[2.0.21] The wire does not reach

[SANTIMEL]

Situation

The wire does not reach ↴

Анимация 2.png (17.72 MiB) Viewed 620 times

[Loewchen]

That is not a bug.

[SANTIMEL]

And what is the deep meaning of such an idea?
After all, judging by the radius, the power line in the upper right corner should reach. And everyone else is not.

[Muche]

According to 120638 Quality Substations have the same red/green wire reach as normal ones, the wire reach in this example is limited by inserter's reach, not substation's.

[SANTIMEL]

These are ordinary power lines, of poor quality. And an attempt to connect them with a wire is made in the Map Editor.
So it makes no sense to calculate the length of the wire based on a player who does not exist on the map.

[BlooSkies]

These are ordinary power lines, of poor quality. And an attempt to connect them with a wire is made in the Map Editor.
So it makes no sense to calculate the length of the wire based on a player who does not exist on the map.

Nothing to do with a player. Circuit wires can be connected from any supported entity to any other supported entity, not just power poles. Every entity thus has its own maximum length of wire that can be connected to it. The substation here is out of reach of the inserter's wire length. This is a limitation that is working as designed.

[SANTIMEL]

Turn on your head
It just doesn't make sense that the green wire doesn't reach. And the usual wire reaches ↴

1 [30.11.2024].png (505.46 KiB) Viewed 384 times

[boskid]

So if you build small wooden pole and 30 tiles away a big electric pole, would you expect them to connect with copper cable or is that too large distance for smakl wooden pole? How does your scenario change if you start dragging wire from inserter instead?

[IsaacOscar]

Because that's always the rule in factorio: the shortest wire length betweeen the things is the one that wins.

The inserter needs a short wire length, or else you could use jnserters as power poles and connect your circuit wire to two really far inserters.

You'll need to make a post in viewforum.php?f=6 if you don't like the behaviour. I see two reasonable alternatives:

• Make power poles special: when connecting a power pole to something else, the wire length of the power pole is always used.
• Make wire length scale with quality for all entities (just like health always scales). (so you'd want to match the quality of your inserter to the quality of the power pole).

Personally I'd just generally make the longest wire win all the time (but I doubt they'll make that change as it would mean you can connect big power poles 't to wooden ones that are far away...)

[SANTIMEL]

In life. The higher the structure, the further you can pull the wire:

8.png (748 KiB) Viewed 312 times

It is foolish to proceed only from the possibilities of a low structure.

[IsaacOscar]

In life. The higher the structure, the longer you can pull the wire.

8.png

It is foolish to proceed from the possibilities of a low structure.

It is foolish to play factorio if you want life.

Also, in life you can't connect a VGA cable from your computer to a DisplayPort on your monitor,
but if your monitor also has a VGA port, you can connect via that (but you won't get digital video). (In my analogy, the comput is the inserter, and the monitor is the substation)

[SANTIMEL]

We have Internet service providers running their wires over the roofs. Because it's more efficient that way. And the city administration runs electric wires underground. Because it's more reliable that way.
However, neither your metaphor nor mine makes sense.

After all, the essence of my claim is that the power line does not perform its function, not allowing you to connect the green wire. In its area of operation.
This shouldn't be happening!

4 [30.11.2024].png (170.42 KiB) Viewed 288 times

[IsaacOscar]

We have Internet service providers running their wires over the roofs. Because it's more efficient that way. And the city administration runs electric wires underground. Because it's more reliable that way.
However, neither your metaphor nor mine makes sense.

After all, the essence of my claim is that the power line does not perform its function, not allowing you to connect the green wire. In its area of operation.
This shouldn't be happening!

Honestly I agree, but for some reasons the dev's decided that shortest length wins, not longest, and it's been in the game for ages....
You can see the same problem with non-quality big power poles pre-space age: you can connect green wires from two far apart big power poles, but can't connect one to a far away inserter.

[IsaacOscar]

This shouldn't be happening!
4 [30.11.2024].png

Oh I see you're confusion now, that blue area is for supplying power to the inserter, I don't think it has anything to do with cables (which depend on the 'wire reach')

which is why you can connect an green cable from an inserter to a big electric pole, even if the inserter is outside of the blue area (and so isn't being powered by the pole).

[boskid]

If you want to use real life comparisons then lets go that way: if you have 2 big electric poles with super long wire between them then weight of the wire may be significant so the tensile force on the cable will be significant and so the forces on the big pole need to balance by having wire from both sides or you need extra cables to hold big electric pole from tipping to one side. If you would have a 1km long wire going from a big electric pole and on the other end you would have a fridge then there is no way you would be able to have that fridge not move due to tensile forces in the wire.

[boskid]

After all, the essence of my claim is that the power line does not perform its function, not allowing you to connect the green wire. In its area of operation.
This shouldn't be happening!
4 [30.11.2024].png

So you are suggesting that if entity is in range of electric coverage, then wire should also be able to reach? Does it also apply the opposite way? If entity is not in electric supply range the wire should not connect? That will cause big electric poles to reject connections to nearby entities unless they are in the electric supply range. Well... for consistency i would also make 2 big electric poles not able to connect to each other if they are not in each other's supply range, right? Wooden pole and substation would have to be placed so that substation is in electric supply range of wooden pole otherwise it would be inconsistent! all the bug reports that we will be able to finally resolve after this long standing bug! /s

[SANTIMEL]

Make sure that the green and red wires are at least as long as the radius of electricity distribution.
Otherwise there will be such ugliness ↴

7 [30.11.2024].png (739.48 KiB) Viewed 239 times

Or just make two zones. For electricity, and for connecting logic. So that there are no questions ↴

6 [30.11.2024].jpg (144.46 KiB) Viewed 237 times

Or

5 [30.11.2024].png (165.1 KiB) Viewed 239 times

[boskid]

No, i will just use your own argument about importance of real life analogy here: to have long cables, both endpoints need to be able to resist increased tensile forces so they need to be strong enough. Inserter is not strong enough to resist immense tensile forces of having such a long wire (it was only tested to safely hold wires up to 9 tiles long) and as such it cannot hold wire going to a substation in some cases regardless of being in the electric supply range.

[IsaacOscar]

Make sure that the green and red wires are at least as long as the radius of electricity distribution.
Otherwise there will be such ugliness ↴
7 [30.11.2024].png
Or just make two zones. For electricity, and for connecting logic. So that there are no questions ↴
6 [30.11.2024].jpg
Or
5 [30.11.2024].png

Except thay won't work, the range is the intersection between the wire reach ranges of the substation and inserter (also the wire reach of the substation is actually the same as its supply range!) So you'd need to draw your green square around the inserter as well, and the substation wouldn't have a blue square anymore as it would be entirely overlapped by its green square.

[SANTIMEL]

Except thay won't work, the range is the intersection between the wire reach ranges of the substation and inserter (also the wire reach of the substation is actually the same as its supply range!) So you'd need to draw your green square around the inserter as well, and the substation wouldn't have a blue square anymore as it would be entirely overlapped by its green square.

At the very top, the animation proves otherwise.
Or the map editor is not working properly.