Factorio Forums

TLDR; Show an icon on the map for construction commands that aren't covered by a construction network to help the user to figure out why thing's are working.

At the moment the game iterates over all the construction & deconstruction orders on the map. If there are many orders not covered by a construction network then the construction network (to the user) stops working while it iterates over them all. There is no way to debug this and to figure out why it's doing what it's doing without disabling achievements. The only ways I'm aware of is to either load the game in the editor and use a selection tool or to use a /c script.

If the game instead put a red (or similarly coloured icon) on the map in the same way it does for the "missing items" or "missing construction robot" then the user would have a much better understanding what the network is currently doing and why it's apparently completely stopped.

This also helps find things that weren't built, such as a single missing inserter in a manually built blueprint or the "cliff changed shape so wasn't fully blown up so now the track wasn't laid correctly" issue.

The problem here is: The game does not iterate through the construction outside of construction networks. So it cannot be counted.

Doing so would need extra CPU cycles.

Attached are 2 save files. The only difference is that one has 1000's of ghosts out side of a construction network.
If you load up the two games and use /editor command to start the game running you will see the difference in the behaviour of the construction network. If the game wasn't iterating over the construction commands that were outside of the network then the behaviour should be the same between the two save files. Unless there is something else that would cause the issue.

To get a good idea of the difference in the behaviours, put your cursor over the "missing material for construction" icon and watch how fast the map icons snake their way over the blueprint in the two save files.

I currently have it set up so that in both games the inserter only puts in one belt at a time to make the scenario play out longer, but you can put in all the belt with enough robots to view the MASSIVE difference in the construction time.

Also, don't as me how, but it seems to alternate between the inside range ghosts and outside range ghosts. Don't know how I did that as I've always experienced it go in the placement order. Probably has something to do with the way the editor does it's "pause the game" magic.

Ah, ok. Seems, that I mixed up something here. I failed into it, because when something cannot be constructed for a long time, it seems to go into another queue, which is worked through much slower (?) to prevent exactly those wait times. And what I said makes also not much sense, because the robots prefer to build power and roboports, so what’s not inside a construction area can be inside within the next tick.