Green and Red wires: Why two colours?

[Durabys]

I have perhaps a very stupid question but why do we need two color types of wires? Why not have a single one? Or..why not have more colored wires?

I want to know what is the reason for having exactly two types of colored wires? Why not more or less?

[MiniHerc]

Good idea. We do need more colors. Blue and Yellow would be nice. Or White and Black. Or both sets. More circuits for the circuit god.

[quyxkh]

Haven't needed more than two colors yet, do you have a concrete, worked example of something useful in-game that would be dramatically better with more colors? I generally get by with very few signal-isolation combinators, I use each-to-each - 0, the "-" is my visual clue, other uses for that are vanishingly rare.

[mergele]

There is not really a need for even 2 colors, however I too would like a few more colors, just so I can more easily distinguish / kep track of which networks have to be seperated and which are on the same hierarchy of the computation and stuff like that.

[DaveMcW]

2 color wires allows you to compare a global variable to a local variable without the signal leaking between them. Many combinator builds would be 2-3 times as big if they were forced to use extra 1-way gates to prevent signal leakage.

Some very complex combinator designs could be improved with 3+ wires, but the gain is not that big. And it is a pain to design connection point graphics for more than 2.

[aober93]

If not for 2 wires, you wont be able to compare 2 networks. You cant compare 3, so no third wire necessary.

[quyxkh]

I suppose having arbitrary-colored wires but still only two connectors per direction might be fun, nothing would have to keep track of more signals than currently because those are by network, not by wire. You could allow open connection and port-color specification, so upgraded combinators will let you connect any color wire to any post, all wires on a post are still on the same network, and let you say which color each post shows up as on the readout. The network highlighting on mouseover solves the tracing problem for me (mostly, vertical wires are a bit of a pain, every so often I'm reduced to the debug overlay to avoid a gui-hell clickfest), but it might be pleasing to be able to color-code my networks with more symbols, I use red for want or take, green for have or put, when I can, but that's not always possible. I use the black signal for aggregate belt capacity, it's a want-signal so I generally use red wire, but it'd be nice to be able to use black wire on my capacity-distribution network, so that oh-God-no-don't-connect-that-wire-_there_ reaction would get just a little more likely to kick in before I do something I'm going to regret.

[ChoMar]

More colors would be ok - it would reduce complexity for newer players (sound counter intuitive, but giving each thing another color means you dont need to worry that much about the wrong signal...)
Maybe 4 would be nice?

[Hannu]

Haven't needed more than two colors yet, do you have a concrete, worked example of something useful in-game that would be dramatically better with more colors? I generally get by with very few signal-isolation combinators, I use each-to-each - 0, the "-" is my visual clue, other uses for that are vanishingly rare.

Most things, if not all, can be done with 2 wires. However, at least I have used to plan electronics and other engineering stuff. I try to make things clear and I try to avoid all kind of "hacks" whenever possible because they increase always risks of errors and faults and maintenance costs. Consistent grouping and color coding of wires is one way to do it. It is sometimes annoying that Factorio does not give proper tools to do things clearly. But on the other hand, it is of course challenge of the game to get complex things to work with compact set of basic building blocks.

[Durabys]

2 color wires allows you to compare a global variable to a local variable without the signal leaking between them. Many combinator builds would be 2-3 times as big if they were forced to use extra 1-way gates to prevent signal leakage.

Some very complex combinator designs could be improved with 3+ wires, but the gain is not that big. And it is a pain to design connection point graphics for more than 2.

So why not three? There are 3 basic colors: Blue Red and Green. Why not add blue? It would also allow us to make RGB displays easier and so on.

If not for 2 wires, you wont be able to compare 2 networks. You cant compare 3, so no third wire necessary.

Uh oh. I am studying Electronics and there is a thing called 3-Way Comparator.

[quyxkh]

Haven't needed more than two colors yet, do you have a concrete, worked example of something useful in-game that would be dramatically better with more colors? I generally get by with very few signal-isolation combinators, I use each-to-each - 0, the "-" is my visual clue, other uses for that are vanishingly rare.

Most things, if not all, can be done with 2 wires. However, at least I have used to plan electronics and other engineering stuff. I try to make things clear and I try to avoid all kind of "hacks" whenever possible because they increase always risks of errors and faults and maintenance costs. Consistent grouping and color coding of wires is one way to do it. It is sometimes annoying that Factorio does not give proper tools to do things clearly. But on the other hand, it is of course challenge of the game to get complex things to work with compact set of basic building blocks.

All things can be done with 2 wires, the combinators are Turing complete. Agreed on the coding consistency to reduce risk of errors, let's ... be kind to myself and say circuit logic is, umm, not native to my way of thinking? ... but once I settled on conventions, green carries positive, left, have, put signals, red carries negative, right, want, take signals, where possible, reading combinators gets easier, most combinators are clearly things like "have < want" or "total + put - take", and the less common uses really stand out just from the wiring.

[UnluckyNinja]

I guess it's for ingame "if" clause implementation. So you can easily distiguish the "true" branch and "false" branch.
More colors is ok, however, it's more of a cosmetic feature rather than something functional and important that can attract the devs' attention.
Maybe someday after 1.0, the devs will add something like "paint system", then you can change the color of floors, factories, and wires freely (in rgb code).

[Deadly-Bagel]

Probably not, but for those of us who cannot easily distinguish between red and green I hope they change the red wire to blue.

(Makes no sense to change the green wire because red is the difficult colour and is often almost invisible to colour deficient people)

[Tinyboss]

All things can be done with 2 wires, the combinators are Turing complete.

Well, lots of things are Turing complete and also a total pain in the ass to work with, so that's not a very good criterion. Factorio combinators are TC even with only one wire color, for example.

[quyxkh]

All things can be done with 2 wires, the combinators are Turing complete.

Well, lots of things are Turing complete and also a total pain in the ass to work with, so that's not a very good criterion. Factorio combinators are TC even with only one wire color, for example.

The point wasn't that the current 2-color setup is about as easy as it's really going to get, DaveMcW already made that point rather clearly. 3 colors rarely reduce component count at all and then not by much,

The point was that the question can be resolved by comparing equivalent circuits, that there's no theoretical oh-but-maybe situation lurking in the wings. If some 3-color design is going to make things better then the case for it can be made by showing concrete examples.

[mergele]

-Deleted, I must have had a brain out.-

[BlooSkies]

Why is this such an argument?
We've already explained why two wires are helpful, so what's the issue with adding more?

Graphically:
-The colors aren't differentiated at the combinator level, so it's actually counter-intuitive to make separated input points for each color of wire anyway.
-Light poles are the problem child, but it could be as easy as having the wire colors sag differently.

Performance-wise:
-More colors would be better for performance than the hacks required to perform the same operations using only two.
-They would not change performance whatsoever in usage cases that wouldn't require them.

Any problems with understanding how the system operates are already an issue anyway, and would need to be solved in the tutorial.