[1.1.6] Ghost power poles still prevent connection of new powerline

[AntiElitz]

Powerring of a roboport in a blueprint is prevented by ghost poles.
See Video:
https://youtu.be/uipTX0ZN1nA

related: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91933

Fix does not work if power aren't/cannot be dragged.
Possible Solution: Prioritize connection to placed power poles.

[plepper1]

I've run into this as well. When dropping a pre-bot blueprint, the power lines don't connect where I place poles, they try to maintain their blueprint connections - which is a new feature.

I've been debating between filing a report and re-creating my blueprints to follow a logical manual build order - which may be the resolution for me.

But it is still annoying when a pole not in the blueprint prefers to connect to a ghost than to a placed pole.

powergood.png (553.83 KiB) Viewed 3294 times

powerbad.png (556.06 KiB) Viewed 3294 times

Edit: missed 'and'

[robot256]

I've been debating between filing a report re-creating my blueprints to follow a logical manual build order - which may be the resolution for me.

Sounds like Power Grid Comb needs a button to apply it to blueprints now. Then even messily-saved blueprints could be cleaned up before use

[blazespinnaker]

This 'feature' makes using BPs without bots tough to use unless you remove all the power poles (which I do)

[kovarex]

Well, if the poles reconnected in this case, we would have a bug report right away, that the connections were "mangled" when you manually build over them.
Generally speaking, building over a ghost with the same entity counts as entity revive, and the game tries to behave basically the same as if robot built it, and if building poles by robots didn't keep the ghost connections the whole wire persistency logic would be useless, so for consistency sake, I want to keep it this way.
I'm open to suggestion thought, but until that time, I'm moving it to won't fix.

[blazespinnaker]

Fair enough, to be honest, my use case is a somewhat niche use case of BP anyways. It is a pain because placing poles exactly over where they are in prints is rather slow and painstaking even in the face of new features.

But BPs, when used with newer players pre-bots (eg, MP mode to guide new players when helping), are meant for players to place poles over the ghosts anyways. And when used with bots, they place the posts correctly. So maybe not really a huge problem.

And it's not really a huge pain to just remove poles from BPs for my use case at least.

If it's a further issue, the only suggestion I can come up with is a Ghostplacer type mod feature in vanilla, which I personally think would be fun for a lot folks and help remove a lot of tedium from the game, similar to what was done with belt dragging. It would certainly make BPs more compelling and enjoyable pre bots. Some type of ctrl key to enable though is necessary rather than having it as default mode, otherwise you end up placing entities accidentally sometimes when you are trying to prioritize placement.

[Lou]

One thing that should improve the experience little bit (as of 1.1.7) is that on ghost pole destruction (like building another entity over it like in the example) should trigger automatic reconnection of neighbouring poles as real poles do. That should making repairing connection after manual changes to ghosts from blueprints bit more pleasant.

[Bilka]

Are we looking at different bug reports? The example video only places a single power pole over an existing ghost, at a place which is not where the problem occurs. So the problem is neither during entity-revive nor during ghost pole destruction. It's during placing of poles next to ghost poles, where wires to ghost poles are preferred over wires to real poles.

[Lou]

Yes, but as mentioned in

Fair enough, to be honest, my use case is a somewhat niche use case of BP anyways. It is a pain because placing poles exactly over where they are in prints is rather slow and painstaking even in the face of new features.

But BPs, when used with newer players pre-bots (eg, MP mode to guide new players when helping), are meant for players to place poles over the ghosts anyways. And when used with bots, they place the posts correctly. So maybe not really a huge problem.

And it's not really a huge pain to just remove poles from BPs for my use case at least.

If it's a further issue, the only suggestion I can come up with is a Ghostplacer type mod feature in vanilla, which I personally think would be fun for a lot folks and help remove a lot of tedium from the game, similar to what was done with belt dragging. It would certainly make BPs more compelling and enjoyable pre bots. Some type of ctrl key to enable though is necessary rather than having it as default mode, otherwise you end up placing entities accidentally sometimes when you are trying to prioritize placement.

There are still cases when BPs would be used this way, wchich will result in manual fixing of pole connections. The new feature I mentioned will make that just a bit easier (i thought this topic needed some positivity (not the covid kind...)).