Suggestion: Automation alerts

[tommytom2k2]

Basically, I was thinking about how certain things you end up having to check them yourself or stare at them. It's not all that fun.

What if you could have a piece of automation that can display a custom alert?

I would love for my power grid to, for instance, tell me when it has run out of all resources and kicked back to coal backup. It would be as simple as putting a piece of automation directly on my coal automation circuit that turns it on to have "show message if active" and I type in something like "Warning! Power running on backup coal generators!"

Could have a tick box for an audible alert as well.

[ISAWHIM]

An "Alarm" would be a nice addition to the automation package. (Optional text too, but just an alarm you could jump to, would be nice.)

Also, a "level sensor", to add to devices. Instead of just "on/off", or just "one level". EG, the batteries have only ONE active level. Adding another logic-level, would/could extend the output of the battery to control other things at other levels, instead of having to use another battery for every level of logic.

EG, I use six batteries. Each is at 10% less than the other. One turns on a coal-gen, another turns on another coal-gen, etc... If power is being used only a little, only one gen fires-up. If it continues to drop, in high use, more gens fire-up. Even more, and my dupe-gerbils start running in manual generators.

Could be, alarms", "levels", "Direction control" or "dupes allowed/restricted", or whatever, to extend whatever normal output is, from the device it is hooked-up to. (Sensors, batteries, pumps, etc.)

[Nightinggale]

I don't think it would be hard to mod in a "reverse sensor" as in a 1x1 building, which reads the automation signal instead of writing to it. If on, it adds a status item and when it's off, it removes it. The status item will then use the existing code to create an alert. If it's easy to mod, it should be easy to add to the game.

The problem comes with the text. It looks like there are a fixed amount of possible messages (pipe blocked, no input etc) and adding more while modding doesn't look trivial, certainly not if the text should be changeable by the player. As much as I would like an alert building, gaining the ability to easily make a mod with one would allow so many other options while modding.