Inventory Sensor + Storage Room

[Oxidizer]

Due to the large number of different materials in ONI and the way conveyor filters work (i.e., only able to filter a single material, rather than a set of related materials), it can be quite hard to implement something that most games of this type have, which is "make X item until you have Y amount". Yes, you can sort of use conveyors, sweepers, smart bins and automation to achieve that, but soon the amount of stuff surrounding the materials (storage, sensors, filters, doors to prevent infinite loops, etc.) takes up more space than your dupes, all your machinery, and the materials themselves. 

I understand there can be some difficulty in determining how much of a specific material you actually "have" (sometimes it's not desirable to put items in storage bins, but you might also not want to count items lying on the floor on the opposite end of the map), since ONI (also) doesn't support the concept of stockpile zones, so I would suggest adding the following:

 

1. A new type of sensor: the Inventory Sensor. This has a list of materials with checkboxes (like storage bins, with the option of selecting multiple materials) and a double slider (like reservoirs). It outputs a GREEN signal until the total amount of selected materials (in all your storage on that planetoid) reaches the value set by the MAX slider. At that point it switches to outputting a RED signal, and maintains the red signal until the total amount of materials drops below the value set by the MIN slider (upon which it goes back to green). Basically, green means "make more of these things" while red means "don't make more of these things".

If you select multiple materials (ex., copper and gold), the sensor tests for the total amount (all your stored copper + all your stored gold), so 50 copper and 20 gold would trigger a threshold of 70, although you don't actually have 70 of either of the individual materials. Naturally, you can also select just one material (same as with storage bins).

 

2. A new type of room: the Storage Room. This can be defined by having a marker similar to the park / nature reserve sign. All items inside a Storage Room are also counted by Inventory Sensors, even if they're not inside bins (i.e., including items lying on the floor).

 

Other improvements would include toggles (on the sensor) to count only items in Storage Rooms (ignoring storage bins in other places) or even count only the items in a specific storage room (though that would require a way of identifying specific rooms - again, something other games have but ONI lacks).

 

 

[Sasza22]

Simply adding thesholds on smart storage (and making it not consume power) would mostly fix that. It would probably need a little more than a single sensor but not much more as longas your storage is in one place.

Another issue is controlling which thing is being made. If you want to keep making an item until you have Y amouint of it you can disable the station that makes it but that disables the whole building that could be doing other things as well. There is no way to disable a single recipie atm.