Factorio Forums

Just the ability to create filter groups for example "Fuel" which would match coal, wood, solid fuel, etc..

adam_bise wrote: Mon Sep 18, 2023 3:21 am Just the ability to create filter groups for example "Fuel" which would match coal, wood, solid fuel, etc..

Mods could mess that up! I've been guilty of that myself: For my WIP version of Bio Industries, I implemented a feature where fuel values were assigned to all items made with recipes that take at least one item with a fuel value.

I primed the process by considering as fuel all items that already had a fuel value. Then I checked all recipes producing an item, and if they contained at least one item defined as fuel, I'd put them on the item-with-fuel list as well and start over looking for item recipes that use fuel items. Finally, I'd calculate fuel values: If 1 wood has 2MJ and 1 small wooden pole is made of 1 wood, it also has 2MJ, while 1 big wooden pole made with 4 small wooden poles has a fuel value of 8 MJ. This really seemed to make sense (things made with wood should burn), but then it started to get a bit extreme: BI has wood pulp which can be compressed to wood bricks with a higher fuel value, or be processed to cellulose which can be used further (a more advanced tech) to produce plastics. That way, everything made with plastics would get a fuel value, including red circuits -- and then, everything using red circuits would get a fuel value as well! Eventually, in case of a black-out, you could just burn a rocket silo in your steam engine to get several GJ.

I'm not saying your idea is bad! But if your idea is implemented there may be mods that make it useless because your filter groups suddenly contain too many items.

Hmm not sure adding the ability to create filter groups would mess with item properties or recipes.

I was talking about filters as in the cargo wagon and filter inserter. But, in the case of filter inserters, I know there are only a certain number of filter slots for balance, so it would really only apply to cargo wagons. Belt splitters being able to use these groups would also trivialize sorting challenges. But for cargo wagons, it can be pretty cumbersome to load many types of items which could have several different quantities. It takes too many combinators to figure out when the train is "full" considering what is currently being loaded would not complete an item stack. You wind up waiting for inactivity, but then you have to account for different reasons there may be inactivity, and maybe you are loading from a sushi belt, but not to go into any of that. It would just make cargo wagons as a whole work better in these edge cases.

For example, middle-click a cargo wagon slot and bring up the filter select menu. Here would be an option to create a new group or delete a group. When creating a group you give it a unique name and select other filters that would belong to that group.