Factorio Forums

There is a mod called "wire shortcuts" it ads shortcuts for red and green wire.

Why isnt it in the basegame ? I can't see any downside, and crafting them is inconsistent and unintuitive for new players considering you get them for free if you copy settings.

Its just pure QoL, without changing much balancewise.

There’s also a mod Get wires back, which allows you to get your wires back from mining and deconstruction, but likewise makes it so blueprinting no longer gives them to you for free.

Either way is user personal preference at this point. I prefer the one I just mentioned vs having them removed and made shortcuts.

TheRailmaker wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:38 pm There is a mod called "wire shortcuts" it ads shortcuts for red and green wire.

Why isnt it in the basegame ? I can't see any downside, and crafting them is inconsistent and unintuitive for new players considering you get them for free if you copy settings.

Its just pure QoL, without changing much balancewise.

I love that mod! Why it isn't vanilla is beyond me. Wires should have been made tools+hotkeys+shortcuts at the same time blueprints did. Blueprints and combinators are the most interesting parts of the game, but combinators don't get the same amount of love as the rest of the game from the devs

FuryoftheStars wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:49 pm There’s also a mod Get wires back, which allows you to get your wires back from mining and deconstruction, but likewise makes it so blueprinting no longer gives them to you for free.

That sounds worse than vanilla D:
That will make the required construction bots multiply by several times for circuit heavy blueprints.

The wires are not a cost in materials. They are so cheap, why would you want them back!!?
I don't want them back. The energy and time and UPS cost of having bots deconstruct wires and bring them back to me is so bad I would gladly pay multiple wires to tell a bot to not bring the wires back! The construction job queue is a fixed world resource (10 ghosts per tick or something), making bots require several trips for a single entity makes large scale construction less feasible. It's like taking the car for a 100 mile trip to buy a bottle of water when you have a tap of infinite fresh and clean water at home.

I was hoping for bots to be able to use their carrying capacity to place several entities in a single trip, like logistics bots. And you want the opposite, requiring multiple bots to deconstruct a single entity! That's highly offensive.

Maybe you haven't built anything large or you don't use circuit wires that much. If so then the mod is just a stylistic choice for you and it doesn't impact your gameplay at all really.

Qon wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:23 pm That sounds worse than vanilla D:
That will make the required construction bots multiply by several times for circuit heavy blueprints.

Yeah, I figured that mindset wouldn’t be for everyone. I mean, I have a personal mod that makes trains (almost) realistically slow and heavy (scaled), and another I’m working on will prevent you from placing concrete (and the like) where trees, resources, or enemy spawners/worms are (and prevent placing them on concrete, though the spawners and worms are actually a chance to fail vs outright denied for some level of balance).

FuryoftheStars wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:30 pm Yeah, I figured that mindset wouldn’t be for everyone. I mean, I have a personal mod that makes trains (almost) realistically slow and heavy (scaled), and another I’m working on will prevent you from placing concrete (and the like) where trees, resources, or enemy spawners/worms are (and prevent placing them on concrete, though the spawners and worms are actually a chance to fail vs outright denied for some level of balance).

It's fine as a mod if that's how you want to play it. But definitely not an improvement for vanilla. Slow trains sounds like a fun thing to try, as a "challenge" or to have something that makes me design differently. But I wouldn't want it as a vanilla feature, challenge mods should stay as mods, that is what mods are for. QoL mods are made to improve vanilla and implement features faster than vanilla can, a good QoL mod in the spirit of Factorio is fine to make a vanilla feature.

"Get wires back" sounds like the primary purpose of the mod is "fixing" that wiring requires wires but deconstructing doesn't give them back. So it's pretending to be a "buff" or QoL if you are wiring and unwiring, to make it easier when playing with combinators which are clumsy. And that is how you presented the mod as well, posting it in this thread about improving the vanilla combinator experience.
But the mod is mostly made up of nerfs that make combinators more tedious to work with, and those are almost nefariously hidden with that kind of mod name. It's not a QoL mod at all, it's more like a challenge mod, more similar to the challenge mods you present now like slow trains.

I'm considering making a mod that flips the logistics progression upside down. Logistics bots are heavily nerfed and cheaper and unlocked with red science, for early low volume logistics. Belts are yellow/purple science and are buffed and made more expensive, so that they become the highest throughput endgame logistics system. Trains are in the middle with lower acceleration but higher top speed to make them worse at short range but better at long range. And maybe make burner inserters end game tech as well with extreme speed. And maybe make nuclear power be the first power source, nerfed and cheaper. The point is to make the game different. I would be mad if I made that mod and people that liked the mod then tried to get Wube to balance the game like that mod then. Do you see my point?

Anyways, keep enjoying the mods you use!

