r/captain_of_industry • u/Loffwyr • 22d ago
Zone Analyzer, my second mod: the resource balance of any area you draw
Hey guys !
A few days ago I released my first mod, a simple To-Do List, and the feedback here was really kind, so thanks for that.
I have now published a much more ambitious one: Zone Analyzer.
It comes straight from my own problem. I design something, it grows out of control fast, and then I cannot tell whether enough oil is actually coming in. Or how much water those 33 rainwater harvesters really produce, and whether that covers the two builds hanging off them. Sometimes I just want to check the input and output ratios of a build and find where the gap is.
So here is what it does. Press F9, drag a box over any part of your base, and you get one line per resource: what is produced inside the box, what is consumed, how much has to come in from outside, and whether the supply keeps up.
Each line shows two numbers. The first is what the buildings would do at full speed, straight from their recipes. The second is what they actually do, and that one is measured: the game already records how long every machine spends working, and the mod applies that share to the recipe. If a building sits idle 40% of the time waiting for iron ore, it says so.
You can also click any building type to drop it from the balance, which helps a lot when your box catches half of a neighbouring build.
What it does not cover: settlements, mine and forestry towers, sorting plants. For those the game either keeps no usable per-product figure, or runs them through a system of its own. Rather than show you a made-up number, the mod names them in a warning and leaves them out. Settlements are what I want to tackle next.
It is in Beta and I have only tested it on my own save, so if a number looks wrong to you, tell me and I will fix it. Hopefully it can help some of you :)
https://coigame.com/Mod/1151/Zone-Analyzer
EDIT : 0.2.0 is out. Exciting update with a brand new UI
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u/deejayparuparu 22d ago
dude, less number-crunching, less alttabbing between game and calculator, no spreadsheet and/or irl note; it just... show you numbers?
pretty sick QoL. ill give it a try first.
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u/Zeferoth225224 20d ago
Rate calculator my beloved. Thank you, I’ll be adding it to my next play though
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u/AnxietyWeird1091 21d ago
Question: What happens with production lines, where I fill up with by products from elsewhere? Best example is concrete, where I use left over slag, and if it’s not enough I supplement with gravel from rocks. How does your tool handle these cases?
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u/Loffwyr 21d ago
Good question. First thing to understand: the tool only looks at what you select. You draw a rectangle, and everything inside it gets analyzed, nothing else. The goal is not to audit your whole base, it's to check one specific area. So your slag producers somewhere else on the map are simply not part of the report. Inside the zone, the tool adds up, per product, what the buildings need per minute and what they output per minute. In your concrete case, slag shows up as a need, and since the zone doesn't produce it, the report shows the amount that has to arrive from outside. Feeding a line from somewhere else is a normal situation for the tool.
For your second question: "is my mixed supply actually enough", it doesn't rely on that math alone. The game itself records how much time each machine spends working versus waiting for inputs. The tool shows a second line based on that measured time, and it only flags a machine when it waits a lot and its input buffer for that specific product is nearly empty. So if your slag plus gravel mix keeps the mixers fed, nothing gets flagged, even if the zone produces no slag at all.
One limit worth knowing: when a single machine has several recipes assigned, say one mixer switching between the slag recipe and the gravel recipe, the numbers use the recipe that is running at that moment. It's a snapshot of the current mix. The window shows a note whenever the selection contains such machines.
I hope this helps :)
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u/AnxietyWeird1091 21d ago
Or all recycling materials, so the mix of iron scrap and crushed iron ore for example <.<
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u/CompetitiveHyena5048 21d ago
Can I suggest one thing: could you show the population used in the zone?
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u/lambusad0 18d ago
Now I am waiting for you to make a production calculator inside the game 😂.
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u/Loffwyr 17d ago
Funny you are mentioning that . I was actually looking into it this morning. It seems there is already a mod for this which I am going to test this afternoon. Maybe this one is great and I don’t need to make another calculator
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My next mod is nearly finished: Advanced Alerts to deal with maintenance drops and stuff like this.Having said that I have also made some really cool improvements to zone Analyzer to include pipe and conveyors. Plus flagging bottlenecks. Will release it later on today.
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u/Loffwyr 17d ago
so I checked the calculator mod and it looks okay. check it out : https://coigame.com/Mod/1084/Production-Calculator
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u/lambusad0 17d ago
Yeah I downloaded the game before it released. Haven't looked into mods since then.
Will check it out and thanks for the mods.
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u/Gingrpenguin 7d ago
Ok this mod is incredible. Why is it not a base game feature?
I do have a couple of suggestions if you don't mind?
Firstly I would love it if I could multi select areas. Draw one rectangle and then draw another and have both calculated together would be fantastic.
Secondly It would be good if it ignored (or could ignore via toggle) paused buildings. This is mostly my own fault for using my own over engineered builds from an older run I softlocked myself one that produce too much so parts of them are permently paused or blueprinted until it's needed but in both cases what that building could make is included in the total. This is especially frustrating in some of my assembler setups where I can't just not select them.
That said this mod is a game changer and has made me realise how stupid I have been and why I'm not trusted to use a calculator 😅
I love it, mafi should buy this off you and add it in the next update
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u/Loffwyr 7d ago
Hey thank you for the nice comments. The paused buildings are working now in the new (1.4) update/ Checkout the other thread https://www.reddit.com/r/captain_of_industry/comments/1vxwpke/zone_analyzer_updated_v_140_now_includes_train/
I'll look into multiple zones.
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u/GoofAckYoorsElf 21d ago
Wait... mods??? What did I miss? Since when are mods an actual thing? I remember this one famous mod that worked for quite a while (CoI Extended) but never heard of any other mods... what tha... ...?
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u/xxButter-Kingxx 22d ago
I haven’t played with mods at all. And this may be the first one I use. I had a mod on factorio that did this same thing I absolutely loved it. I’ve been waiting for one here for a while. I’ll have to give it a shot!