TL;DR
Optionally read spoilage percentage (either min or max) from storage instead of item count.What?
When a belt/container is hooked up to circuit network you usually get the item count.I think it would be beneficial if you had the option to read spoilage percentage instead, returning either the minimum or maximum for each item.
Non-spoilable items would simply always return 100.
Why?
Currently, the only way to keep track of spoilage is to set up a circuit network ticker and use that to try and keep track of time and how long items have been in storage. This only works so well however.For example when resupplying biter eggs from Nauvis you'd have to start the clock when the first batch of 500 arrives and then start throwing them out when the 30 minute deadline approaches, with no real way of knowing how much they spoiled while your ground base was collecting them.
Likewise the second batch of 500 would be fresher so you'd need a second timer and disregard the first timer when 500 eggs have been used up.
So on and so forth.
I've seen a lot of Suggestions about freshness splitters and whatnot being able to filter out a certain percentage. I think this approach differs greatly from those suggestions since it only tells you the percentage of the most fresh or most spoiled item.
Considering that inserters have an option for selecting for freshness I think the basis of this concept already exists within the game.
As a bit of a bonus, this option would turn non-spoilage output into a purely binary signal of either 0 or 100. You can obviously do this with a decider combinator but it saves one component. I dunno if this would be useful but circuit wizards might be able to work with it somehow.