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When I'm making circuits, it would sometimes be really nice to have a little input or output post for sections that I could label up as "put the input here."

You can use power poles for this but they create copper power lines which can be annoying, and also visually clutter up the space, especially if you are placing them below a combinator layout.

Would anyone be interested in making a visually small, non-power version of a pole that doesn't provide visual clutter but just acts as a convenient "attach signal wires here" point?

You can shift leftclick a power pole to remove all wires from it, including the copper ones. If you want to draw specific copper wires (to switches for instance) you can fabricate some copper wire to do that.

Not what you asked, but a workaround for it

It can be added, just remove all wires by pole placing.

Yes I know you can do that. It's a pole that's *graphically* small that I'm after. If you stick a power pole on the bottom edge of a combinator row, it overlaps all the combinators visually, obscuring some of the wires.

Define "visually small", in terms of game tiles, please. Does it even have to be a "pole"? Some sort of 1x1 copper connector?

Try this mod:

I had a little poke around and there are issues. You can't independently define circuit wire distance and copper wire distance, so a power pole entity must have either both or neither. If it has copper wires, you can't stop them being drawn while the entity is in your active hand during placement, you can only do what darkfrei's mod above does which is automatically disconnect the entity after it's been built.

What you'd need is some other entity that doesn't have copper wires at all but does support circuit networks and doesn't do anything "off the shelf" in terms of changing any signals, like a lamp or a constant combinator. At which point you may as well just use a lamp or a constant combinator.

darkfrei wrote:Try this mod:

2018-04-15 13_41_58-Factorio 0.16.36.png

ConnectionBox_0.0.1.zip

code

Code: Select all

script.on_event(defines.events.on_built_entity, function(event)
  local entity = event.created_entity
  if entity and entity.name == 'connection-box' then
    if entity.neighbours then
      entity.disconnect_neighbour() -- copper only
    end
  end
end)

That looks great! I'll try it

I agree with this request.

You don't need copper wires for electric poles to read circuit network contents. And the auto-connect electric poles is annoying when trying to manage where power is and just creates clutter. I know you can remove all wires but its tedious after awhile, then you have the no electricity alert for poles that essentially don't need electricity.

It would be nice if the base game offered a 'small circuit pole' variant of the 'small electric pole'. For bigger stuff there's lots of mods that do wireless transmission.

MakeItGraphic wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2020 6:13 pm I agree with this request.

Why not https://mods.factorio.com/mod/ConnectionBox ?

darkfrei wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2020 9:40 pm

MakeItGraphic wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2020 6:13 pm I agree with this request.

Why not https://mods.factorio.com/mod/ConnectionBox ?

Yeah not sure why I didn't look there for an updated file. I tried modifying the info json with no luck and then posted the reply.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, the new graphics look a lot better too!

I was able to sit down just now and play with this a bit. At first it seemed like the same thing as an electric pole only tinier.

- auto-draws connections

So this was just a conflict with 'Lighted Electric Poles +' https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Optera/LightedPolesPlus

It is kind of interesting, if you use a lighted connection box it auto-connects, you use a non-lighted entity no connect. But if you build a lighted CB after a non-lighted version that one will connect to the lighted entity, and in some cases when removing the lighted one the non-lighted entities will auto-connect everything. *This is Factorio forcing the connections though, it does this with all poles placed, larger poles are the worst auto-connects any nearby copper, and circuit wires. Is fixable, but you'd have to replace all electric poles.

Anyways easy fix I just updated your control file for compatibility, is copy-paste pretty much.

- states no power connected

Not sure why this one fired, it doesn't with just the base mod active (unedited version of your mod). It's not the same mod conflicting either since if I run just the base game "optera library, light poles plus, stenios library, toggle map editor, and connection box" then it fires the no power on the modded version of your entity ONLY. It could just be the crap ton of other mods on my main save I don't know whatever it's not a big deal. When fixing the above compatibility issue it's just one line of code you have to add to fix it (event.created_entity.energy = 1).

Misc:

I removed the supply area completely, and increased the draw distance a bit. The only other change I might make is updating the graphics files takes a few seconds remove the copper pole completely, or split it into two separate entities. A powered, and non-powered version.

--------------------

Any ways all that said great mod, easy to use, easy to understand love it. Thanks again!