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Changes to burner roboport equipment tooltip

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 4:19 pm
by Deadlock989
Following this question and illustration.

Would it be possible to suppress the entire "Consumes: equipment grid electricity" section of the tooltip if input_flow_limit is 0?

The rationale here is that if you have set input_flow_limit to 0 then the equipment is never consuming any equipment grid electricity - assuming that the whole point of giving it a burner source is that it doesn't need to do that. I don't see the need to show the electricity buffer either (in the case where all the power is coming from what is being burned, presumably the buffer only has to be large enough to contain a tick's worth of the outgoing recharge rate). I don't feel a pressing need to show the robot recharge rate either (again, assuming that your burner source is tuned to the same wattage, because less or more than that is pointless). Essentially the stack of fuel in the roboport is the buffer.

I suppose someone somewhere might have a use case where the equipment uses both power sources at once (I don't really get why but still, it exists now). So I'm not proposing changing how it works at all, just how the tooltip is configured if the equipment grid electricity is not being used.

Someone may be able to think of a better way of handling this. The way it is now though, it's weird at best.

Many thanks.

Re: [Request] Changes to burner roboport equipment tooltip

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:48 pm
by Rseding91
The burner is strictly filling the standard energy buffer in the equipment. Just blanket not showing energy info if the input limit is 0 doesn't seem helpful. The issue is: it's not likely the burner energy source will be enough to supply the full demand of the roboport equipment so showing the energy bar and the robot charge rate is still very useful.

For example: the burner could be running at full speed but only supply enough power to sustain 1 robot. But given time it could fill the energy buffer and then for bursts it could sustain more.

Re: [Request] Changes to burner roboport equipment tooltip

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:54 pm
by Deadlock989
Fair enough. It's of no use in its current state so I'll stick with separate generator equipment.

Re: [Request] Changes to burner roboport equipment tooltip

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:59 pm
by Rseding91
Deadlock989 wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:54 pm Fair enough. It's of no use in its current state so I'll stick with separate generator equipment.
That's a little melodramatic. It's fully functional and does precisely what it sets out to do: let roboport equipment run off burner energy directly. I think you might be putting too much stock into the tooltip details.

Re: [Request] Changes to burner roboport equipment tooltip

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:00 pm
by Deadlock989
If you don't want to do it, that's absolutely fine.

I'm not giving players something which has "Consumes equipment grid electricity" written on it when it doesn't, that's all.