Factorio Forums

There are frequent cases when you accidentally disconnect part of your factory from electric network, sometimes not completely. Sometimes you add new blocks of solar panels that stay on their own just because some border power pole is missing or it was small pole that didn't reach central substation. I once found part of my bus factory was feeding on half of solar panels and steam while other part of factory used the other part, effectively splitting my end-game electric network in two.

Proposal - whenever power pole is hovered, electric coverage overlay is drawn the way it's currently drawn when placing assemblers and inserters (that is - for entire electric network, not just this pole), AND distinct power networks are displayed using different overlay colors, e.g. blue for biggest electric network (based on number of entities), the next one is red, next is green, if more networks exist, diagonal/straight dashing can be applied. This way at a short glance you can see if electric coverage is correct, that no fresh solar panels are isolated and that some fancy builds involving backup steam plants and power switches work as intended. It also would be superuseful if this information is available at minimap, so you can check if that's ok for all outposts without running to them.

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=18153 Information-Layers (for map and/or normal view)
I think this should be also visible in map.

This is a great idea. (I like to keep my steam engines on a separate electric network so I can switch them on and off, and sometimes I mess up and accidentally connect them to the main network.)

When you hover over an item that's connected to the circuit network, all the wires in that circuit network get highlighted:

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-138
(Scroll down to "wire highlights".)

I think it would be great to highlight the electric wires of everything in the network when you mouse over a power pole.
The only catch is that the electric network and the circuit network have to remain visually distinct. Maybe mouseover should highlight the circuit network and pressing a modifier key highlights the electric network?

ssilk wrote:I think this should be also visible in map.

Gets my vote. Would be a small but nice addition.

As a user of multiple electric networks this also gets my vote.