Make colored wire "free"

[ratchetfreak]

Currently a green or red wire costs a copper cable and a electrical circuit. When deleting a wire manually you don't get a refund.

This combined makes creating and editing large circuit networks an expensive affair.

Robots however don't use the item when placing blueprinted networks.

I suggest making the wires a "endless" use so making a connection doesn't consume the item (or not a whole cable item and use a durability bar). Deleting a connection should be refunded if the current system stays.

[MeduSalem]

Well, that always bothered me as well... Can't even count how many copper cables, red/green wires I wasted because there's no refund.

That alone wouldn't bother me as much (especially later on), it's more the fact that we always have to craft new wires every time we make a mistake or want to change something, which can get pretty tiresome, especially if you are not requesting them.


I don't know if they should be completely for free though.

Maybe they should really work like repair packs with a durability bar, with a certain value getting substracted from the cable drum depending on the length of wire being drawn.

But at least the cables/wires should get refunded.

[ssilk]

See
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =67&t=9092 Free cables/wires (Poles contain all)

With the combinators the situation has changed a bit, so I do not join this thread into that.

[Peter34]

Alternatively, have the recipe require 1 Copper Wire and 1 Green Circuit, but give 100 Green Wire or 100 Red Wire. Red/Green Wire is meant to carry an electronic signal, of very, very low wattage, whereas normal Copper Wire is meant to carry a significant wattage (e.g. the 300 freakin' kW to power a Radar) and so must be quite thick.

If Red and Green Wire is made cheap, then players won't be upset about losing it when their re-do their wire networks.

[lancar]

Maybe they should really work like repair packs with a durability bar, with a certain value getting substracted from the cable drum depending on the length of wire being drawn.

Something like this is probably the best approach.
A recipe of <insert clever combination of resources> could result in a Wiring Tool, which can be used as any normal wire but never runs out (or give it durability like a science pack).
Rightclick the Wire Tool in the inventory to switch it between Neutral (copper wires), Green and Red.

[Tinyboss]

Maybe they should really work like repair packs with a durability bar, with a certain value getting substracted from the cable drum depending on the length of wire being drawn.

Something like this is probably the best approach.
A recipe of <insert clever combination of resources> could result in a Wiring Tool, which can be used as any normal wire but never runs out (or give it durability like a science pack).
Rightclick the Wire Tool in the inventory to switch it between Neutral (copper wires), Green and Red.

A spool of wire with a durability bar is functionally no different from a big stack of wires. I think Peter34's idea of increasing the yield of the red/green wire recipes accomplishes the same thing much more simply. I think his justification for it makes sense, too.

[lancar]

Maybe they should really work like repair packs with a durability bar, with a certain value getting substracted from the cable drum depending on the length of wire being drawn.

Something like this is probably the best approach.
A recipe of <insert clever combination of resources> could result in a Wiring Tool, which can be used as any normal wire but never runs out (or give it durability like a science pack).
Rightclick the Wire Tool in the inventory to switch it between Neutral (copper wires), Green and Red.

A spool of wire with a durability bar is functionally no different from a big stack of wires. I think Peter34's idea of increasing the yield of the red/green wire recipes accomplishes the same thing much more simply. I think his justification for it makes sense, too.

My idea requires half the slots

[provet]

It should be easy enough to mod! just changing the recipe yield from 1 to 100! Someone with modding skillz do this please!