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[Feedback] Signal Wire (Red/Green) is a dead end recipe. Please consider reverting to vanilla

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 11:20 am
by Squelch
Signal wires (Red and Green) require rubber in their recipe. This recipe is not used in any other recipe, and is only required by the player/engineer by pocket crafting and wiring manually. This serves as a barrier to building and experimenting with circuit networks because of the relatively high cost of production, supply chain, and/or inventory space required.

Signal wires are single use only, and due to the base game restrictions, cannot be salvaged. Two connections cost 1 unit of rubber regardless of the connection lengths, so the creation of circuit networks, which inevitably requires undoing and rewiring, become excessively expensive and inconvenient to the player. Paradoxically, Blueprints and copies attach signal wires for free. This leads to the temptation of saving and experimenting before reverting, or leaving the current game and experimenting in a sandbox and creating Blueprints. Both of these options break any creative flow in the current game, or even reveal future events to the player as spoilers.

I genuinely feel that the requirement for rubber in signal wires is a dead end recipe, is unbalanced, and merely serves as a hindrance to the player. I also do not feel it is fair to inflict this on new players of what is otherwise a great suite of mods.

Please would you consider removing the rubber requirement and revert to the standard recipe?

[Workaround] Wire Shortcuts Mod removes the signal wire recipes and provides toolbar shortcuts to give free signal wires. This is also unbalanced, but does remove the inconvenience. I would rather not have to resort to another mod, or build my own for pY suite.

Re: [Feedback] Signal Wire (Red/Green) is a dead end recipe. Please consider reverting to vanilla

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 12:11 pm
by error0664
initially i also found this a bit weird, but since i played quite a lot of hours the cost of rubber does not seem too expensive - rubber is a realistic ingredient due the colors / isolation of the wires

what i did regarding these is simple: i just added green/red wires in my mall of thousand things -> there are so many other items/buildings, the rubber and wires do not add anything to the mall (rubber is also used with belts in many receipts that are usually also in a mall)
rubber is building up with a small rubber setup during the early game

then you have always stacks of 200 sitting around - i do not mind wasting signal cables since i have the simple mall setup

Re: [Feedback] Signal Wire (Red/Green) is a dead end recipe. Please consider reverting to vanilla

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 5:27 pm
by immortal_sniper1
well all things automated in a mall feel cheep since realistically no one uses them all the time
also regarding inventory space py should have some techs to increase that

Re: [Feedback] Signal Wire (Red/Green) is a dead end recipe. Please consider reverting to vanilla

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 11:24 pm
by Blokus
Regarding the supposed OPness of Wire Shortcuts, it is entirely possible to achieve functionally the same behavior without technically doing that. Simply place a blueprint containing wires and then revive the ghosts. They will revive with the wires and configuration in place. As a result of this behavior (which mods can't even affect, as it is part of how reviving ghosts works in the core game), I consider Wire Shortcuts to be essentially "canon", especially when mods make the wires expensive. This is particularly because I strongly prefer to design in a live base, rather than designing in creative and deploying in the live base.

Re: [Feedback] Signal Wire (Red/Green) is a dead end recipe. Please consider reverting to vanilla

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 11:15 pm
by Squelch
Blokus wrote:
Tue Aug 18, 2020 11:24 pm
Regarding the supposed OPness of Wire Shortcuts, it is entirely possible to achieve functionally the same behavior without technically doing that. Simply place a blueprint containing wires and then revive the ghosts. They will revive with the wires and configuration in place. As a result of this behavior (which mods can't even affect, as it is part of how reviving ghosts works in the core game), I consider Wire Shortcuts to be essentially "canon", especially when mods make the wires expensive. This is particularly because I strongly prefer to design in a live base, rather than designing in creative and deploying in the live base.
Absolutely! In fact a simple clipboard item of a couple of power poles with signal wires (allowing them to be built within player reach) will allow straight lines to be built for free. Bizarrely, this only uses electric pole inventory, and not the signal wires and copper cable that may also be in inventory. That is a fundamental game mechanic I have had to grow to accept. However, whilst I agree that Wire Shortcuts does follow canon, the base mechanic of free ghosts still feels awkward. I also believe that there should still be a cost to manufacturing wires/cables, but not the cost that Pyanodon is using. I have been wrestling with whether to make this suggestion for some time, and this new playthrough just happens to have been frustrating enough for me to post. (see below)

error0664 wrote:
Tue Aug 18, 2020 12:11 pm
initially i also found this a bit weird, but since i played quite a lot of hours the cost of rubber does not seem too expensive - rubber is a realistic ingredient due the colors / isolation of the wires
There is a period in early game shortly after gaining circuit networks where the wires do seem excessively expensive. I happen to be at that stage again in my current game, and need to automate fetching titanium from an outpost. As titanium is an ingredient for rubber, I have a catch 22 situation, and simply can't produce enough stock in one go to complete my remote work. I find I'm constantly having to travel back to my starter base to firstly deposit titanium, wait for rubber, and then return.
what i did regarding these is simple: i just added green/red wires in my mall of thousand things -> there are so many other items/buildings, the rubber and wires do not add anything to the mall (rubber is also used with belts in many receipts that are usually also in a mall)
rubber is building up with a small rubber setup during the early game

then you have always stacks of 200 sitting around - i do not mind wasting signal cables since i have the simple mall setup
immortal_sniper1 wrote:
Tue Aug 18, 2020 5:27 pm
well all things automated in a mall feel cheep since realistically no one uses them all the time
also regarding inventory space py should have some techs to increase that
I do have a small "mall" at my starter base, but signal wires are not included for two reasons.
  • They can be a resource hog, and starve other production lines - particularly science production - even with output chest limits.
  • Space - my map is tight, so until I move to distributed manufacturing - hence the need for circuit networks - the ad-hoc arrangements that I have already built, simply hasn't left room.
It is true that the expense and inventory space becomes trivial in a more mature game, but there is a point early on where it actually becomes a significant hurdle and has the effect of blocking the early work needed for later infrastructure. Larger inventory space is too far away - and less of a priority - in the tech tree considering my current resources.

Thank you for your suggestions, but they seem to work around the problem rather than address its duality of being expensive for the player without being useful for anything else, and being free by using ghosts/clipboard.

[Edit for words]