[2.0.23] Tooltip for automated insertion limit of burnable fuel is often wrong

[IsaacOscar]

Consider the following setup:

Screenshot 2024-12-12 160901.png (110.09 KiB) Viewed 410 times

The insert has a stack size override of 1, and the chest provides an infinite amount of spoilage.
The above fills the boiler with 24 spoilage:

Screenshot 2024-12-12 160857.png (148.54 KiB) Viewed 410 times

However as you can see, the "automated insertion limit" according to the tooltip is 5.

Now I've tested spoilage with every entity I could find in the lua prototypes that takes burnable fuel.
When there fuel slot is empty, regardless of what fuel is in it, they all seem to display 5 as the automated insertion limit.
However, after testing, for spoilage it is usually not 5:

• For burner Inserters (1 slot), Cars (1 slot), Tanks (2 slots), Heating Tower (2 slots), Locomotives (3 slots): 200 for each slot (i.e. the stack size of spoilage)
• Boiler: 24
• Burner Generator: 12
• Burner Mining Drill, Stone Furnace, & Steel Furnace: 5

I've also tested with some other fuels, but spoilage shows the greatest disparity.
(For nuclear fuel though, the limit is always 1, which is the only time it's less than 5).

[boskid]

Not a bug. viewtopic.php?p=650778#p650778. Tooltip is generic for the item but its the machine that says it needs so much energy that it will ignore the limit to not get starved.

[IsaacOscar]

Not a bug. viewtopic.php?p=650778#p650778. Tooltip is generic for the item but its the machine that says it needs so much energy that it will ignore the limit to not get starved.

Hmm, Rseding91 says that it is "fixed" for the next release, what has changed?

[boskid]

In linked topic what is fixed is burner inserter having too big energy buffer causing this override logic to consider burner inserters as consuming up to 24MW (0.4MJ energy each tick) that was making it request way more than it needs for at least 3 seconds of operation.

[IsaacOscar]

Tooltip is generic for the item but its the machine that says it needs so much energy that it will ignore the limit to not get starved.

But that's not how the tooltip works for assembling machines;
E.g., for iron gear wheels on an assembly machine 1, the insertion limit of iron plates is listed as 6, but for an assembly machine 3 it's listed as 8, both of which are correct.

Also I don't see how such an incorrect and useless tooltip is "not a bug", if it's too difficult to work out the correct number, you can at least hide the tooltip.

[boskid]

Tooltips, entity statuses, lua docs, wiki, prototype explorer, all the bureocracy of making changes at some point will cause that even the simplest change will be pain in the ass to apply and noone will be doing any changes because it will be incorrect somewhere in those. If i could i would just delete this line from the tooltip. I will take a look if this can be slightly adjusted to make it context dependent and to account for specific burner energy source consumption.

[Rseding91]

It works for assembling machines because their limit is dependent on the specific item for that slot for the active recipe. Fuel has no such specific item and so the tooltip uses the generic "any item" value rather than the active item that's in the slot.

I consider these values to be harmful because they generate bug reports like this and waste developer time better spent on crashes, corruption, performance issues and so on. The "insertion limit" is when the inserter stops putting items in, and it isn't something a player can control so why show it at all? "It is what it is" and a player can do zero about it.

[IsaacOscar]

The "insertion limit" is when the inserter stops putting items in, and it isn't something a player can control so why show it at all? "It is what it is" and a player can do zero about it.

You have a point, it's easily determinable by experiment, and it's not even fully accurate due to the inserter hand size bonus.
The information can be useful though for circuit network contraptions (so you can check if a machine is low on ingredients), and maybe to plan stuff so that machines don't get input starved.