Factorio Forums

TL:DR

Do not show the no power warning icon when the power has been shut off using a power switch.

Eh?

As it stands now, using power switch to shut down parts of the power network can trigger large flood of flashing no_power_warning icons. While there are certainly workarounds to battle this, all of them are far from ideal. Right now, the power switch itself doesn't really have much use other than selectively shutting off segments of the power network - trying to minimize power drain, or preserve enough power for core parts of the factory. Pretty much everything else can be done better with signal network. So please give the lowly power switch some love :)

Yes please! It would be extremely useful to see at a glance that there is no power because I deliberately turned off the lights by using the power switch. And getting rid of the annoying emergency flashing lights so I can see where the real emergencies are!

Of course there is going to be some complexity determining why there is no power. However, there is already the ability to see different power networks via the minimap view, and determining if a factory has power at all, so hopefully most of the hard work has already been done.

Knowing that an entity is powered down is still useful, though. Offhand, here's how I'd do it:

- Does it have a network? If not, display the icon for "not connected to anything"
- Does the network have power? If yes, there's no problem.
- Does the network have power providers? If yes, display an alert and a flashing icon.
- Does the network have a switch? If yes, display a solid "network intentionally powered down" icon.
- It's a closed network with no power providers. Display an appropriate "user has derped" icon.

thedarkbunny wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 17, 2018 3:53 pm

... Knowing that an entity is powered down is still useful, though. ...

That is a very valid point.

Instead of big icon, I'd much prefer small red light dot somewhere on the entity, just like the ones on power switch itself. Green for on, red for off. Though that is lot of work adjusting all the sprites ...

In the end, i'd be very happy even with no indicators on anything other than the power switch. Maybe icon (that is not flashing) over the power switch itself in alt view? That way we can tell that switch is off at a glance. On the map, when switch is off, the power links are painted red, if the switch dot itself was red too, that would also be pretty visible at first glance.

Oh hell, and if you want to get really fancy, paint all the power links that are turned off by the switch red. :)

The game already detects and highlights wire links connected to power switches. Would it be possible to just take it that extra step forward, color all the wires of the powered down segment red, and flag the connected machines as powered down? That would make it dead easy to spot by the player.

Something like this mockup:

Yes, please reduce the flashing when power is 'turned off'.

I know the power is off!

Related suggestion threads:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28007 Option to disable no-power flashing
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42630 Don't warn if power _should_ be off
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28899 Discuss: Power Switch should not "Blink"
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27436 [0.13] Power switch: Different icon when switched off

The real problem is, that there is no standby light on all machines that need power to operate (including inserters and lamps). If we had a subtle standby light glimming orange whenever there is power connected to a machine, at least i would not need any overlay icon showing me when i accidentally disconnected something. I would miss the glimming pixel, investigate and fix the problem.

A tiny standby light would not be so in-your-face that it becomes annoying to use a power switch for anything but switching between power sources. It could even blink because of fast switch cycles without giving me eye cancer.

Wube could get rid of some of the other overlay icons too. A small info panel on the model could display the current state of the machine. Stuff that needs fuel could have a red glimming out-of-fuel light, wich only turns on when out of fuel.
It could even enable optional VRAM-saving: Assemblers for example would always turn on a static blue in-operation lamp while assembling something and you could optionally disable their animations and still get the feedback by seeing the tiny blue light.

If all of them get some 1 kW for all entities then they are working, but very slow. Solved?

darkfrei wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 30, 2018 8:02 am

If all of them get some 1 kW for all entities then they are working, but very slow. Solved?

Then what good is the power switch?

Trebor wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 30, 2018 11:49 am

darkfrei wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 30, 2018 8:02 am

If all of them get some 1 kW for all entities then they are working, but very slow. Solved?

Then what good is the power switch?

It must not disable, but reduce power conducting to few Watts (is 0 Watt is also few?).

darkfrei wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 30, 2018 8:02 am

If all of them get some 1 kW for all entities then they are working, but very slow. Solved?

I would really like if machinery that does not get the full amount of power needed would just shut down completely. Such machines should then wait at least a second before they try starting up again.

I recently learned the following:

Bilka wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 18, 2017 3:25 pm

It matters. If you unpower an entity it has to check each tick whether it receives energy again, so it can't go inactive.

Granted that's in a very old thread, so maybe it's changed, but assuming this is still a thing, it seems like the need to alter how unpowered entities behave when turned off due to a Power Switch can actually be very significant. I know many players use Power Switches to intentionally turn off large portions of our bases to save average power usage (especially in heavily beaconed setups). Are we still taking a massive UPS hit when we do this?

I feel like in addition to this age-old request to adjust the No Power indicator, I would love to see the entities in those same sections also stop making power requests while they're unpowered. Let the Power Switch (which is already checking for a condition) make a singular check and then update the state of all of the entities whenever that state changes.

p.s. Should I make a separate Ideas and Suggestions thread for this discussion? Or is this good enough.

Just in case...
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LessUnplugged

Nice mod!

Another aspect that I use Power Switches for is for item quantity control. Instead of having a circuit condition on every output of some large array (say, Electronic Circuits) I just have a single circuit condition on my Power Switch to that entire array.

As already recommended: better to control the input lines (belts, pumps) and turn power off via a timer that counts the output items.

ssilk wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 06, 2019 8:09 am

As already recommended: better to control the input lines (belts, pumps) and turn power off via a timer that counts the output items.

That doesn't get around the problem that powered off items eat UPS though.

I think that changed. it feels like the devices look if a power source is in the current circuit, but I have no prove for it. in any case it looks simple to add that feature.

Maybe RSeding could explain here a bit more?

How would the game distinguish between intentional open switch disconnection and a broken connection creating a network that coincidentally contains an open switch?