[MOD 0.16.x] Whistle Stop Factories

[Avacado]

@eradicator

So I finally finished implementing the beacons that are the same size as the buildings to make sure if the building gets power, they also get power.

• Problem: Inserters/loaders that take from the factory, also want to take the modules out of the beacon. Apparently removing the "player-creation" flag is a partial fix because it stops loaders from taking while leaving the beacon effect, but inserters still take the modules out.
• Alternative idea: make them burners... apparently you can't for beacon entities for some reason
• Alternative idea: Include power polls in the entity. I haven't figured out a great way to do this, because you can't ensure that the wires will connect and when they do there is no real way to just power the entity... but maybe I can always count on wire length being longer than power length (as it almost always is so that you can string power polls without overlapping their power zones) and maybe I'll just have a 3x3 grid of 9 power polls in the entity at each of the corners, the sides, and the center
• Alternative idea: Simply put off the entire beacon/speed tech idea until .17 when void energy is introduced

Hopefully the new void energy will work with beacons even though burner energy doesn't work.

[eradicator]

Hopefully the new void energy will work with beacons even though burner energy doesn't work.

I pushed the whole idea up mainly for beacons, and nagged a lot to make extra sure it works for them (though it would probably have even without my nagging). Also 0.17 has a "inserters can't interact with this" flag. Though i thought inserter-beacon-interaction had already been removed (i thought i saw Optera complain about not being able to disable them anymore by out-serting the modules). Burners don't work for beacons because burners only work for stuff they were specifically allowed for ^_^ (the whole energy source system is seemingly much less universal than it appears at a glance).

That said...i can't come up with a neat and magic solution to your inserter problem either . Connecting invisible power poles isn't difficult, but it means that suddenly the player can accidentially connect two power poles on either side of the factory via the built-in invisible pole...

Hm...ingeneously...if you have a factory-sized invisible accumulator with 1 tick of capacity, and a zero-reach (0.01-ish) zero-wire power pole exactly in the middle, where the beacon also is... then the accumulator steals the power that's connected to the factory, and transfers it to the beacon via the no-reach power pole, and the beacon thus no longer needs to be factory-sized .

[Avacado]

Hm...ingeneously...if you have a factory-sized invisible accumulator with 1 tick of capacity, and a zero-reach (0.01-ish) zero-wire power pole exactly in the middle, where the beacon also is... then the accumulator steals the power that's connected to the factory, and transfers it to the beacon via the no-reach power pole, and the beacon thus no longer needs to be factory-sized .

You are a madman. That is a such a crazy idea. Hmm... the only issue with that idea I can see is the factory might steal the accumulators power before the beacon does, but now I'm realizing that that is probably solvable by putting the accumulators at a higher usage_priority. So now I just have to add a beacon, accumulator, power pole, and 20+ loaders every time I place down a building, what could go wrong? And that'll pretty seamlessly transition to .17 by just removing the accumulators and power poles and changing the beacon energy source, as it'll be a tiny beacon in either case such that it stays well away from the loaders.

I'm trying to think how much of that will be exposed to the player. I'll have 2 new accumulator entities (since I need 2 different sizes for my 2 sizes of factories) each draining a small amount of power from the network and will show up on the power usage graph. I don't think players can browse other power networks like they can browse each logistics network unless they click a power pole in it and they won't be able to click this one. I haven't worked with wires, but hopefully I can make it invisible. I'm a little worried about the players being able to getting ahold of the modules in a way I haven't thought of (.destroy() apparently also destroys the modules inside and doesn't drop them), but I've made them super weak +10% speed, +14% power and given the beacon a 5x efficiency so that the total effect is +50%, +70%.

[awm23]

Hi, great thanks for adding a switch of indesctructability of your WSF!
There is a reversed loader on Big Assembler, here is a pic.

p.s. now i'm playing with 30 science packs mod and i have idea: what do you think about Big Laboratory? For 30newSP+bob which totally gives like 37 different science packs would be great to have a big laboratory with loaders. I can assume Labs would be as rare as Oil Refinery, or even rarer. Anyway it would be better than logistic robots

p.s.s. so i launched game and found an issue of reversed loader. If you put adjacent belt in any other direction except of direct to the Assembler, you will get an output from assemlber. Not a big deal, you can reverse them back with belts.

[magus424]

@eradicator

So I finally finished implementing the beacons that are the same size as the buildings to make sure if the building gets power, they also get power.

• Problem: Inserters/loaders that take from the factory, also want to take the modules out of the beacon. Apparently removing the "player-creation" flag is a partial fix because it stops loaders from taking while leaving the beacon effect, but inserters still take the modules out.
• Alternative idea: make them burners... apparently you can't for beacon entities for some reason
• Alternative idea: Include power polls in the entity. I haven't figured out a great way to do this, because you can't ensure that the wires will connect and when they do there is no real way to just power the entity... but maybe I can always count on wire length being longer than power length (as it almost always is so that you can string power polls without overlapping their power zones) and maybe I'll just have a 3x3 grid of 9 power polls in the entity at each of the corners, the sides, and the center
• Alternative idea: Simply put off the entire beacon/speed tech idea until .17 when void energy is introduced

Hopefully the new void energy will work with beacons even though burner energy doesn't work.

Could you make your own beacon based off the existing that requires no power, then use that?

[zebediah49]

For context, this is in regards to a bug a few people have had with WST 0.2.2. In some situations, technology researched before the version was updated does not get unlocked.

I've attached a save file to this post which demonstrates the issue. E: Bug resolved in 0.2.3, so no point in leaving the savegame up. TYVM!

`game.player.force.reset_technology_effects()` does not fix it.

`game.player.force.reset()` followed by `game.player.force.research_all_techhnologies()` does unlock the recipes... but a rerun of `game.player.force.reset_technology_effects()` reverts it back to no unlocked recipes.

Note that I get the same result with a fresh game as well.