Blackbox

Blackbox Mod

This mod allows you to "blackbox" sets of buildings together to improve your UPS

WARNING: This is an alpha release of the mod. Use at your own risk or if you would like to help support development of this mod

What's new in this update?

• Fix compatiblity issues with combat update (game version 0.10.28.xxxxx)

How to use this mod

• First install the mod, and reboot the game.
• Press Ctrl + N after either
• Selecting a station (the station window must have opened)
• In blueprint copy mode, select the input station(s) of your blackbox setup (not recommended any more, might possibly be deprecated in the future)
• Press Ctrl + M to open up the Blackbox Manager Panel to view the blackboxed
• Use "Highlight" to view what buildings got grouped together as a blackbox
• Settings
• You can untick "Analyse in background thread" if you want to blackbox in game time and check your blackbox setup for inefficiencies. Note that analysing in background thread is anywhere between 10x - 1000x faster.
• Use Cycle Length Override to specify the duration of the recipe - otherwise the automatic duration detection uses a very high duration and may delay the analysis
• You can also adjust the thresholds at the bottom if you want to control how accurate you want your blackbox to be
• Ideally, you should not need to toggle any other setting below except for "Auto-blackbox" (I still recommend manual blackboxing at this stage, since the auto-blackbox algorithm goes through the stations in the order they were placed. The algorithm cannot discriminate between blackboxable and non-blackboxable setups without simulating them, so it will probably waste a lot of time on non-blackboxable setups)
• The rest of the settings are currently for debugging purpose. You will only need to change them if you have been in contact with me on the DSP Discord

I will provide clearer explanations once the mod is out of alpha. For now, I just want to get this out there

You are encouraged to contact me on the DSP Discord to provide feedback

Known issues

• The background benchmarking (default option) sometimes converges too fast with a suboptimal recipe. In such a case, you can try unticking the "Analyse in background thread" option and try again to see if it gives a better recipe
• The benchmarking takes a much longer time to converge, if the setup oversaturates the belt. This is because the excess items need to back up through the setup, till it reaches the input stations, for the recipe to stabilize

Roadmap

• ✅ Provide configurable thresholds for analysis
• ✅ Allow item saturation phase to be skippable (defaults to skipping item saturation phase)
• ✅ Maintain internal buffer for blackbox simulation
• ✅ Support proliferated output
• Basic fingerprinting support to allow for reuse of analysed recipes
• Auto-blackbox QoL improvements
• Complete blackbox insufficient power logic
• Provide visual feedback regarding which item / recipe is preventing the setup from being blackboxable
• Figure out static analysis logic (if possible)

Changelog

v0.2.7

• Fix a build issue with dotnet

v0.2.6

• Fix compatiblity issues with combat update (game version 0.10.28.xxxxx)

v0.2.5

• Fix an infinite loop that occurred when trying to blackbox a setup containing an adv. mining machine
• Fix stale UI issue with the Blackbox Inspect window

v0.2.4

• Fix compatibility with latest game version (0.9.27.15466) (for real, this time, I hope)

v0.2.3

• Fix compatibility with latest game version (0.9.27.15466)

v0.2.2

• Fix a crash that occurred when trying to delete prebuilds

v0.2.1

• Fix a bug with blackboxing setups that had output belts from stations for items set to supply or input belts to stations for items set to demand

v0.2.0

• Fix a bug with blackbox inspect and hover highlight, that caused a blackbox on another planet to be selected if the station ID matches
• Add configurable analysis thresholds

v0.1.0

• Fix a crash that occurred when trying to save the game after deleting a blackbo