ClaudeMetz
Network Base Planner View Feature Request
Suggestion
While trying to plan a factory for modded recipes, a player will eventually end up with a circular recipe chain. For example: A + B -> C C + D -> E + F F + G -> A
Some mods may introduce much more complex looped chains with more ingredients and by-products. Some by-products will have to be voided using recipes that generate a non-fluid result, which introduces another layer of challenge.
On the other hand, players, especially those interested in megabase designs, tend to use a lot of direct insertions and craft intermediate products on the spot using separate machines. For example, both green circuits and red circuits use copper wires as an ingredient. Even though we can produce the required amount of copper wires per minute with one machine, due to the sheer amount per second required, belt throughput caps, UPS optimizations, or just space efficiency in general, it sometimes makes more sense to use separate machines for each of the EMP machines individually. This creates a problem where we have to separately think of each individual flow of copper wires instead of leveraging an entire pool.
Trying to leverage a regular traditional/matrix factory planner to deal with these kinds of problems is a whole other problem on its own.
Everything about this reminds me a lot about Satisfactory endgame recipes and the requirement to deal with Dark Matter Residue. Satisfactory players have a great tool for planning their production chains called "Satisfactory Modeler". It is a flow network-based editor where we can individually arrange each part of the production chain. We also gain a lot from the visualization aspect of it; we can clearly see what goes where and in what amount. It is immensely helpful when dealing with these kinds of problems.
I think Factory Planner could have a third planner mode that represents the factory plan as a flow network in the style of Satisfactory Modeler. Honestly, I am willing to make a POC when I get the time to do so, and if it works out, I can offer my contribution to create a ship-ready feature
