Suggestion to add a remaping mode for combinators

rycbar · Post by **rycbar** » Mon Jul 27, 2026 7:01 pm

TL;DR

Add a Signal remapping mode (or dedicated combinator) that allows multiple input-to-output mappings within a single entity.

What?

Currently, remapping one signal to another requires an Arithmetic Combinator configured with a neutral operation. This works well for individual signals, but every additional mapping requires another Arithmetic Combinator even though no arithmetic is actually being performed.

: 07-27-2026, 20-04-38.png (719.86 KiB) Viewed 502 times

I would like to suggest adding a Signal Remapping mode to the Selector Combinator for this purpose.

The remapping operation would allow multiple signal mappings within a single entity. Each mapping copies the value of one input signal unchanged to a chosen output signal.

Photoshoped example
This mock-up is only meant to illustrate the concept.

: 07-27-2026, 20-31-39.png (73.72 KiB) Viewed 502 times

Why?

Large circuit networks often contain dozens or even hundreds of Arithmetic Combinators whose only purpose is renaming signals. This feature would reduce entity count and blueprint complexity by combining many trivial signal remappings into a single combinator. It would not add new computational power to the circuit network.

One example from my own factory is a video player. The video data is stored in a compressed format. During decompression, the resulting signals need to be remapped to avoid overlapping signal IDs before being sent to the lamp display. The remapping stage is by far the largest part of the circuit, as nearly every other operation can be performed on groups of signals using the Each wildcard. Signal remapping is the only step that currently requires one Arithmetic Combinator per signal.

robot256 · Post by **robot256** » Mon Jul 27, 2026 8:00 pm

This is a cool idea and your mock-up is very helpful. It seems like one of the functions would be to add multiple signals together into one output. For example, your mock-up could be made now with three arithmetic combinators that add each pair of signals into the three output signals. Is that a correct interpretation?

My other question was how often do you need multiple remapped signals to all start and end on the same wire? In normal gameplay when I remap signals, it is because I have many wires with the same signal that I need to remap so they can be transmitted on the same wire without interfering with each other. (Like the contents of four different storage chests of iron ore.) I couldn't use this mode for that because the input wires still need to be separate. (Except for the R/G selector)

rycbar · Post by **rycbar** » Tue Jul 28, 2026 6:59 pm

Thank you for your Feedback

Yes, your interpretation is correct. The example shown in the mock-up could currently be made with three Aritmetic Combinator each adding two signals and outputting it to a third.

While the exact implementation would be up to the developers, I imagine that any combination of input-to-output mappings should be valid. For example:

A->D A->B A->B A->C
B->D A->C C->D B->C
C->D A->D E->F B->D

You are also right that this does not help much for the example you made with 4 sources that carry each the same sole signal. if you connect them together they combine before they even enter the combinator. If you keep the sources on separate red and green wires, you could still reduce the required Arithmetic Combinators in half before combining the signals, which is still a massive reduction.

Where I think this feature really shines is when each source contains multiple signals that would overlap with multiple other signals from a different source. For example:

Source A
5 Iron Ore
7 Copper Ore
9 Stone

Source B
2 Iron Ore
3 Copper Ore
4 Stone

Without remapping, combining both sources results in:
7 iron ore
10 copper ore
13 stone

With the proposed remapping mode, Source A could be transformed in a single combinator:
iron ore -> I
copper ore -> C
stone -> S

giving:
5 I
7 C
9 S
2 iron ore
3 copper ore
4 stone

This avoids collisions for the entire group of signals at once instead of requiring one Arithmetic Combinator per signal.

One reason I think this fits well into the existing circuit system is that something conceptually similar already exists with the Quality operation. A Selector Combinator can already transform an entire set of signals in one operation by changing their quality. The difference is that quality changes are limited to the five quality levels, discard the original quality information, require Space Age, and cannot change the base signal itself.

So the game already supports bulk signal identity transformations. This proposal would extend the same convenience to remapping base signals, without the limitations of the current quality-based approach.

robot256 · Post by **robot256** » Tue Jul 28, 2026 8:55 pm

I think the comparison to quality transfer mode is not quite accurate, because remap mode would require manual entry of each input and output signal (basically the same number of clicks as to configure separate arithmetic combinators). Quality transfer mode can remap all signals with one user parameter setting.

The devs did just add a multi-output feature with the decider combinator Else output. The difference there is that the Else output reduces the number of configuration inputs as well as the number of entities, because previously you had to make sure to enter the same condition twice in two different combinators (normal and inverted).

So a new mode that only reduces the entity count without reducing the number of user parameters required or the number of back-end calculations seems like it would be a low priority change, but you never know what a dev may find interesting. Good luck!

BHakluyt · Post by **BHakluyt** » Tue Jul 28, 2026 9:55 pm

quantumbot

...saving screenshot for possible integration and feature verification for Quantum Nexus Combinator v8... ...scheming... ...generating...printing... ...redesigning...coding...re-reading...

I would like to suggest adding a Signal Remapping mode to the Selector Combinator for this purpose.

The remapping operation would allow multiple signal mappings within a single entity. Each mapping copies the value of one input signal unchanged to a chosen output signal.

Photoshoped example
This mock-up is only meant to illustrate the concept.
07-27-2026, 20-31-39.png

Why?

Large circuit networks often contain dozens or even hundreds of Arithmetic Combinators whose only purpose is renaming signals. This feature would reduce entity count and blueprint complexity by combining many trivial signal remappings into a single combinator. It would not add new computational power to the circuit network.

One example from my own factory is a video player. The video data is stored in a compressed format. During decompression, the resulting signals need to be remapped to avoid overlapping signal IDs before being sent to the lamp display. The remapping stage is by far the largest part of the circuit, as nearly every other operation can be performed on groups of signals using the Each wildcard. Signal remapping is the only step that currently requires one Arithmetic Combinator per signal.
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