Factorio Forums

TL;DR

In the entity info window on the right show what ingredients a recipe has and what it lacks.

What ?

The entity info should look something like this:
Ingredients that are completely lacking should appear ghosted. Ingredients that are present but in insufficient number should have their number shown as red.

More colors could be used. For example yellow could indicate a sufficient amount for one cycle but not the requested amount.

Also results could be shown as ghosted when none are present to avoid the window constantly resizing when items are build and near instantly removed by inserters.

Why ?

Sometimes things grind to a halt because some ingredient is missing. While tracing the problem backwards from assembler to assembler it is hard to remember all the ingredients each recipe has. When some assembler isn't working and one hovers over it with the mouse the entity info window on the right shows what ingredients are present but gives no clue as to what is missing. To find out what's missing one has to travel to the assembler in question and open it or lookup the respective recipe in the crafting window. Seeing the info directly on mouse over would be easier.

Mark/show missing ingredients of assemblers

TL;DR

mark/show missing ingredients of assemblers in the hoovering menue

What ?

It could be readily available in the same manner as for logistic item marking all ingredients of the recipe and underlying with red color the missing ones in the content row. Other a little more hinting is adding the missing ones in the row below the statment of missing ingredients

Why ?

Sometimes/often one need/want to look why a assembler is not working.
Its stated that an igredient is missing but not which one/s, so one need to head over to get that information to work on.
Its in style of automation to not needing to get there for this bit of information

I like the second…

+1

I prefer the second alternative however, since it takes less vertical space.

+1
The advantage is, that you don't have to open the assembler.
or from far, you don't have to know the exact recipe and anticipate what item is missing

jodokus31 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 25, 2022 11:06 am The advantage is, that you don't have to open the assembler.

Wouldn't it make sense to (optionally?) be consistent with what you can see in that case? That is, show all ingredient/result slots at all times under Contents in the tooltip, shaded (or not) in the same way, eg fully red for a missing ingredient, red background for insufficient quantity, grey for an empty output slot etc, with number overlaid for non-zero amounts. Somewhat similar to "Signals" when hovering over a circuit network-connected power pole that have a coloured background to show wire colour.

Furnaces would be a bit different because of their dynamic recipe behaviour. Also fuel slots where appropriate.

When one investige his/her factory and sees that some machine is missing ingredients you always have to guess which one is missing.
The GUI shows us that something is missing, but it won't show which one exactly.

I propose fixing it somewhat like this: Also note that sometimes it's even more complex, say the recipe wants 12 steel and machine have only 10 steel. Than looking on GUI it's even harder to notice that.

So only way to fix factory is to go to stopped machine, open it, look inside and only there you'll see red square that highlights what's really missing.
Than you understand that you are missing steel beams,

Ok, now you have to go to machine with steel beams open it just to see why that one isn't working.
So you run around your factory not to fix something, but just to open machines to see what's missing.
Or you have to search recipe and substract ingredients you have to the ones in machine now.
All this is totally solved with this small GUI enhancement.