Diodes, Switches, other Electrical Apparatuses

[rlerner]

Hello all,

Been playing the game since I bought it on IndieGoGo a few months? back. It's a fantastic game and it is great to see it come together.

That being said, a gripe I have:

The power poles have no redundancy, if you delete one, you can't have another path for current, so it cuts off a branch. Makes upgrading quite difficult (different poles, locations, and so on).


Some items that would be nice to have added:
- Diodes (a method for controlling power to separate circuits, so user's can set up the accumulators to charge only off of solar, or just steam, and so on).
- Switches (allow shutting down/starting up a particular branch of power. Easier than deleting poles)
- Relays (allow a circuit to close based on the presence of power on another circuit)
- Fast and Ultra splitters
- Market to sell extra goods, currency more for posterity than for function.

Take care!

[Dakkanor]

Hello all,

The power poles have no redundancy, if you delete one, you can't have another path for current, so it cuts off a branch. Makes upgrading quite difficult (different poles, locations, and so on).


Some items that would be nice to have added:
- Diodes (a method for controlling power to separate circuits, so user's can set up the accumulators to charge only off of solar, or just steam, and so on).
- Switches (allow shutting down/starting up a particular branch of power. Easier than deleting poles)
- Relays (allow a circuit to close based on the presence of power on another circuit)
- Fast and Ultra splitters
- Market to sell extra goods, currency more for posterity than for function.

Take care!

agreed, usually in my industry heavy areas i make my power pole in a grid and then connect them all so that each pole is connected to its neighbour.

the splitter functionality is easy enough, could be done with a mod, altough i warn anyone who tries to super speed any belts or inserters, each inserter goes about 0.03, 0.06, 0.09 for basic, fast and express, going any faster makes belts "launch" any items on it forward.... its really weird....

[MF-]

The power poles have no redundancy, if you delete one, you can't have another path for current, so it cuts off a branch. Makes upgrading quite difficult (different poles, locations, and so on).

You can build and attach copper wires to the poles just like green/red wires.
Rewiring is thus possible.
It has a downside, though - there is no way of getting that copper wire back.

Some items that would be nice to have added:
- Diodes (a method for controlling power to separate circuits, so user's can set up the accumulators to charge only off of solar, or just steam, and so on).
- Switches (allow shutting down/starting up a particular branch of power. Easier than deleting poles)
- Relays (allow a circuit to close based on the presence of power on another circuit)
- Fast and Ultra splitters
- Market to sell extra goods, currency more for posterity than for function.

There is a trick allowing you to charge capacitors only from solars and then discharge them during the night instead of starting coal power.
Build a separate electric network for the steam engines. Build a capacitor on their boundary, so it's connected to both networks, but the networks themselfs aren't connected.

Switches.. I don't really see the need. I don't like loosing light and land defence.

Relays.. Could be useful.

Splitters are said to be instant, good for any speed

Markets and money were discussed quite a few times, look up the threads.

[MF-]

PS: You can power down factories using smart inserters.
Simply connect it to the circuit network, set the condition and let the smart inserter take the product out.
When it stops, the whole branch that produced that item stops.

[kovarex]

It is planned to make some redundancy when connecting, probably connect two poles to the same pole just when they are not direct neighbours.
The rest is good ideas, and some of it might be implemented.

[MF-]

It is planned to make some redundancy when connecting, probably connect two poles to the same pole just when they are not direct neighbours.
The rest is good ideas, and some of it might be implemented.

Just please be careful not to kill the ability to build more independent/disconnected networks.
Right now it's simple - build one bridge pole at a remote location, build what you want to build, remove the bridge pole.

[DingoPD]

Old thread, i know

Why not just let us choose, the top right corner of electric network info would be perfect to have small radar-like circle that would display all the power poles within range of the one you right-clicked on, and simply by clicking on the blips we could enable or disable wiring going to that pole.

And if you want to get really fancy, you could let us install/remove the individual color cables ... no modifier power-cable, ctrl-left-click green cable, alt-left-click red cable .. or something in that sense

[MF-]

Welcome.

Big poles can have lot of neighbors in big distances. I don't think it would work well for them.

