The <1mg Problem

[tuxii]

This is a repost of this issue since it is now archived: 

The crux of the issue is that anything with a mass of less than 1mg cannot change temperature.  However it can jam a Conveyor Rail Thermo Sensor often enough to cause problems.  I know through testing it personally.

Somehow a Volcano is able to dispense <1mg of material which can then be picked up by an Auto-Sweeper, dispensed by a Conveyor Loader and then sensed by a Conveyor Rail Thermo Sensor which then can be jammed if the <1mg stays out of the set temperature range.

Yes, a player can work around this by manually cycling the sensor or through creative automation, but it isn't a problem that should exist at all.  This is a Quality of Life issue, in my opinion.

I see multiple solutions:

1. Make volcanoes never dispense <1mg in a tick.  Just delete this negligible mass.
2. Make Auto-Sweepers ignore <1mg.
3. Make Conveyor Loaders not dispense <1mg.
4. Make <1mg pass through Conveyor Rail Thermo Sensors freely.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Sasza22]

At this mass it wouldn`t hurt anybody if the game just deleted the debris. It`s such a trivial amount it doesn`t affect anything. Also it would help with performance. And if it affected gasses as well it would make vacuuming easier.

[Lucyfurnu]

Would definitly need this. As said I think easy ways to change it would be to have loaders not dispense under a certain threshold. The auto sweeper part I'm not so sure because it looks to me that the auto sweeper just picked up a stack and it so happens that the stack is a few mg over 20kg.

Another way I could see of fixing this would be with a conveyor meter kind of building that takes in packets and merges them to only dispense the amount asked or an automation sensor that looks at mass in addition to germs, temp and element. Personnaly I would much prefer the last one since that would be useful for gases and liquids as well

[meekay]

I would be in favor of merging packets of solids just like fluids, since we already merge debris.

[JRup]

A packet merger/stacker for solids would be an interesting addition to the game. Nothing too complicated either.
I'll just keep it controlled with double shipping in the meantime.