Friday Facts #379 - Abstract rewiring

[Qon]

3. ghost wiring bring nice new feature you forgot to mention, complicated defence wall ( laser wall with auto-switch off capability ) can be fixed ( restored from rubble) only by robots.

This was already possible in 2019, before blueprints saved wire connections.

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.

I do want something like this.

[Taneeda]

Paying attention to the tiny little details? YES, details matter, love it

[KoblerMan]

I want the belt immunity equipment to be an "abstract item" that just appears as a button toggle when you put on power armor. I've been annoyed since its introduction that it's the only item other than portable solar panels that takes up a 1x1 slot in a grid. Also it's the kind of thing that would be nice to toggle in certain situations, like the exoskeletons.

[Belter]

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

You cannot break something that is already broken I had to uninstall Power Grid Comb after unfortunately seeing it's really not tidying up my powerpoles as i expected.

For me it does the job - consistency. You might ask the author on the mod's forum entry to see if still active - last update 2yrs ago.

[Sir Realism]

I am a bit puzzled by the 2 types of copper wires. Wouldn't it be better if you clearly split the 2 items? Introducing a different icon for the wire in the toolbar, so that there is no confusion possible with the copper wire item in recipes and on the bus

I agree with this one. Now that they are two pretty much unrelated items / functions, they should have different icons. Real overhead electricity cables tend to be black plastic or grey aluminium, but that might blend into the background too much or look like shadows. Yellow perhaps?

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.

I'm also on board with this, the "can do it in map mode but only by creating a blueprint" thing feels a bit odd. I do think that changing wires, changing combinators, changing recipes directly from the map doesn't quite feel right either. I think it would be nice if they didn't consume material but still needed a construction robot to visit.

[Ohead]

I believe the remaining shadow issue is that overlapping shadows recursively darken the graphics behind them, when realistically there should only be one darker shade. You can't block more sunlight when it has all already been blocked!

[BlackKnight]

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

You cannot break something that is already broken I had to uninstall Power Grid Comb after unfortunately seeing it's really not tidying up my powerpoles as i expected.

For me it does the job - consistency. You might ask the author on the mod's forum entry to see if still active - last update 2yrs ago.

For me it works perfectly. You have to remember there are two different modes. Shift+while holding forces absolute while normal is best connection. Use it in combination for a rigid interior framework with perhaps exterior connection flexibility.

A good reminder that some tools (vanilla and mod) have alt actions while right+click dragging tool, shift dragging tool etc. My favorites are the right click drag+upgrade planner which inverts the upgrade action, and shift+deconstruction planner which cancels the deconstruction for the selected areas.

[carsan]

Being a programmer myself, I can relate to all the complexity that lies below things that seem "simple" on the surface.

In addition to that, reading through all the details of this makes me reflect that in real life, nature performs all these calculations by itself perfectly, in real time, with zero cost or lag.

I cannot wait to spend my money in this beautifully crafted product. Keep up the good work fellas!

[Chrisdasdasd]

How about making it 1 button to avoid clutter?

• left-click to connect poles
• right-click to switch to different colour

And if you do a lot of switching, just like in case of BPs,
an option of assigning specific version to your 1-9 hotbar.

[Mango]

The wire and shadow changes are great. I really appreciate the attention to details like this.

My pick to the quiz would be either overlaping shadows being darker or shadows being drawn over buildings being straight as if the building was flat.

I was actually hoping for more changes in the case of abstract items. I find it very confusing, that I can open blueprints, click on one and actually move it to my inventory (while actually removing it from blueprint interface) and then put it somewhere else or throw in on ground.

I don't get why the abstract items have to interact with inventories at all.

I would much rather have them only existing in hands when used and never delete them unless specifically selecting the delete button in an opened blueprint.
This would also nicely work for wires, discharge and artilery remote - you select what you want to use and just use it.

The spidertron remote is similar to blueprint because you can have multiple different remotes existing at the same time. It would need special menu like the blueprint one to set/manage remotes but then you also just select which you want to use and just use it.

No more random blueprints or remotes clogging inventories and no blueprint or remote is unintentionally lost.

Maybe there will be something similar explained in next FFF, lets hope

[coppercoil]

Not sure if wires should drop shadows. Have you ever seen electric wire shadow in the daytime?