Qon wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 12:31 am Anyways, keep enjoying the mods you use!

And you as well!

(That was kind of my point from the start....)

Back to topic.

TheRailmaker wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:38 pm There is a mod called "wire shortcuts" it ads shortcuts for red and green wire.

Why isnt it in the basegame ? I can't see any downside, and crafting them is inconsistent and unintuitive for new players considering you get them for free if you copy settings.

Its just pure QoL, without changing much balancewise.

That’s my man! I said that since years! And I can prove it: search.php?keywords=%E2%80%9CWireshortc ... mit=Search
And many other time, too.

There is no other logical solution. I don’t know why wube didn’t change the wires when they changed the whole wire-behavior (in 0.16/0.17?) with not getting them back. It makes no sense.

ssilk wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 4:29 am
That’s my man! I said that since years! And I can prove it: search.php?keywords=%E2%80%9CWireshortc ... mit=Search
And many other time, too.

There is no other logical solution. I don’t know why wube didn’t change the wires when they changed the whole wire-behavior (in 0.16/0.17?) with not getting them back. It makes no sense.

Okay...you have like 13k posts, made 8posts about this topic and are here for ~ 10 years. im just new. Guess this forum is no place for much change, even if someone presents argumentably a better solution. gl with that, but im out.

TheRailmaker wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 10:32 am Okay...you have like 13k posts, made 8posts about this topic and are here for ~ 10 years. im just new. Guess this forum is no place for much change, even if someone presents argumentably a better solution. gl with that, but im out.

I think you may be misreading, he's saying he agrees with you that it would be a good solution. Personally, I agree - the "cost" of wires is more of a nuisance than a feature especially when they're free in blueprints.

TheRailmaker wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 10:32 am

ssilk wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 4:29 am
That’s my man! I said that since years! And I can prove it: search.php?keywords=%E2%80%9CWireshortc ... mit=Search
And many other time, too.

There is no other logical solution. I don’t know why wube didn’t change the wires when they changed the whole wire-behavior (in 0.16/0.17?) with not getting them back. It makes no sense.

Okay...you have like 13k posts, made 8posts about this topic and are here for ~ 10 years. im just new. Guess this forum is no place for much change, even if someone presents argumentably a better solution. gl with that, but im out.

Was my post so misunderstandable?


P.S.: In this case we are both the same opinion. But it should not matter how long someone is in this forum, or how many posts he/she made. If something is right or wrong for you, you can argue with us, no matter what subject.

I so much agree on this. I'm sure I have advocated for this some time in the past too. The way the wires are implemented now is clunky.
One needs to craft them to be able to use them.
But they can't be harvested back when deconstructing.
But they are free if built from a blueprint.
And on a special note for the copper wire, which is basically free all the time, except when explicitly wanting to wire manually something.

I hoped this would disappear at the same time the pickaxe was removed to become a buff based mechanism, but unfortunately the devs chose another path. Still hoping though .

Koub wrote: ↑Mon Jun 27, 2022 6:38 am And on a special note for the copper wire, which is basically free all the time, except when explicitly wanting to wire manually something.

Copper cable is a weird one, since it's also widely used in recipes. If I "cleanup" my inventory by throwing out intermediates, it should by all rights go with but it's also a utility item that has purpose staying in my inventory...

ssilk wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 4:29 am


P.S.: In this case we are both the same opinion. But it should not matter how long someone is in this forum, or how many posts he/she made. If something is right or wrong for you, you can argue with us, no matter what subject.

okay, there was lot missunderstanding
I 100% aggree with you. We have the same idea, for a good improvement, and you posted it multiple times allrdy years ago but nothing changed.

So for me this means, its useless to suggest something here, cause nothing will happen.

TheRailmaker wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 1:39 pm

ssilk wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 4:29 am


P.S.: In this case we are both the same opinion. But it should not matter how long someone is in this forum, or how many posts he/she made. If something is right or wrong for you, you can argue with us, no matter what subject.

okay, there was lot missunderstanding
I 100% aggree with you. We have the same idea, for a good improvement, and you posted it multiple times allrdy years ago but nothing changed.

So for me this means, its useless to suggest something here, cause nothing will happen.

There is an entire section of the forums that shows that is wrong: viewforum.php?f=66 . 1100 threads of things people suggested that got into the game. Just because your suggestion didn't make it into the game doesn't mean they don't listen to them.

Silari wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 2:44 pm [...]

There is an entire section of the forums that shows that is wrong: viewforum.php?f=66 . 1100 threads of things people suggested that got into the game. Just because your suggestion didn't make it into the game doesn't mean they don't listen to them.

If I may add : the fact it's still not in the game does not mean it will never be :
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=21276 : 6 years
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=6162 : 6 years
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=306 : 8 years
Sometimes it's just not the right time, or the devs don't see the point and realize it only later on, ...

