Friday Facts #379 - Abstract rewiring

[IForgotMyName]

The developers made an incredible reworking of power system communications, although a small part of the players needed it. I think the overhaul of Spidertron's controls (which is much more commonly used) will be great; Given the hint at the next FFF and the lack of mention of remote in today's FFF, we'll probably know about changes in Spidertron next week!

What lack of mention? The Spidertron remote is literally one of the abstract item examples.

I explained it incorrectly. Yes, Spidertron's remote was mentioned in the list of Abstract Objects. However, there was no explanation as to how it would now work, and this is one of the most complex items along with blueprints. Therefore, I suggested that there will be a more detailed FFF about him

[husnikadam]

Have you considered having an opportunity to assign hotbar actions to regular quickbar? I think it could be very useful, I could press one key (1,2,3,...,0) for a custom action (roboport, exoskeleton toggle) and wires and remotes popping into a hand rather than having to memorise all the multi-keyshortcuts

[Shingen]

Abstract rewiring, and the next FFF being focused on remote interactions?
While it's all cool, i had hoped that you will continue the train theme.
I think my most awaited feature is train station conditions - but not ones to leave the station, but ones to arrive there in the first place. E.g. ones that you could use to make a decision that a train should go to a refueling station only if it's low on fuel, and otherwise skip that station altogether, to not waste additional fuel to get there.

[Drury]

Pop quiz: can you spot the shadow problem I want to fix next?

overlapping shadows?

[gravityStar]

I explained it incorrectly. Yes, Spidertron's remote was mentioned in the list of Abstract Objects. However, there was no explanation as to how it would now work, and this is one of the most complex items along with blueprints. Therefore, I suggested that there will be a more detailed FFF about him

The FFF says:

turn these all into abstract items which you can spawn for free

The relevant screenshot says: "Create artillery targeting remote." So, if you click the Spidertron remote you get a free Spidertron remote. No need to construct it from a recipe. No radar or rocket control unit needed as input for the recipe. Free.

That's it I'm afraid. There is nothing more stated or implied about the Spidertron remote. Everything else about the Spidertron remote stays the same.

(Well, I guess, because this is just my interpretation of the FFF.)

[MatHack]

Pop quiz: can you spot the shadow problem I want to fix next?

Inserter claw shadows don't seem to line up with the direction of the sun. If I compare the angle of the power pole shadow and the angle of the claw shadow there seems to be a mismatch.

[Tertius]

It's not a spectacular change from the gamer's point of view, but it will definitely improve game experience. It is really slightly weird how the abstract items currently behave. How the wire connection changes will actually work out is yet to be seen, but there were also some oddities with auto-connecting copper cable if you add a new item or blueprint to existing buildings. With blueprints, often way more copper cable connections to the outside are created than intended. I'm curious if there is any change in behavior resulting from the refactoring as well.

Nice how you value all those details and QoL. It seems you're actually playing your own game for fun, not only developing, debugging and testing it. A thing I'm not always sure with all the other games I played in the past.

[Zaflis]

Very nice changes ! The new toolbar icons look so tiny though I hope they will get bigger in the release

I noticed the same thing. They might have been a bit too small in 1.0 still.

[gravityStar]

Who here is going to need to adjust their mall blueprint to remove the construction of red/blue wire and artillery/spidertron remotes?

I have them in my mall, so that's 1.

(Lets not talk about the discharge remote.)

[mmmPI]

Pop quiz: can you spot the shadow problem I want to fix next?

Shadows are so difficults x) I think i noticed the shadow of a wire being drawn above another wire or another entity when it shouldn't be. It's hard to imagine the shadows otherwise, without making assumption on the axis of rotation of Nauvis. But if the sun rise from the east and that is the right, as if north is up, then maybe the shadow should be on the other side the morning Now of course Nauvis could be flat, or have several sun, for all i know i like the new shadows but there is no way it will make my wirings clearer or more organised when seeing the new spagetthi-possibilities

I'm the kind of player who play with the smart belt off, i think the auto connexion for red and green wires at pole removal and dragging is interesting, it will makes some parts much faster, to the point where it's going to give an incentive to place wire everywhere, but i'm afraid it will connect too much things sometimes and mess up networks or memory located far away with signal contamination, but hey that already happened with power grid.

