Factorio Forums

Is there a guide about them?

Some basics here.
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... it_network

Does it help? Is it understandable?

DRBLN wrote:Is there a guide about them?

I try my best.

First I want to introduce the channel-concepts. You might read over that!
The red and the green cable (=circuit network) can be thought as "channels". A channel sends - like a radio channel - messages or signals. The messages are not like in the radio the weather reports or music, they are "current number of items". That simple. If you know the MIDI standard: that is nearly the same concept.

Now to the wires. Depending on where you connect them, they have three functions:

1. By building wires from pole to pole (right click the base of a pole then right click target pole, this is sometimes difficult, because the game doesn't show, where the bases of the poles are) you can built a network of red or green wires. This network is only for distribution of the messages/signals.

When you look at such a pole fully zoomed in, you see the cables well. Everything in such a network belongs to the same circuit. Or in other words: every cable can build its own network. Like with normal electricity you can built big networks of red and green wire. But you don't have to.

2. If you connect a red/green wire from a pole to a chest (smart-, storage-, requester-, provider-) the chest adds its content to the network/circuit. For example: If you have two chests, one contains 64 coal, the other 32 coal and one wood, then the connected network of both circuits contains 96 coal and 1 wood.

3. If you connect a wire to a smart inserter, the number of items which belongs to this network/circuit is sent to this inserter and can be used to decide, if it should work or not.
The smart inserter can use both channels (red and green) for its decision (but only for one type of item both). It will work only when both conditions are true (logical and).


If that helps this text can be used for the wiki.
...

This next part is much more vague, please don't refer to it!

The normal copper wires (electricity) should work more or less equally: a mine for example sends a message to the elektro-channel like need x watt of energy, the steam engines receive that and send back: yes, I have that left.

And the logistic network (not circuit network): without knowing the code I assume, that logistic network is also a channel. The storage-chests sends its content to the logistic channel. But I think that the provider and requester chests have their own invisible channels. The logistic robots receive here messages like "need iron at position xy" or "have coal number 6457 at xy". And i think they send messages like " move to get coal number 6457". But how that works in detail: idontknow.


And a suggestion to the wires: it is complicated, to understand, that a wire has three function, depending on where you connect it. I would add here some graphical help to see the difference, for example small arrows on the cable while building it - from a chest to the pole and from a pole to a inserter.