Split power combinator

[JaJe]

I am surprised that there's no way in this game to split the power into a specific amount I wish.
For example, let's say I want to build far away from my near base another base only by producing a lot of power and I want to split/increase/decrease the amount of power output for each of my smaller bases around without exceeding consumption of the amount set by me.
This way it could be simpler to watch the power consumption grid for each small base rather than just seeing the whole consumption chart.

[Tekky]

This has already been suggested in the following thread:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42648 Watt limiter

@Mods: I'm not sure if it is worth merging these threads, though, because, in the other thread, the original poster was not clear on what his suggestion was about in his original post. This only became clear later in the thread.

I am surprised that there's no way in this game to split the power into a specific amount I wish.

As has been pointed out in the thread mentioned above, it is possible (but not easy).

[Koub]

I will quote the answer from a dev to another topic with a suggestion related to electrical network (but different from OP's) :

... i still think that it's possible to rework the electric network with only a slight performance impact. ...

Then it's not likely to ever happen. Unless it can be done with zero additional overhead it's most likely never going to happen.

I doubt OP's proposition could be achieved with 0 overhead, therefore I doubt it will ever be considered by the devs.

[Tekky]

I will quote the answer from a dev to another topic with a suggestion related to electrical network (but different from OP's) :

... i still think that it's possible to rework the electric network with only a slight performance impact. ...

Then it's not likely to ever happen. Unless it can be done with zero additional overhead it's most likely never going to happen.

I doubt OP's proposition could be achieved with 0 overhead, therefore I doubt it will ever be considered by the devs.

That post of Rseding91 was about simulating the individual wires inside the circuit network, instead of simulating an electric network as a whole. Rseding91 pointed out that it would be very bad for performance and that it therefore would never be implemented. I fully agree with him on that.

In the current thread, however, the original poster is asking for a way to split power among several bases. This can be implemented already now by having separate power networks connected by an accumulator (as has been pointed out in the thread that I mentioned above). Since this involves two electric networks instead of one, it may be slightly worse for performance, but not nearly as bad as what Rseding91 was talking about. Therefore, I see no reason not to use this feature, unless you are already having UPS issues.

However, even if what OP wants can already now be implemented in vanilla Factorio, I do think that it should be possible to implement this in a more controlled manner, such as an ONI style transformer which only lets a certain amount of electricity from one electric network into another electric network in a unidirectional manner. In Factorio, currently only a bidirectional transfer is possible (using the accumulator), so it is hard to enforce the direction of the power transfer.