Beacon on/off via circuit network

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into older topic with same suggestion.

[SuicideJunkie]

I'm mostly fine with them as-is.

Having a logic toggle for the beacon which disables the effect propagation and energy consumption, but leaves the drain draw would be almost pointless IMO, since the drain is half the draw.


The thing that bugs me is the startup and shutdown lag of the beacons when using switches.

The beacon takes a moment to start broadcasting when the switch closes, and that results in a fairly noticeable gush of inefficient assembler work.
(Particularly notable with nauvis day and a productivity+speed+efficiency combo on an oil refinery for example).
That can be designed around with more logic for a two-stage boot sequence, but seems excessive.
When the switch opens, on the other hand, the assemblers stop immediately and the beacons slowly wind down their internal storage as waste.

Switching on a speed boost when stocks get low works great, since it is a situation where max packing isn't needed as the speed isn't always wanted; the factory can run on efficiency modules until that speed boost is needed, and the exact timing isn't critical.


A setup to eliminate drain waste can also be done with an accumulator throttle on the beacon draw (or a separate connection to a solar grid providing exactly the right kW per beacon for intermittent but waste-free beaconing), which requires a different design again.

[Roxor128]

Why limit it to just beacons? Go all-out and put the ability to toggle on/off via circuit network into everything electrical.

The power switch can stick around for those situations where you just want to be able to shut down a large section of your base or disconnect your emergency power, and the circuit network toggle can be used for those when you just want to switch out a small handful of things.

[evandy]

I'm definitely in favor of making beacons possible to enable/disable via circuit condition. (Either that or make them auto-shutdown when machines in their radius are idle, and that's probably a UPS problem).

Why not add such a condition to anything else? Because everything else stops consuming gobs of power when idle. There is no way to manage that with a beacon.

Why not use a power switch? Because using a power switch makes EVERY powered-off entity check every-tick for reconnection. And because copying/pasting a blueprint does NOT preserve copper-wire connections between power-poles, thus making you manually redo the power connections to keep things separate every time you paste a copy of something.

So, sure, there are other ways to handle this, but the circuit condition on beacons sure seems like the easiest/best...

[jodokus31]

[...] And because copying/pasting a blueprint does NOT preserve copper-wire connections between power-poles, thus making you manually redo the power connections to keep things separate every time you paste a copy of something.

Fyi. This may change soon:

Include the layout of copper wires in blueprints

https://wiki.factorio.com/Upcoming_features

[Koub]

Allow me to link a few suggestions that go just one step further :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=69111
viewtopic.php?p=506556#p506556
but also similar suggestions for other entities :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=39474 (roboports)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19637 (radars)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=71855 (Assembling machines)

I like generic options I can use for all entities, and read and control entities directly with circuit connexions would be so useful.