Improving the informativeness of the combinator interface

[Eldrinn-Elantey]

Description

It would be convenient if there was an indicator in the interface that shows the total number of packs of goods that were ordered in the "output signals" section

Context

Since the essence of the cybersyn mod is that trains automatically maintain the number of ordered goods in order to avoid station overflow, it is impossible to order more packs than the receiving warehouse can accommodate

Implementation

No response

[Sharparam]

I'm not sure I'm following completely. Is it about being able to see if the total count of items requested would be larger than the total storage at the station can hold? The combinator does not have any information about how much storage is built at the station.

Or is it just showing a number that is the sum of all request counts? That should be pretty simple to add if so.

[Eldrinn-Elantey]

Just a counter of the total order in bundles (you can also in items, just in case) and the player will already compare with the station 's chests

[Sharparam]

With bundles, that means stack counts?

[Eldrinn-Elantey]

Yes that's right

[Sharparam]

Right, that should be very doable then. Probably separate displays for items and fluids also, since I don't think it would make sense to combine the two into one (needs separate storages anyway, and fluids can't have stacks).

[Eldrinn-Elantey]

Hi, how are things going with this idea?

[Sharparam]

Ah sorry, been away from Factorio so things here kinda came to a standstill I guess.

I did some quick testing and came up with this display:

(The tooltip showing the exact number shows when hovering on the formatted number.)

What do you think? The names for the numbers I'm not sure about, so if you have suggestions for those that is very welcome :)

[Eldrinn-Elantey]

Do you mean the names "Items" Item stacks" "Fluids"?

I am not a native English speaker to suggest suitable options. One way or another I will translate into my own language

Despite this, I can say that I think this concept is so simple that it is difficult to come up with different naming options for this

[Sharparam]

@Eldrinn-Elantey There is now a version you can download to test the feature here: https://github.com/Sharparam/cybersyn-combinator/suites/14831243689/artifacts/844436467

(The actual mod zip is inside the mod.zip you get by downloading the above link.)

I'm still uncertain on the names to use so haven't made a proper release yet, but the functionality itself is finished.

[Eldrinn-Elantey]

I set myself this version and noticed the first bug, so to speak. For the dispatcher to work, we specify values with a minute sign. Total, respectively, is also obtained with a minus

[Sharparam]

Oh of course. I suppose it should collect only negative signals and show the absolute value of those instead. Nice catch!

(There's also that question about whether signals should simply be input positive in this combinator, and they are then converted to negative values behind the scenes, but that is a topic for a separate issue.)

[Sharparam]

The latest build artifact now has fixed logic for counting the totals: https://github.com/Sharparam/cybersyn-combinator/suites/14838947884/artifacts/844953705

I also added tooltips to the labels which explains them.

Included in this is also a more explicit name for the combinator ("Cybersyn Constant Combinator") to help avoid confusion with the combinator from Project Cybersyn itself ("Cybernetic combinator"), just so you're aware.

Also, if you're able, if you can translate the new locale strings to Russian then that can also be included for the 0.6.0 update :)

[Eldrinn-Elantey]

mod.zip

[Sharparam]

And now it's live in v0.6.0! Thanks for the testing and translation ^^