Lights for devices

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Hey guys, I'll confess to not having played much of the game but from discussion with a friend both of us thought that it might be an idea for some devices (maybe not all) to have lights built into them, that shine either when they're operating or when they complete an action of some kind (e.g. crafting an item). He, as a more experienced player, thought this might be useful for spotting flaws in his production line (identifying broken machines and such like), but for myself the suggestion was more out of interest with regard to the game concept.

In essence, I can see a huge amount of potential for the game in a Minecraft-esque mould, with factories essentially turning into giant devices whose end goal is not to produce goods in the most efficient manner, but to do something... other, with the flow of goods effectively acting as circuitry after a fashion. It's a different kind of route than the game's taken so far, but it might be a nice option for those who are so inclined to make these kinds of things and wouldn't really affect the way others play the game. Currently, the biggest issue that I see with the game in this regard is the fact that all machine outputs are in goods form, and that doesn't make for a very attractive device; but if one were to implement a visual display via the lights, then there is all sorts of potential for producing muchly prettiful patterns for those who like that sort of thing. It's just an idea, and I'm sure you're all itching to shoot me down as to why it's dumb, but I thought it an interesting prospect.

[DaveMcW]

Smelters do provide light.

With a LOT of work you could transform a belt of raw materials into a moving pattern on a grid of smelters. Add speed modules for higher FPS.

You could also look into using boiler+steam engine+lamp to transform fuel into a light pixel, but even using wood the FPS would be quite low.

[ssilk]

In my opinion we must disinct between lights, which ... ehm ... make light, and "information lights".

The first one are something like the lamps, the furnaces, burners, accumulator etc.
The second are "lamps" on the top of a device, which gives information about the inner.



For the first I think we don't need more, just different kinds of light, like this mod: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=4872

There might be some natives, which are atracted to light: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... lit=lights



For second:

Show the current state of an assembly via lights:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... hts#p23127

Show the modules:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... hts#p27792


Off topic: When thinking to lights I think this looks amazing: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 140#p35073