Factorio Forums

TL;DR

With an agricultural tower in hand, I want to see/read a proper number, that tells me how many valid planting spots it will reach (green).

WHAT

The agricultural tower should report the amount of planting spots, both green and yellow, before placing it.

WHY

Before clearing and landfilling the area, it is really hard (sometimes impossible) to read all the squares and their colors properly. Doing the mental arithmetic for a 7x7 (49) grid and multiple permutations is annoying. It's totally doable, but I would like to know at a glance.

See examples below:
If you can tell me by scrolling past which one is the best, without doing mental arithmetic, congrats. I can't do it.

Related: viewtopic.php?t=134611

+1

When you are placing a mining drill, you can see the total expected resources for a given location; why can't we see the number of viable planting spots when placing an ag. tower?

worph wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2026 9:21 pm If you can tell me by scrolling past which one is the best, without doing mental arithmetic, congrats. I can't do it.

First one is best, I can see at a glance that they all have "enough" green squares and that the first one has the fewest (one) red squares.

But on a more serious note, I agrea with your point, so +1.

worph wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2026 9:21 pm If you can tell me by scrolling past which one is the best, without doing mental arithmetic, congrats. I can't do it.

I was to say the same thing as SirSmuggler x) Also i know sometimes you want to know the number of green squares only because you may as well replace it later once the proper landfill is available. The idea could be to have all 3 number summing to 48 in their respective color like [7/40/1] versus [8/37/3] , you can more easily tell which one can have the max output now, and/or later.

mmmPI wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2026 6:27 am [7/40/1] versus [8/37/3]

LOVE this idea. Super simple. Super clean.

Last time i thought something would be difficult to mod , i was wrong, so maybe here too x), what appears difficult to me after a quick check is to guarantee the numbers match the game's ones, i think one would have to rewrite part of the logic to know if the tile should be yellow, green or red from the position of the cursor/tower and this appears error prone and/or beyond my knowledge and ability if you need to account for other mods that may adds their own tiles and rules as in the thread linked by redrook, or 135865

But it may me doable to some extend judging from this mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/agricultu ... ent-helper , maybe a request , or a suggestion would be met positively, it appears welcoming to suggestions for the visuals in the description