I think the combinators and wire from factorio are inspired from redstone mod from minecraft and although i've never used this i think the signals there are only pulses. ( similar to terraria in case ). Not like that in factorio; but were they came from. I think the 2 wires colors added a little layer of depth and confort , and transmitting whole number accross different channel is also a little more depth and confort. Some operations were added overtime, for more depth and confort. At this point, it may seem tempting to add another layer because some higher level logic still seem complicated to implement, but maybe it was never made/thought to make complicated contraptions in the first place. Maybe that's were it is going.raidho36 wrote: βSat Oct 07, 2023 10:11 pmI tried making a PID controller for my nuclear reactor array and I gave up halfway. Though such a trivial system to implement in Lua, it wasn't worth the effort to do in Factorio.Qon wrote: βSat Oct 07, 2023 8:36 pmIf you actually had done some big and advanced contraption then you would know why being forced to assign wires to channels every time you wire things together would drive anyone completely insane. And not having the option of organizing your wires so that they are possible to visually identify would not make things better. Removing the current features for no reason is a bad idea. Make something non-trivial with combinators once and earn your right to write about the topic.
I've done several functionning projects with hundreds of combinators, but when i tried something with several thousands it was not a sucess, and what made me gave up was the wiring, not the logic, but the sheer amount of power poles required to carry all the wires and needing to cut their electrical wire or look at an ugly mess. And not being able to understand the part i work the previous week on without needing to follow the wires thing made extra difficult by the density of power poles connecting everywhere. I should have use wooden chest and substation but that feels wrong.
I don't think combinators are designed mostly for such purposes though, of "non-trivial' task, i think they are made "as simple as possible" so that they are still powerfull. But not made to ease the construction of a computer or other complex logic so i don't think one has to have created masterpieces to write about the topic especially if it is to describe what prevented them from achieving so or what frustrated them sorry Qon i share many of your views but not this one, i think combinators are great, i knew nothing about them and feared their complexity while focusing on rail signal logic for weeks initially maybe because i saw some very complex thing and i thought i wasn't going to need/want/make anything like that but i really enjoyed playing with 1 or 2 at first for very simple contraption. And i think it take a lot of time to learn how to "master" and as such only very few people will ever do gigantic contraptions, and many of them will have already previous knowledge of electronic or programming and they wouldn't be representative of the difficulties people have with combinators when they try them.
But on the other hand, i don't think it's necessary in factorio to have such complex features as proposed with the single wire color containing the ID and the signals ,and entities fetching signals by their ID from this single wire. That feel like a super precise tool that takes time to configure where most people want a fast tool that works without time to configure. ( again here only a subset of players are willing to implement something they can trivially do in another langage and can't).
I think trying to ask too much to combinators can damage gameplay because you as a player could be given the impression that you are expected to write programs and it's a never ending quest then of requesting more and more interaction with such and such entity to make those programs possible, whereas it could be argued part of the fun is to try and implement some (simple or not) logic with some (simple) pieces. ( can't read temperature of nuclear reactor makes good (optionnal) puzzle ).
It makes it more accessible to newbs ( like i was back then ) while still entertaining for veterans,( you don't just write what you want you still have to think of the puzzle or think in factorio combinator).
For example doing the operation "green wire/ red wire" is quite difficult with combinators, that's a requested feature, but as is it's also a super puzzle, either to try and make the division with combinators is one, or to try and make what you want ( like your lua program) without using the division greenwire/redwire because it's difficult to implement it in factorio.
IMO the good point of the current implementation is it's fun, not too hard to get into for beginners, not punishing if you don't, still challenging after some years even if you did a lot
Maybe some puzzle could be simplified to solve challenges from the expansion that would be too difficult with current tools, but for current purposes i like them, some other modifications could already alter the gameplay a lot, ( like 1 new combinator ) which was speculated from a picture of a FFF i think is more likely than a total rework of the green/red wire system. That would maybe feel "too new" altering too much factorio instead of "improving upon/expansion". But i've always liked Wube's suprises so far, so i wouldn't mind being wrong and having another one 
