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This is a simple quality of life improvement for long distance circuit network connections.

When placing large electric poles, they should automatically connect red and green wires to other large electric poles, and ONLY to other large poles.

I think this is a fair trade to allow players to run wire connections long distance without excess tedium and still ensure that short range connections along small poles, medium poles, and substations can be wired up without risk of making unwanted connections. So it's easy to make a big central circuit network and at the same time one can also make small local networks.

The Phoenixian wrote:This is a simple quality of life improvement for long distance circuit network connections.

When placing large electric poles, they should automatically connect red and green wires to other large electric poles, and ONLY to other large poles.

I think this is a fair trade to allow players to run wire connections long distance without excess tedium and still ensure that short range connections along small poles, medium poles, and substations can be wired up without risk of making unwanted connections. So it's easy to make a big central circuit network and at the same time one can also make small local networks.

how about a shortcut button for that instead? like press ctrl or something similar while placing power lines to automatically connect red and green cables?

A good idea in general, and a modifier option to connect red or green wires is a good solution as there may be times when you don't want to continue with red or green wires.

ShizukaMiyuki wrote:

The Phoenixian wrote:This is a simple quality of life improvement for long distance circuit network connections.

When placing large electric poles, they should automatically connect red and green wires to other large electric poles, and ONLY to other large poles.

I think this is a fair trade to allow players to run wire connections long distance without excess tedium and still ensure that short range connections along small poles, medium poles, and substations can be wired up without risk of making unwanted connections. So it's easy to make a big central circuit network and at the same time one can also make small local networks.

how about a shortcut button for that instead? like press ctrl or something similar while placing power lines to automatically connect red and green cables?

That's better actually.

(Normally I don't like the idea of adding modifier keys, for various reasons, but in this case it definitely makes far more sense.)

What advantage would this have over just blueprinting a red/green wire connected big pole setup? I normally use big pole blueprints anyway just for perfect spacing w/ tree removal and such.

BlakeMW wrote:What advantage would this have over just blueprinting a red/green wire connected big pole setup? I normally use big pole blueprints anyway just for perfect spacing w/ tree removal and such.

Circuit network is unlocked LONG before blueprints.

Another idea that takes on the fundamental problem presented in the thread...

It would be interesting to have wireless transmission of Circuit Signals.

Something like 2x2 or 3x3 radio masts/towers. They basically could build a wireless network over very large distances (500 or 1000 tiles or even more after which you have to build a relay station, or maybe even unlimited range)... for example to get information from an outpost to the mainbase and vice versa. Would eliminate the need for connecting distant outposts with red/green wire in the first place.

There could be multiple broadcast channels on the radio mast (like frequencies) so that you could have 5-10 (or more) different transmission channels.

The only thing you would have to do then is connect the radio mast to the circuit network on a local scale.

Also the biters hate that nasty stuff. They don't like to listen to your Radio Resource Outpost!

I may point also to viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14465 Make colored wire "free"

(which makes sense, cause there is nearly no game-value added to produce wires)

ssilk wrote:I may point also to viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14465 Make colored wire "free"

(which makes sense, cause there is nearly no game-value added to produce wires)

Indeed. In fact, IIRC, Wires are free when using a blueprint and robots. This is just a logical extension of that for the early game.

You place a power pole, then another next to it, and get a free wire between the 2 poles. Press Shift(I think, might be control) and left click, the wire is removed, it consumes a copper wire to put it back.
Same with coloured wires, it consumes a coloured wire to wire it up, but you get nothing back when you take the pole down, or cut the wire.

Instead of coloured wires, what we need is a wiring tool instead, basically an item that does exactly the same as the copper, green and red wires do now, except it isn't consumed when used.


Alternatively, placing a pole could consume as many wires is it creates when connecting to another pole, but most importantly, when disconnecting the pole, YOU GET THE WIRE BACK. It is a bit "harder" than free wires, but makes more sense.

bobingabout wrote: Alternatively, placing [...] when disconnecting the pole, YOU GET THE WIRE BACK. It is a bit "harder" than free wires, but makes more sense.

We had that. I think it was changed in v0.8 or 0.9? As everything that might have reasons we don't know yet.

bobingabout wrote:You place a power pole, then another next to it, and get a free wire between the 2 poles. Press Shift(I think, might be control) and left click, the wire is removed, it consumes a copper wire to put it back.
Same with coloured wires, it consumes a coloured wire to wire it up, but you get nothing back when you take the pole down, or cut the wire.

Instead of coloured wires, what we need is a wiring tool instead, basically an item that does exactly the same as the copper, green and red wires do now, except it isn't consumed when used.


Alternatively, placing a pole could consume as many wires is it creates when connecting to another pole, but most importantly, when disconnecting the pole, YOU GET THE WIRE BACK. It is a bit "harder" than free wires, but makes more sense.