Silari wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 2:44 pm

TheRailmaker wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 1:39 pm So for me this means, its useless to suggest something here, cause nothing will happen.

There is an entire section of the forums that shows that is wrong: viewforum.php?f=66 . 1100 threads of things people suggested that got into the game. Just because your suggestion didn't make it into the game doesn't mean they don't listen to them.

Same opinion as Koub. Any suggestion that managed to slip through our “quality process” points to something, which will improve the gameplay-value.

That’s just our (the community) view. Nothing is wrong with it and we need to know it and the forum or discord is one of the best places to discuss it.

On the other side there is a software-development team, which knows much, much more than we. They have the truth. Because I’m myself also a software developer and have similar things on my desk and have visited them for a week some years ago, I think I can imagine how it works, but don’t take me too serious, because what follows is a lot of “professional guessing”, keep that in mind please! (Be free to correct me)


They have thousands of things they can do. There are things they must do:
- bug fixes.
- changes that come from outside, like regularities (changes on steam for example) or changes in operating systems.
- things they have promised (Factorio 1.2, see viewforum.php?f=38)
- game-polishing (if a new game-mechanism works, but feels clumsily implemented)
- things that pop up in the community and give a lot of discussion

Below that I think they have some time to do things a developer wants to implement. You see that on things like the improvement of train-routing for example or the steady improvement of the lua-api. I think that’s an interesting point in Factorio development, that they don’t follow an exact plan and say instead if someone really likes to do something which we think is a good idea, then the dev is so involved that in the end a good product will come out.
We had seen many times that a new idea popped up in the forum and a devs immediately took it and implemented it. That’s eventually because the dev already worked on that part or because the implementation was so simple and gameplay-value so high. Or — another explanation I guess could be true — a dev had time to read the forum and liked an idea.

So in the end we can say wube gives the “needs” (I want this feature) of the devs a bit more weight than following a strict plan. And I think that explains a lot of things why Factorio is as it is and why it is a successful game.

Which doesn’t mean they don’t have a plan. See above: the higher priority is to implement Factorio 1.2 and fulfill their promises. To do that I think they have detailed plans what parts of the game-engine needs to be improved or replaced, so that a lot of new features fall “out of the bag”. Could be, that this thread will be implemented as part of a complete rewrite of tool handling or something like that.

That’s also interesting: as long as there is not too much pressure behind it, they don’t implement things that have low impact. Like this thread. Instead they try to look behind the curtain: now where we have enough experience with this, how can we improve the general aspect of it? And that results in an idea to replace big parts of the software with a new implementation which solves a lot more issues than just this simple feature and gives also the ability to experiment a wide range of more things to find an optimized solution. That’s why some suggestions are implemented after 6 years. It’s also because the team is relatively small for such a game. Development is quite slow. They could increase the team size, but that would dramatically change how they work. (A team of 20 developers cannot work in the same way as 10. The overhead of communication would kill them.)

The most important thought stands above that all: improvement of gameplay-value. There It could be, that a good idea turns out to be not a good game-improvement. They have not so much scruples to throw away many month of development, if it turns out to not been working. That’s very uncommon in game-industry (and most other software development I have seen).

Again: all above is based on observations I’ve made. There is much interpretation I put into! So don’t take me too serious! I could be completely wrong.

But if I’m half correct, we can say Factorio development is very agile and dependent on the personal interests of the devs. That’s not uncommon in game-industry (especially for Indy games), but we don’t see often, that new features go such deep into polishing and that fixing bugs is one of the highest priorities, but I think that’s part of the success.

Don't take it personally if your suggestion doesn't get implemented. Also don't assume that just because the devs haven't implemented a suggestion, that they haven't listened. Not every suggestion will get implemented. Some will be contradictory. Some won't fit the devs idea of the direction the game should go. Some will be considered a low priority, and will get added to a maybe implement later list, if/when they finish other higher priority tasks.

My personal opinion of Wire Shortcuts is that I don't think it should be part of the stock game. You can already add circuit wire to your quickbar. Personally I think that is a better solution than adding the wire shortcuts.

But from a game design perspective I think circuit wires are something the player should have to pay for. They shouldn't be free. In my opinion the current "get wires in blueprints for free" implementations is a compromise because building combinator contraptions by hand is tedious and error prone. (And if you make a mistake, it can be annoying to find). Hence the compromise of giving us free circuit wires when we place blueprints, even if we don't have construction bots. But from a game design perspective we really should be paying for those circuit wires.

Obviously not everybody will agree with my opinion above.

The devs can and will make their own decision. But in my opinion the above is a possible perspective on why they might choose to pass on your suggestion.