Merge map "show recipe" icons with like recipes when a large block is shown very zoomed out

[gallomimia]

Topic says it all. Keep those icons on the map at all zoom levels please. To do this, merge them together and keep the icons the same size when zoomed out very far.

[NotRexButCaesar]

This sounds like it could be performance heavy: the map icons already add ~1 ms to update time without merging.

[ssilk]

I place an tag on the map for this and I would be irritated from all of those icons.

[eradicator]

+1

I place an tag on the map for this and I would be irritated from all of those icons.

Do you use tags AND the map overlay? Your answer sounds kinda like "you just need to get used to it" ;).

[ssilk]

It depends on what I’m doing, which kind of overlay I turn on.

In the end it’s a kind of “clean work”, if you keep the readability of your factory high. It spares you and others a lot of time with searching. It’s something you constantly should do, when programming or when working with software. And placing tags to group things together or paste a kind of description is one aspect of that.

[SoShootMe]

To do this, merge them together and keep the icons the same size when zoomed out very far.

How should the game decide what to show for, as an example, electronic circuit production using direct insertion of copper wire, similar to this?

I place an tag on the map for this and I would be irritated from all of those icons.

Tags are a simple solution to the problem of questions like the above. It's not automatic as per the suggestion but whatever is shown is less likely to be "wrong" (unless eg you change your mind ).

However, I guess the use case behind gallomimia's suggestion is as an aid to understanding a large, distributed factory, but "when zoomed out very far" tag icons are scaled to (more or less) nothing and tag names are no longer shown, so they don't really achieve this. Tags would work better for this purpose, and perhaps in general, if the text remained the same size and visible at all zoom levels, the same as player names (and perhaps also show the icon at a constant size that is similar to the text).

[gallomimia]

How should the game decide what to show for, as an example, electronic circuit production using direct insertion of copper wire, similar to this?

I thought the decision, needing to be really simple and lightweight, should be obvious: if there's two icons close together that are the same, and would overlap if we zoom out, merge them. Enough zooming out should make units that produce intermediary products show them and the final product. It's a thing that could easily be "baked in" to a factory until changes get made. It might even be able to be done deterministically, but shouldn't really matter since it's a client-side thing that doesn't affect the game state.

It's a fairly edgecase scenario, and you're right that tags are easily more useful than this. I just think it might be possible to get it done automatically, and I feel that such a premium, well thought out feature would fit in with the types of professional finishing touches that I've come to expect from Wube.

[posila]

I thought the decision, needing to be really simple and lightweight, should be obvious: if there's two icons close together that are the same, and would overlap if we zoom out, merge them.

While obvious and simple, it's not lightweight at all. The simple implementation would check each icon against all other ones to detect the overlap, but that is very not lightweight. Probably faster solution exists using some spatial data structures, but that's not simple solution

[SoShootMe]

How should the game decide what to show for, as an example, electronic circuit production using direct insertion of copper wire, similar to this?

I thought the decision, needing to be really simple and lightweight, should be obvious: if there's two icons close together that are the same, and would overlap if we zoom out, merge them. Enough zooming out should make units that produce intermediary products show them and the final product.

I think for the example I gave of electronic circuits this would be fine, but for a production area built with more stages the useful information may be "diluted".

I also have a feeling that while merging is conceptually simple, for any algorithm there will be at least some cases where it does not give the "right" result - that is, there may be more than one way to merge icons such that the resulting groups of merged icons do not overlap, and the best one is subjective. A problem that tags, being manual, very neatly sidestep .