I don't see any relation to this thread, though. Your suggestion was about alternative approaches to manual wiring.
This thread, if I remember correctly, was mostly about automatic stuff.

[ssilk]

Hm, I would like that, cause I lose very soon the overview and would like to see a more schematic display like so:

http://www.telecom-sudparis.eu/s2ia/use ... ios005.png
or
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3rVZBNJPXR4/T ... nagios.png

I explain it a little bit, how I think it should work.

The network-view is an own window, and needs only half of the screen, because the other half is used for the map.

In the network-view the center is always the pole, at which you stand. The most nearest pole.
When you click on a pole, the map (not the network view) is centered on that pole, so you see, where it is. (again, this means, that the map and the network view is displayed at the same time on one screen). That pole is also highlighted on the map (and the cables to it).
When you hover a pole, all other poles in the graphics, which are the same pole are highlighted, so you see the shortest connection to it. That pole is also highlighted on the map (and the cables to it).

You can choose for the network view, how many hops of the tree (yes, it is a tree in this case, not a network) are displayed. I think more than 5 hops doesn't make sense. You can filter electric- or signal-cables. You can filter out the size of the poles or if it is an "endpoint". Instead of dots, the icon of the targets are displayed. Maybe you can also view all machines, which are connected to that pole.

The more connections are made from this pole, the farer the icons are away from it (=more space is needed to keep overview). The directions of the surrounding poles and machines are only "about" the same, they don't need to be exact, because one pole can be displayed more than one time, when it has more than one connection. When selecting or hovering all the "parallel" poles are highlighted in network view.
The same with the positions, because the more distant the poles are (distance = number of poles inbetween), the smaller they are displayed (logarithmic scale to the outside).

Now you can select a sort of cable and drag new connections or you can click long on a cable and remove that connection...
You can drag over more than one pole, then a connection is created between those.

[MF-]

To sum up - just a walking-free wiring?
You would place the poles.. and then select which poles you want connected with each wire?
( That would allow separating wiring from placing poles, while eliminating the extra "run" for the wiring)

Sounds pretty complicated for a wiring placing/removing mechanism.

+ some sort of network-highlight mode - IMO better in the world instead of in a entity ui

[ssilk]

To sum up - just a walking-free wiring?
You would place the poles.. and then select which poles you want connected with each wire?
( That would allow separating wiring from placing poles, while eliminating the extra "run" for the wiring)

Maybe. But see the thread for the autoplacement. Must be seen in conjunction. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ?f=6&t=961

Sounds pretty complicated for a wiring placing/removing mechanism.

Hm. Yes. see this as first draft. It can be made much easier! But I made very exact suggestions, cause I had a very realistic picture in mind, when I wrote it.

Just leave out the more complicated stuff and you see, that it is just a new map which shows a schematic view of the networks as a tree and let you edit the wires here much easier.

For example, why I tell this: It tooks me an hour or so to find out, that I don't need to click to the top of a pole to wire it, I need to click on the bottom. With such a schematic view you need not know where to klick exactly.

[SilverWarior]

It is planned to make some redundancy when connecting, probably connect two poles to the same pole just when they are not direct neighbours.
The rest is good ideas, and some of it might be implemented.

Here is a simple solution. When you remove a pole other poles that has been conected to it automaticly check for available conections to other poles just as they do when you place them down. This will result in automatic rewireing. Problem solved

[MF-]

Here is a simple solution. When you remove a pole other poles that has been conected to it automaticly check for available conections to other poles just as they do when you place them down. This will result in automatic rewireing. Problem solved

Sounds like just another solution that prevents me from keeping deliberately separate networks

[SilverWarior]

Here is a simple solution. When you remove a pole other poles that has been conected to it automaticly check for available conections to other poles just as they do when you place them down. This will result in automatic rewireing. Problem solved

Sounds like just another solution that prevents me from keeping deliberately separate networks

Not unles poles that have been concected to the pole you just removed are close enough to connect between themselves.

[MF-]

Not unles poles that have been concected to the pole you just removed are close enough to connect between themselves.

Yes, network separated purely by distance stay separate.
It becomes impossible if both networks utilize big poles to, say, span a lake.
Or just need to be run close together for another reason.

I also prefer creating shapes from the wires, having them randomly shuffled also doesn't sound right.