Factorio Forums

TL;DR

An ingame calculator to stop the alt-tabing.

What ?

An ingame calculator for simple calculations (+, -, *, /). It can be a simple GUI but i would be happy with a chat based thing.
And with the upcoming "Rich & interactive text" (fff-237): it could magicly change into the answer or give the answer as a reply.
Or have a GUI

Why ?

When you try to calculate something, the usual way is to 1) alt-tab 2) make a calculation 3) alt-tab 4) look for the next number 5) alt-tab 6) make a calculation 7) alt-tab
it would be a lot shorter if there weren't any alt-tabs.

i know of the mod Calculator for Factorio. but i don't have all the achievements (yet)

I use a pocket calculator, paper and pen.

There should be a handheld calculator at every desk.

Also, when you play in borderless window mode (fake fullscreen), you don't have to tab out of the game. You can open your start menu or access the taskbar with the windows key just in front of the game. This is much quicker that minimizing and maximizing it in real fullscreen mode.
And for real, nowadays I couldn't imagine a gaming PC without a second monitor. A calculator is an easy task, but where do you put your spreadsheets, wikis, or production planner?

Or just lay down some arithmetic combinators

gsezz wrote:There should be a handheld calculator at every desk.

Agreed.

1. At home, I have like, 4 real calculators on my desk. 2 really old Casio 10 digits, 1 of them solar powered, and 2 Sharp calculators, 1 of them is a Complex calculator, the other a Graphics calculator.
At work (where I am now) I have 4 calculators too, though one is broken. 3 of them (Inc. the broken one) are Casio FX-85GT or FX-83GT calculators, and one is a Texet Albert. (My calculator is named Albert? what?)
2. I have a button on my keyboard that opens calc.exe, so I don't need to alt tab anyway. (at home at least, I don't play factorio at work, for obvious reasons. unfortunately lack the calculator button here, which is annoying when you deal with finance stuff, hence having the multiple calculators)

3. I doubt something like this would make it into the base game, but someone could probably write a mod for that.

mrvn wrote:Or just lay down some arithmetic combinators

Probably not the most practicable solution, but definitely the best answer

ickputzdirwech wrote:

mrvn wrote:Or just lay down some arithmetic combinators

Probably not the most practicable solution, but definitely the best answer

Someone on discord showed me a screenshot of one someone made
then the showed me a screenshot of a modded calculator.

So yeah, there IS a mod for that!

ickputzdirwech wrote:

mrvn wrote:Or just lay down some arithmetic combinators

Probably not the most practicable solution, but definitely the best answer

It's just 2 combinators to do the example. Only problem is you don't get the wires back when you deconstruct it again.

+1
Calculator can be very useful.

Arithmetic combinators

Definitely the most simple and direct answer.

Using arithmetic combinators to make a 7 segment display calculator in the game world

I'm sure this exists!

bobucles wrote:

Using arithmetic combinators to make a 7 segment display calculator in the game world

I'm sure this exists!

of course it does, that's what someone was showing me in the screenshot I mentioned earlier. well, at least the working 7 segment display built out of Lamps.

bobingabout wrote:

bobucles wrote:

Using arithmetic combinators to make a 7 segment display calculator in the game world

I'm sure this exists!

of course it does, that's what someone was showing me in the screenshot I mentioned earlier. well, at least the working 7 segment display built out of Lamps.

Use the nixie tubes mod so you don't have to implement a binary to decimal and 7 segment decoder.

You can use Lua code in the console as a calculator, not optimal...
https://wiki.factorio.com/Console#Use_it_as_calculator