Factorio Forums

It's possible to power your own machines with electricity drawn from a hostile force's electric network.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Download the attached scenario and start playing. When you start the scenario, anything inside the large hazard-concrete square belongs to the player's force, while structures outside that square belong to a hostile force called "rival". An iron chest inside the square contains items you will need for the next steps.
2. Place a fast inserter in the coverage area of one of the rival's power poles. The inserter will be powered. [Expected: machines will not draw power from or provide power to enemy poles]
3. Build a power pole of your own within wire connection range of an enemy pole. The poles will be connected with a copper cable automatically, and become part of the same electric network. [Expected: poles will not connect to enemy poles]
4. Attempt to disconnect your pole from the enemy pole using Shift+LMB. It will disconnect, as expected.
5. Mine and re-build the pole to restore the connection.
6. Attempt to disconnect your pole from the enemy pole by clicking on one and then the other with copper cable in hand. The game will not allow that ("Enemy wires cannot be changed") [Expected: you should be able to remove cables connected to your own power pole. And if it's possible to remove them with Shift+LMB, it should be possible using copper cable too]
7. Open your own pole's GUI. It will show power generation and consumption statistics for all entities in that network, regardless of force affiliation.

Scenario: download/file.php?id=44481
Log: download/file.php?id=44480

Thanks for the report however this is working as intended: if you don't want someone to take power from your electric poles build turrets to prevent them from getting there.

Ok. But what about the discrepancy between step 4 and step 6? It's possible to disconnect your pole from the enemy's with Shift+LMB, but not by stretching copper cable. And once it's disconnected, the connection can be restored by mining and re-building, but not by stretching copper cable.

If connecting and disconnecting the poles is allowed, shouldn't both ways work, for consistency's sake?