there should be no reason not to have the cursor automatically in the search bar when you open the research window. There is much less to interact with in the research window in terms of hotkeys so search should not require an extra click.

[tetryon]

For the Character screen, under Statistics, please change Entities and Ghost 'Build' to 'Built'. As it is right now, it's literally unplayable. Also change Ghost to plural - Ghosts.

For Weapons, you have a double-negative. If Damage is -769, that that's the same as healing 769.

Why is ammo listed below, and not in the bottom-right hand corner as normal?

Excellent stuff!!

[hueich]

Nice design details! Could you tweak the display of requested number and max number, so that the requested number is always at the bottom right corner of the icon, and the max number at the top right corner? As a user, I think it makes more intuitive sense to have the max number at the top.

[chris13524]

Changing the display of numbers the logistics slots in different scenarios is awkward IMO. It could be as simple as a range: 0-0, 0-50, 50-50, 50-200, 50-inf, etc. Left number is min, right is max. No need to remove numbers in certain cases. Clicking the slot brings up a modal to adjust the min/max.

Also, just a reminder that it would be very nice to have logistic profiles!

[MiniHerc]

Please, please, please keep this tooltip for the new GUI. It's useful info.

Also, please add an option to swap between the new dark inventory background and the old light inventory background.

[Eketek]

I think that character logistic requests could be improved a lot by adding a mechanism to make one-time requests (non-persistant) for a specific amounts of items - such requests would be independent of the current inventory and would not persist after fulfillment (possibly even make it work like pulling the items out of a chest).

[lf_]

I think this is a step in the right direction but there is one big problem with this tabbed concept: where is the indication when I trash something and more generally why do I need another click to trash stuff given that it is a very common operation?

Another major deficiency of the current system is that you can't request something only once and remove the request as it is delivered. I am calling this feature "ephemeral requests" for the purpose of this post.

Finally, we *need* the ability to toggle on and off stuff: exoskeletons, logistics requests (turn off automatically if the player dies; this pretty much requires ephemeral requests since you might want to order new armor but not get a load of other crap), belt immunity (for walking on belts and getting a speed boost), personal roboports.

If ephemeral requests is implemented, it brings about some very useful functionality that would complement it very well. For instance, given a blueprint, request a certain number of copies worth of materials in an ephemeral request. So you can go build *n* furnace arrays and know you have enough stuff. This could either take into account current inventory levels or not, maybe configurably?

[Mmmmmmorten]

On thing in the character gui that is bugging me might be just me using it wrongly...

I lock a lot of stuff in place (middle mouse click) and get blue background for the locked item. Usually all the stuff I always want to have on my.
When I need to do some heavy moving I pop down a steel chest or two and empty my stuff into them. Now I usually do this (or would like to) by shift clicking on empty slot in the steel chest moving all my items.

Most of the time this is fine - excempt when I do this close to home base (read: mall) and all my logistic bots leap to work to fill up all my, now empty, blue slots that most of them has a logistic request to autofill.

Is there a way to only move items (all at once) from inventory to empty chest - without moving the locked in place stuff?

Love Factorio by the way!

/old dude

[RobertTerwilliger]

(8) Item is not requested and maximum amount is 0: When you don't want the item to be ever in your inventory, in this case, we just show no number, same as it is in the auto trash slots now.

under logistics: Items requesting 0 and max set to 0... instead of having nothing on them, how about having a tiny trash can icon?

This. Simply not having any number is confusing. As there is a trash field, it is unobvious that auto-trash is in request field, and looks like you request random unknown quantity.
Need any recognizable symbol - "0", "X" or a trash icon.

[ManaUser]

I don't understand what confuses you. There are two numbers, min and max. If they are both the same, only one number is shown. Otherwise both numbers are shown, min at the top and max at the bottom. Isn't that already what you are proposing?

I disagree with merging them, and also with the fact that a maximum of zero shows no indicator. There's nothing specifically wrong with the way it displays any of those states, but I would prefer greater consistency. I guess they're going for a "clean" look by using the minimum amount of numbers possible, but I think adding rules about when which things are displayed makes it less intuitive.