TL;DR
In the Factoriopedia, each planet-to-planet route has a graph which shows the rate at which each type of asteroid spawns at each point along the route. This graph would be more useful if it had options to instead show the combined spawn rate of all asteroids of each size, or the combined spawn rate of all asteroids of each material.What?
- Under the graph, add a 3-way toggle which selects between normal, merge-by-size, and merge-by-material modes
- When merge-by-size is selected, all non-Promethium asteroids of the a given size have their spawn rates added together, and these combined values are displayed on the graph. Chunks of all types are omitted entirely.
- When merge-by-material is selected, all asteroids of each material (i.e. oxide, carbonic, metallic, and promethium) are converted to their equivalent number of chunks (i.e. mediums are 6, bigs are 18, and huges are 54) and then added together, and these combined values are displayed on the graph.
Why?
When I am designing a spaceship, there are two aspects where asteroid spawn rates are relevant:- When designing the ship's defenses, including ammo production, I need to know how many asteroids of each size will be coming at me. All non-Promethium asteroids of a given size have the same HP and resistances, so I don't care which type they are. Raw chunks don't factor in at all, since they don't need to be defended against.
- When designing the ship's resource processing system, including asteroid reprocessing, I need to know how many chunks of each type will be available. I don't care what sizes are initially spawned; my defenses have to be able to reduce them all to chunks anyway in order for my ship to be safe to fly.