Increase Big Electric Pole Wire Reach to 32 to = Chunk Size

[5thHorseman]

Now that one can align blueprints to the chunk grid with absolute reference and build them from the map, this change is more than needed.

How so? 32x32 is only one of all the possible blueprint grid alignment sizes. Any size other than that (and factors like 16) will not align to chunks. Sure you CAN do it, but it's not in any way inherent in the process. If anything, the blueprint alignments help you ignore chunks even more by setting up your own grid to your own liking.

[ssilk]

Now that one can align blueprints to the chunk grid with absolute reference and build them from the map, this change is more than needed.

I don’t understand that preference. 32 is just a number which comes from binary system, which comes from internal organization of the game engine. There is nothing against having a “chunk size” of 42 in your world. And so it makes much more sense - from my point of view - to have a wire reach of 42.

Why not??

Use mods, if that is somehow important for you.

[Xorimuth]

Now that one can align blueprints to the chunk grid with absolute reference and build them from the map, this change is more than needed.

I don’t understand that preference. 32 is just a number which comes from binary system, which comes from internal organization of the game engine. There is nothing against having a “chunk size” of 42 in your world. And so it makes much more sense - from my point of view - to have a wire reach of 42.

Why not??

Use mods, if that is somehow important for you.

There is a slight advantage to using chunk size 32 in your world when creating snap-to-chunk blueprints: if you make 30x30 blueprints then the first layout that you create will not actually be aligned correctly, so you will have to blueprint it, deconstruct it and then place the blueprint so that it is actually aligned to 30*n tiles from spawn. When using 32, you can just build inside the world grid chunks and that is where the created blueprint will be snapped to.

Hopefully that made sense

[eradicator]

There is a slight advantage to using chunk size 32 in your world when creating snap-to-chunk blueprints: if you make 30x30 blueprints then the first layout that you create will not actually be aligned correctly,

That just means that you need to install a mod that shows a custom grid instead of using developer features to play the game.

[Zaflis]

To me it's very simple, i define world by rail network that is always built from blueprint blocks spaced by big powerpoles. Chunk alignment means that every 7th powerpole i can put down a radar without having to make a mess and draw powerline to a random radar that could end up being inside an actual build...

chunkalign.png (2.44 MiB) Viewed 3571 times

Now look at the 2 at the top; original and proposed. They are almost the same visually, adding that extra 2 tiles is really too much fuss?

Also i do note that the above 32 wide actually connected in the screenshot, that's because of Krastorio 2 playthrough which ups range to 32.25 (why is it decimal?). There are few other mods that add long poles too such as all Bob's mods even if it's played with Angel's. So people definitely see and use them. Not making the feature because they cause issues would be saying those modpacks have issues. Modders will naturally come back to you at forums and request to fix them

I'm not sure where you get that it's computationally expensive to go through every powerpole within reach of the just built powerpole. It's not like you go through the whole map. It's not even a per tick operation but thing that happens just once when constructed so even less relevant.

Also why the bottom designs of rails are bad is because:
1) They need more powerpoles and is thus more expensive.
2) You can't manually place the powerpoles without blueprinting always, because you're not doing max wire reach.

[Xorimuth]

There is a slight advantage to using chunk size 32 in your world when creating snap-to-chunk blueprints: if you make 30x30 blueprints then the first layout that you create will not actually be aligned correctly,

That just means that you need to install a mod that shows a custom grid instead of using developer features to play the game.

True, and I'm not saying that it is a huge issue, but if I'm installing mods, then I might as well install the 32-reach one? We're discussing vanilla.

[NotRexButCaesar]

I don’t understand that preference. 32 is just a number which comes from binary system, which comes from internal organization of the game engine. There is nothing against having a “chunk size” of 42 in your world. And so it makes much more sense - from my point of view - to have a wire reach of 42.

The reason 32 is useful as a grid is because it can be standard in all blueprints/multiplayer games. If everyone uses the same grid, collaboration will become much easier and more effective. It is like asking “10 is just a number from the decimal system. why have all scientists use metric? In their projects, they can use any unit system the like.”

[Koub]

I'm not convinced "everyone has the same grid" would be beneficial to multi.Moreover, once one starts to align ... things that can be, there are always more :
Wire reach from long poles to 32, then substations should be 16x16, then roboports should have 64x64, Radar tiling should also tile in multiples of 2, and so on. There are always more things that would fit well if they aligned. And at the end, one will have a single universal spacing pattern with no reason for creativity because it would be so optimal there would be no reason not to use it.

Also :

It is like asking “10 is just a number from the decimal system. why have all scientists use metric? In their projects, they can use any unit system the like.”

Real life does not need to be fun or something. Efficiency is the key, and there aren't many things more efficient than adding a 0 to scale one order of magnitude up.

[NotRexButCaesar]

It isn’t that everything should be grid-aligned, more that power poles are so close to a nice number, why not just make them that nice number.

[Koub]

Or desalign them so much that one would not cringe seeing the "almost aligning but not entirely" ^^.

[ickputzdirwech]

Feels got to move this from “Outdated/Not implemented” to “Implemented Suggestions”

(Even though it’s still a while until 2.0 comes out)

See 108862

[Stringweasel]

Feels got to move this from “Outdated/Not implemented” to “Implemented Suggestions”

(Even though it’s still a while until 2.0 comes out)

See 108862

Might need to be in the "Implemented for 2.0" instead

[jodokus31]

I think making big-electric-pole wire reach equal 32 would be bad. This would allow setups that would have exactly 1 big-electric-pole in every chunk in repeating pattern, but since power poles can have at most 5 copper connections to other electric poles, in most cases placing 1 big-electric-pole in each corner (or at any other offset) would mean 4 connections are for connecting with other big-electric-poles, there is only 1 connection spare for chunk itself (from 4 poles, 3 spare connections are for other chunks). This means now if you want to power something inside chunk you need to use other poles to cover chunk. If you want more than 1 connections from inside of chunk to big-electric-pole, then there will be risk some big-electric-poles will not get connected, and with repeating pattern this can lead to disconnected networks (ref: 70042). Value different than chunk size requires usage of more electric-poles and should in most cases break perfect grid pattern and prevent this issue from appearing to some players.

What happened to this concern? Maybe allowed connections for big poles should be increased?

EDIT: FFF379 answers this. Poles can take more than 5 copper connections with upcoming release
Thanks!

[TheKillerChicken]

I personally do not believe anything from social media now as AI can pretty much say or do anything (Like Reddit votes, or X-platforms tweets). I know how scary AI is as I had a linux box with an AI processor in I and was able to generate very convincing, yet fabricated results. So yea, the WUBE devs are smart not taking advice from AI Generated non-sense that resides in Reddit. I believe anything from social media like I believe that the dinosaur invented the floppy disk. I use the powered floor mod personally so no power poles are needed.