Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Add explanatory tooltip popups for the operator/comparator dropdown, to the benefit of players unfamiliar with the symbols.

See also: [2.1] Make arithmetic combinators more readable for non-programmers.

What?

Provide a popup tooltip for the arithmetic operators which provides a brief explanation.

• * = "Multiplication"

• / = "Integer division" (this one is important: factorio does not support decimals/fractions)

• % = "Remainder of division"

• + = "Addition"

• OR = "Bitwise or"

• XOR = "Bitwise exclusive or"

And so on.

Similarly for the decision combinator:

• > = "is greater than"

• ≤ = "is less than or equal"

• ≠ = "is not equal to"

And so on.

(Note: the = and ≠ symbols do not render with the same spacing between the horizontal bars in some fonts, which is just awful.)

The tooltips could also include some additional stuff like examples (especially for integer division and remainder) and longer explanations for the bitwise operators: "Bitwise or, also know as boolean disjunction"

Mockup:

Why?

The symbols are the ones taken from programming languages, and a player unfamiliar with these conventions might be confused.

In my other post, [2.1] Make arithmetic combinators more readable for non-programmers. I suggest that the symbols themselves also be changed to the ones taught in shcool mathematics.