Factorio Forums

Allow the circuit network to see what buildings are planned but missing materials

I'm thinking just an additional radio choice here:

"Read construction network requests" with help text "Reads the unsatisfied requests from the construction network of this roboport and sends them to the circuit network".


Today to do just-in-time malls we can set the recipe on an assembler, and build a nice machine to ensure that there are at least some N of each building type available to build, but this is wasteful! Buildings like spaceports and nuclear generators are quite resource heavy, and if none are planned, why even keep them in inventory?

There is no way to implement this that won't be terrible for performance, or simply incorrect in what it outputs - likely both.

Isn't this data already aggregated for the "entities missing material for construction" messages?

waitofaiorur wrote: Wed Jul 23, 2025 10:18 pm Isn't this data already aggregated for the "entities missing material for construction" messages?

No. That list of alerts had no idea if items are now available, or a robot is now available and or working on a given thing. It also doesn't include the full list since it's only an alert that *a thing* was not possible to work on, and the game cycles through the things over time re-checking them. It's not guaranteed to include all things and is not guaranteed to still be accurate after the exact moment the alert was made.

Additionally network A may be missing the materials and make an alert, but then network B has them and sends a robot - so you both have an alert made and have the thing being worked on.