Factorio Forums

One of the problems I have is that often I wonder how much some thing or some group of things is contributing to resource usage, for example: how much iron is science using compared to production items, or how much steam is being produced for nuclear vs steam, or in seablock what percent of iron creation is due to one method of creation as opposed to another. It is possible to calculate these things going through them manually, but to be honest it's a huge pain in the ass. The production screen is awesome. I love looking at it and figuring out what's happening with the factory at a glance. I think that if this change was implemented it would make the production screen more useful.

How would you do that?
You don't just route a belt of iron into "science", you route it into tons of intermediate products that are not science-exclusive.

Also, item production happens in bursts while science is a constant drain on resources.
Most of the time it would look like "item consumption: 0%, science consumption: 100%".
So if you just look at the total consumption and assume it all goes into science, you'd be right most of the time unless you just ordered the construction of a giant solar array or something.