"Only change after a complete craft" setting

[DaleStan]

I would like a setting where the combinator only considers its inputs when target assembler completes a craft.

Borrowing a highly-simplified situation, I have a circuit that tries to decide whether to craft iron or steel. It looks at a chest, and sees that there is more iron than steel, so sets the assembler to steel. Once I pull the iron plate out, it sees less iron than steel, so it switches the assembler to iron. The iron plate is evicted from the assembler, and it starts loading iron ore. The iron plate is returned to the chest, the circuit changes its mind again, and returns to asking for steel plate.

I'd like to be able to short-circuit this loop by saying "Craft this recipe [in the example, steel plate]. Do not change the recipe until it completes a craft."

This is similar to "Keep crafting until zero", but not the same. The decision circuit may not reduce the steel plate below zero until all the iron is consumed, or it may reduce the steel plate recipe to less than zero as a result of loading iron, before the crafting starts.

(The actual situation is an arcosphere balancer for Space Exploration. It needs to manage 8 recipes, with two inputs and outputs each.)

[DaleStan]

After some thought, I managed to simulate this by checking "Keep crafting until zero", adding 500 to each potential recipe signal under normal circumstances, and subtracting 1000 from each potential recipe signal when the output inserter is holding something. I also set the update rate to 5, instead of 60, but I don't know how necessary that was.

[theRustyKnife]

The "Keep crafting until zero" option was added specifically as a workaround for this problem. The problem is that it's not that easy to check when an assembler finished crafting, especially when performance is a concern.

I do have some thoughts on how to potentially make it work, but I wouldn't hold my breath, since modding is quite far down my priorities at the moment and there are other, more important things on the todo list on top of that...

[loneguardian]

Hi there I would like to chip in some ideas to help develop this feature. I too find it inconvenient when the crafter keeps flipping the recipe due to the fluctuations. In my case I resolved it in-game with a latch, to only pass the signal when the quantity reaches a lower limit, and that signal is latched until it hits a higher limit.

I would like to call behaviours like "Keep crafting until zero" or the one OP mentioned "Finish (current) craft before switching" as "Sticky behaviours". Both are actually different behaviours:

1. "Keep crafting until zero" is to prevent extra signals from changing the current recipe
2. "Finish (current) craft before switching" prevents switching due to the loss of signal - which requires the detection of finished craft

I would like to propose a solution based on scheduler - be it from existing libraries or your own implementation. Detection of finished craft can be implemented as follows:

1. With the setting enabled, when signal is missing the CC enters the "sticky stage". Current progress of the craft is accessed, and the number of ticks (n ticks) required to complete the craft (assuming no interruptions) is calculated and a status check is scheduled after n ticks.
2. Status check is performed, if the progress is lower (should be around 0-1% if everything goes correctly?), it is assumed that the last craft has finished and the "sticky stage" can end and recipe change can take place.
3. If the progress is higher/unchanged (maybe due to power cuts/brownouts?), recalculate n ticks and schedule another status check after n ticks, repeat 2 until craft is "finished" - alternatively maybe add a maximum amount the code can loop before the "sticky stage" is forcibly ended

On the other note, I would also like to propose a new sticky behaviour - craft until ingredient shortage (or a way to implement custom delay in changing recipe after signal loss). My use case is for recipe signals which depends on the ingredient (e.g. recycler in Space Exploration). Currently without this behaviour, when the recycler is fed until the ingredient chest completely empties, the recipe changes and it spits out the ingredient without finishing it. With this behaviour the recycler is expected to completely consume all the ingredients, until the assembler changes status to item_ingredient_shortage, then it switches.