Yes, the wire tool would be excellent for dealing with short range, complicated areas where you're mostly working with machines. I think we've discussed this one elsewhere at some point actually.

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Another thought that comes up in the vein of automatically connecting red and green wires between poles, is that makes wires more readily visible to new players. They don't have to work up as much of the initial impetus to wire up their factories because a large amount of wiring is already done and waiting to be used.

And if something is sitting there visible and available to them that is just asking for players to experiment with it.

And now that I've made that line of argument, I seem to have convinced myself that I want the red and green wires + smart chests moved back into advanced electronics so that that portion of the network makes itself immediately available even before combinators come into the picture.

One problem with automatically placing red and green wire is that you will have to remove the wire to have seperated circuit networks. So there needs to be some way that lets you remove and replace wires as well. It would probably be okay to keep the current system of wiring in that case, as long as the recipe for red/green wire was changed to only need copper cable. I think you don't get wire back when disconnecting it because otherwise you could exploit that for free copper wire by placing the poles, removing the wire, removing the poles and placing them again. I mean okay it's so much easier and quicker to just mine the copper but still.

That's... pretty much it right there. there's like, a 99% change you WANT a copper cable between 2 posts you place, the only times you don't want a copper wire there is when you want to create a seperate grid. As for Green/Red, well, part of the reason you have 2 colours is to easilly make 2 different grids next to each other, or interacting with each other. if you start trying to make something complex, automatically connecting is a very bad thing.

I'm necroing I know, but this still shows up in a google search. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LD_AutoCircuit does a lot of what is requested here, for those who are happy with a mod solution. Combined with https://mods.factorio.com/mod/WireShortcuts, you get a connected-by-default but easily disconnectable network.

I would recommend: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/FARL because it enables to lay poles with connected wires.

But I don't do that anymore. It makes for me absolutely no sense to make wire-connections over more than - let's say - 10 poles (no matter about the distance), because such constructs tend to fail too often, when you rebuild that part.

It's just too fragile. In the moment, when the two connected parts get out of sight you forget as player, that there is a connection.

I use my favorite mod for such connections https://mods.factorio.com/mod/shortwave_fix

In my opinion this mod needs also to be part of vanilla, because of the super estetical simplicity of the mod, compared to other mods, that enables radio-connections.

There's a lot of overlap with FARL, but FARL is not a proper superset of this suggestion. And the breaking of the circuit network when you rebuild is one thing this suggestion would address. I'm on the fence about whether wireless circuit mods are "cheating", but given that the use case for me would be to do without LTN/TSM, I think it's probably valid as those mods "cheat" at least as much as a wireless circuit.

Auto connecting red/green wires to every large pole in reach would be bad because it would too easily connect things in passing.

But what about using the click&drag mode? Take a power pole in your hand, click on an existing power pole that has red or green wires and then drag. Instead of just placing the next pole in the right distance it should also connect red or green wires same as the original pole had. But only with the last pole. And if you don't want the red or green wires you just have to place the first pole without click&drag.

On the other hand if you are talking modifiers to choose which wires to connect how about also a modifier to not add copper wires to every pole in reach? In click&drag mode only connect to the previous pole when the modifier is held.

PS: Does any of the mods do that?

Maybe I'm playing the game differently to you, but the vast majority of the times I have connected a circuit wire to a large pole (as opposed to a medium, small pole, or substation, which would be actual hell), it's cause I want that signal to be available on 99% of my other large poles. For the 1% of the times I don't, disconnecting is easy enough to do, just like with copper wires. If the momentary connection of a circuit would cause chaos (I can't think of an example beyond maybe misrouting a few trains that once), then a modifier to disable, or a shortcut bar toggle can mitigate those edge cases. Still I'm of the opinion that defaulting to connected is what the majority of the players want the majority of the time.

Do you have an example of where auto-connecting red/green wires between large poles would have caused a significant problem? I'm now curious.

The mod I linked will only connect to poles that already have the corresponding wires. Unfortunately it only does this for direct placement, anything built via bots don't get auto-connected. And it has a shortcut bar toggle, I don't think it has a modifier.

I have a grid of city blocks with large poles with red/green wires carrying signals all across the world. I blueprint those so I never ever have to deal with red/green wires for the global communication.

But then I use the large poles when I need to get a signal from one side of a city block to the other right across all the other wires in the city. Often that would be in reach of the global grid. So nearly every time I place a large pole by hand the red/green wires would be wrong. But dragging the poles across the city blocks I need to place red/green wired by hand. Can't even blueprint those because the location of the poles is wherever there is space.

That's why my suggestion is to connect by click&drag. It will never connect signal networks, only extend an existing network.