rmap: what the device needs

The autolathe has accepted a job and stands still. It lacks material – but which, and which ingot would that be? lr tells you how much of which reagent is missing. rmap tells you what you have to put in for it.

The instruction#

rmap ingot printer IRON

rmap r? d? reagent asks a device: “Which item fulfils this reagent for you?” On an autolathe, rmap returns the prefab hash of ItemIronIngot for HASH("Iron") – exactly what you have to fetch from storage. If the device knows no matching ingot, it returns 0.

Two restrictions apply, and both are in the game code like this:

• The device has to be a pin: d0 to d5 or db. rmap does not take a ReferenceId in a register. That is why the printer hangs on d0 here.
• The device has to be a fabricator that works through recipes – autolathe, electronics printer, tool manufactory and their relatives. A furnace is none; rmap on a furnace stops the chip.

Combining with lr#

lr … Required returns how much of the reagent the running job still lacks. If it is more than 0, rmap translates the reagent into the ingot:

lr missing printer Required IRON
blez missing check_copper
rmap ingot printer IRON
move amount missing

That way the chip checks a short list of reagents one after another. Whatever is checked last wins – put the most important material at the end.

Reporting missing ingredients#

The result goes into a logic memory “Nachschub”. A second chip at the storage can read this prefab hash and have exactly this ingot dispensed – you will see how at the vending machine (day 243). A display shows the missing amount.

Why not just a table?#

You could also store “Iron belongs to ItemIronIngot” yourself as defines. rmap has two advantages: it knows every reagent, alloys like Steel or Electrum too, and it stays right when a game update changes the ingots.