Sanity Check

Sanity Check

Built something big and not sure it all works? One button looks over every building on the planet or space platform you're viewing and tells you what's likely wrong. Each problem is circled in the world and on the map, and clicking it in the list takes you there.

What it checks

Production

• Nothing puts items in: machines, labs, turrets and burner boilers with no inserter, loader, drill or recycler feeding them, or a fluid input with no pipe.
• Nothing takes items out: machines and drills with nothing emptying them, or a fluid output with no pipe. A chemical plant that needs an inserter and a pipe in, or two or three pipes out, needs all of them.
• Inserters with nothing at one end: nothing to take from, nothing to drop into, or neither. Wagon loaders with no train in, and drops onto lava or into space, are fine.
• No recipe set (unless a circuit network sets it), and drills with nothing left to mine.
• Out of fuel: boilers, burner drills and furnaces.
• Filter inserters with no filter set (unless a circuit network sets them), and beacons with no modules or nothing in reach.

Logistics

• Pipe networks nothing puts fluid into, or nothing takes fluid out of. Open pipe ends on a bus are fine.
• Underground belts with no other end.
• Logistic chests outside any logistic network.
• Ghosts no robot will build, and damaged buildings no robot will repair: outside every construction area with robots in it.
• Trains with no schedule, or whose schedule names a stop that doesn't exist, and train stops no train goes to. Interrupts with wildcard stops are allowed for.

Power

• Buildings not connected to a pole, on a network with nothing making power, or short of power right now.
• How many separate electric networks your buildings are on, and the spots where two come within a wire's reach of each other (shown with a dashed line).

Defenses

• Gaps: buildings an enemy could reach from outside without passing through a turret's range or crossing a wall, gate, cliff or water. Each way in is drawn as a red line up to where it gets past your defenses, and every gap shows, not just the nearest.
• Enemies already inside your defences count too, and so does unexplored map, since it can hold nests.
• Land closed off by water and cliffs with no enemies and no unexplored map on it is left out, so cleared land isn't reported as a hole.
• Gun and rocket turrets count when something feeds them; hand-loaded ones count while they have ammo (a setting). Laser turrets count when they have power.
• Skipped on peaceful planets, planets with "No enemies" on or no enemies at all, and until you've built a wall or turret.
• Space platforms: every tile of the platform is checked for being within range of at least one working turret, since asteroids can come from any side, the back included. Tiles no turret covers are shaded red and listed by area.

How to use it

Press the Sanity Check shortcut button to open the window, then Scan. Shift+C opens the window and scans in one go. Problems are listed by building type with a count; click one to jump to the next of that kind in remote view. Esc closes the window. Clear markers takes the circles and lines away.

The status line counts what the scan is working through, and the window holds the settings as tick boxes:

• Check defenses
• Turret range counts as protected: turn it off to see every way in that walls, cliffs and water don't block.
• Count hand-loaded turrets
• Report buildings short of power
• Include trains with no schedule: off by default, since a parked or hand-driven train isn't a mistake.

They're the same per-player settings as in Mod settings.

Ignoring things you did on purpose: after you jump to a problem, an Ignore button appears above the results. It leaves that one out of every later scan, whether it's a machine, a train or a spot where two power networks could be joined. Ignored ones are listed at the bottom of the window: click one to go there, right-click to list it again, or use Clear ignored list. The list is shared by everyone on your force. In the map editor, jumping to a problem also moves you to it.

Good to know

• Nothing runs between scans. A scan works through the map a little each tick, so even a huge base only takes a few seconds and never freezes the game.
• Markers and results are yours alone; in multiplayer each player scans for themselves.
• On a very large base the defense check uses a coarser grid, and the window says how coarse. A gap narrower than that can be missed.
• Works with or without Space Age.

For mod authors

If one of your buildings shouldn't be listed (it's filled by hand, say, or uses fluid by script), add it to Sanity Check's lists in your data-updates.lua or data-final-fixes.lua. No dependency is needed:

local ignore = data.raw["mod-data"] and data.raw["mod-data"]["sanity-check-ignore"]
if ignore then
  ignore.data.inputs["my-building"] = true   -- never "Nothing puts items in"
  ignore.data.outputs["my-building"] = true  -- never "Nothing takes items out"
  ignore.data.fills["my-building"] = true    -- counts as putting fluid into its pipes
  ignore.data.drains["my-building"] = true   -- counts as taking fluid out of its pipes
end