[Mango]

Not sure if wires should drop shadows. Have you ever seen electric wire shadow in the daytime?

Yes - Power poles

[coppercoil]

Yes - Power poles

Good. How about light and smooth shadows?

[KeithFromCanada]

I'm glad that y'all are working hard to improve the game, but I'm convinced that y'all are *STILL* going down the wrong path when it comes to power and data. My thoughts:

The Problem

1. Using red & green wires was a useful hack in the beginning, but trying to use them in a complicated circuit can damage your sanity because of how difficult it is to place & trace them. (Yes, hovering over an entity and having the connected wires & entities highlighted would be helpful, but still wouldn't deal with the real problem.)
2. Using more than two nets requires Rube-Goldberg-level shenanigans at both input and output ends. Not fun and (eventually) hits your UPS.

My Solution

1. Ditch the primitive wiring and go modern: use WiFi. (Could be a tech that needs to be researched.) Use the roboport code and define each power pole as having separate power and WiFi ranges. Each entity within WiFi range has an automatic data connection without needing to worry about connecting wires.
2. Add a 'router' entity to create separate data nets, just as power switches can separate power nets. (Each net can separately be shared through the router or not.)
3. Add fully named virtual signals, as is done for train stations/etc., instead of just using a single icon. For example, instead of just

   Code: Select all

   [item=iron_ore]

   --which could mean anything involving iron ore, players could use

   Code: Select all

   [item=iron-ore] Mine 03 Total

   , which tells you exactlywhat the signal actually used for, instead of having to guess.
4. Use the solution that others have come up with (like TSM) and allow players to define separate nets by simply adding a higher-order virtual signal before the main one. For example,

   Code: Select all

   {MineNet05}  {[item=iron-ore] Total}

   would reference a completely different value than

   Code: Select all

   {CircuitFactoryNet02}  {[item=iron-ore] Total}

   , even though the final virtual signal is exactly the same.
5. (Optional) Going a step farther for mega-mega-bases, add a second (or even third) level of nets.

This should deal with a lot of the issues both y'all and the players are having with circuits, and should improve game efficiency, to boot.

Does that sound reasonable?

[Upserter]

A trick I learned only recently is to set the output filter on a splitter to the deconstruction planner. This is useful when you only have one side of the splitter output connected up, because it prevents items from passing through to the end of the belt on the unconnected side where they would just sit unused. Any item will work for this, but I like to use the deconstruction planner because it would never clash with an actual production item, and it leaves a nice big red square on the splitter, which to me reads symbolically as “no exit”.

With the deconstruction planner becoming an abstract item, will it still be possible to use it in this way?

[Panzerknacker]

Thinking more about it, I really don't like the idea of moving things from the game world to the HUD. It gave items a actual purpose rather than just being a ingredient for recipes. It also makes the interface more cluttered.

Abstraction takes away from the immersion. The game is about having fun in the first place, immersion is for many players a big part of that. Just making things more 'efficient' for some turbo megabase builders is not necessarily an upgrade.

[mmmPI]

Good. How about light and smooth shadows?

Challenge accepted !

Does that sound reasonable?

Even more than reasonable that sound necessary for a multi-planetary factory . I'm not familiar with TSM, what you describe i think is how https://mods.factorio.com/mod/aai-signal-transmission function, except it's not related to roboport but there are receiver and emiter building for wireless signal transmission with different channels.

There is this one too maybe even closer to your description: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/shortwave_fix given the example you choose, and https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RadioNetwork which is a little less "cheaty" maybe ? If there is a mid-game version and Wifi is only late game

[coppercoil]

Good. How about light and smooth shadows?

Challenge accepted !

No, shadows should lie on the ground
With the distance, every shadow becomes blurry because the Sun is not a point light source.

[borgiedude]

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.

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.

I don't disagree, but I'm sympathetic that they're may be a lot of code necessary to implement this change. The 'make a local blueprint copy/paste' is a functional workaround for every possible entity arrangement. I'm sure this will be addressed eventually, when higher priority pieces of work have been done.

[Unknow0059]

These QOL changes are always my favorite. I never could say why the wires were so weird and hard to see, but it was both the sagging and the weird shadows. So nice seeing it be fixed.