I really like the going forward in the abstraction for items such as remotes and wires. It will help inventory management quite a lot which is welcome. It's nice to see the toolbar going up to 12 shortcut wide because usually for me there was not enough room to add what mods proposed, there was too harsh of a choice compared to how many items i needed in this bar to add more vertical rows.

The 5 connexion limits was annoying i'm glad it's not there anymore, countless time when doing substation grid 4 connexion where eaten up leaving only 1 for factorissimo building, meaning additionnal poles and messing up the nice grid, or using only 1 building per tile, meh. ok it's a niche case, but it makes me happy

With all the changes, setup like this is no longer deemed impossible.

No but it still seem very risky because adding a power pole in between the 2 power switch or a little on the left will instantly create a big spaggethi It seem to me that to replicate this screenshot, one has to add power pole and remove their wires one by one, then manually connect only the visible wires and hope you didn't forgot a pole or need to move one. At least that was my experience with power switch, fun to see working, not fun to make them work. I hope it will be different without the limit of 5 connexion as the need to move a power pole or forgotting one will decrease.

Maybe there could be or there is already a way to place power poles without any electrical wire ? That would be a shortcut in the bar, instead of removing them all , all the time. Maybe that feels justified now ?

[Lee_newsum]

Agree with most of the people here optimizing electric pole connections Can only be a good thing, that will probably help the developers in the future as well. Making a Abstract items of copper cable You can make a case for As the item already includes copper wire and what is not used could be sitting at the base of the electric pole anyway. The others not so much, for the Discharge defense remote In the 10 years that I've had this game I've never used this item. Also I've gone through 100 hour plus games and never touched the circuit network Green or red wires. I have not even used the Spidertron remote.

Anyway a question for you what would happen if I put a blueprint down that has red and green wires in it but I haven't Yet researched circuit network?

[gGeorg]

Is it possible move pole and get auto rewire ?
Is it possible move combinator and get auto rewire ?

moving a combinator is common task when creating a contraption, but current need of manual rewire is teedious and often creates mistakes. Auto-rewire for moving combinators would be a big thing (well, for few who like combinators )

[kajacx]

You can not red wire something from the map, but you could take a blueprint of it, wire it locally, then place the blueprint back over the top, and the wires would magically change. Thats just frustrating and annoying.

Yes finally the devs are addressing this. Please don't stop with the wire connections. You cannot change assembler recipe from map, but you can place one down, set the recipe and then copy-paste it. It's really dumb.

Also changing spliter options or combinator logic or anything else that can be copy-pasted should be doable from the map via a gui.

If you want to argue that it's "unrealistic", then how is pasting it with a blueprint realistic? If you want realism, then pasting a blueprint with a different recipe should mark the entity and the recipe should be changed only after a construction bot flies to it change the recipe.

But either way, please unify this so that you don't need to place an entiry near you, set what you want and then copy it elsewhere, it's just horrible to do.

[ickputzdirwech]

You are putting us modders out of our jobs! (I might as well never work on another update of https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Shortcuts-ick).^^

In all seriousness: I very much appreciate the changes! Can't wait for 2.0!

Although I hope these icons are WIP. They are not even centred.

Screenshot 2023-10-06 143941.png (5.05 KiB) Viewed 3032 times

[mystik]

2. Also please make another level of abstraction, allow combinators put into a "merge box" lets say integrated_circuit with 4 inputs and 4 outputs wires connectors. So it take small amount of space and smaller amount of energy.

Omg I want this sooooo bad right now!

[morsk]

I notice the droopy combinator wires all the time, and I like this change.

For aesthetic reasons I would ask for a way to wire things at ground level, without going up to pole level, only to go back down again. But it already exists: a wooden box with all slots limited. I keep forgetting this, and should use it more.

[tolomea]

If there are abstract items for the different cable colours, is there any value in having separate items? Or should it just all be copper wire?

[maniak1349]

A wild idea: allow putting any shortcut bar items into players belt.

[wizcreations]

The shadow you want to fix next

Shadows overlapping neighboring entities are not distorted by the neighboring entities. The shadow is simply layered on top as if the neighboring entity were flat on the ground.

[Belter]

I really like FFFs regardless of the impact on the gameplay. Please keep posting!

So mod Power Grid Comb to stay, hope it won't be broken due to these internal changes.

PS:

As a bonus, we can also close some of the historic bug reports on the topic.

How to smuggle in two links :-]