Different colors on different electric networks

[rideawalrus]

If there are separate power grids in your game each one should have it's own color in the map to quickly identify where it is and what lines are in it. My bases tend to get messy and power lines run all over the place. Sometimes I delete a power pole only to realize an hour later that it was connecting two power grids, and without it neither one is running at full power. For example below, I have multiple solar farms, a nuclear site and steam turbines all separated, usually with only a single line or two between areas.

Power grid mess

grid.PNG (286.17 KiB) Viewed 4536 times

[Jap2.0]

Even if there's only one or two power lines, it's considered one grid.

[rideawalrus]

Exactly, for example, if I cut the power lines on the upper right where I put the red line, that whole area circled in yellow would become its own grid, and it would be nice if it changed colors from blue to something else to make that easy to see.

[Jap2.0]

Maybe.

[Sicnarf]

In theory I'm all for that as I'm in the group of players where if you have two separate power grids a mistake was made.
However I have also played games where I setup little solar powered radar installations, lots and lots of them. Not sure how the suggested system would handle situations like that and the developers would have to account for potential hundreds of separate networks if they implemented this feature. Would be a bigger job that just a few hours work.
If I had to choose between this feature and a bit more optimization, optimization wins.

[Tekky]

If two power grids are connected with a circuit-controlled power switch, and if the power switch turns off and on several times per second, this could cause nasty color flashing on the map.

Therefore, I am not sure if I am in favor of this feature.

[Jap2.0]

That would be very annoying, but in what circumstances would this happen? I suppose some (bad) attempts at turning parts of a factory off in power shortages might, but I would think that most people would have a lower threshold where it turned off and a higher threshold where it turned back on.

[TaoGaming]

TL;DR

In the map view, use different colors for non-connected blocks of the power grid (similar to the train-block debug view).

What ?

In the map view, when the "Electrical grid" overlay is pressed, all electrical lines show as the same light blue. However, it should be possible to color them if they are disconnected. (Assuming there are a relatively small number of blocks).

Why ?

As a quality of life improvement, this would make it much easier to see at a glance if any part of a factory has been disconnected. (For color-blind people, you may need to use regular lines vs dashed lines vs dotted lines, as an improvement).

[Engimage]

While this would make sense in general, I think different colors will confuse players as map mode already uses most of the colors for different entities and views.

[Antuanos]

I was really surprised to learn that all electric networks have the same color looking like they belong to the same network. I just presumed it worked the same way as train signals giving you different colors so you can get on overview.

I've been looking map thinking "yup, all connected" and later realizing that a bunch of my solar panel farms were disjointed but giving the impression of being part of the same network. No wonder I didn't get enough power.

Would be a nice addition.

Ps. Is there any way to see if everything is connected without manually trying to follow along and across different sections of your factory?

Pss. I found an earlier post from 2016 asking about the same thing, but I didn't want to necro it since it's probably outdated anyway.

[Sad_Brother]

Is there any way to see if everything is connected without manually trying to follow along and across different sections of your factory?

Try to look at electric network via map.

[DanGio]

Is there any way to see if everything is connected without manually trying to follow along and across different sections of your factory?

Try to look at electric network via map.

OP was already looking at map, he's asking for different colors in the map view. Although it will probably be difficult to implement. In the rail signals visualisation, the game assigns colors with a simple rule : neighbour blocks have different colors. Imagine a factory with several electric networks. How do you decide which network get a different color, which ones get the same color ? (I assume we don't go with infinite color palette)

[Sad_Brother]

It would be difficult to me not to understand are electric networks connected if I look at the map with electric network shown.
But if you want more ways open electric network info (left click on pole) and look on the providers and consumers counter. Your networks should be quite low chance to have exactly the same entities, graphs etc.
As much as I play this game almost no profit of splitting electric networks found.

[Yoyobuae]

How do you decide which network get a different color, which ones get the same color ? (I assume we don't go with infinite color palette)

Only five colors would work fine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_color_theorem

And while we are at it: Fluid networks should be shown on the map with a similar color coding scheme.

[Antuanos]

It shouldn't be that hard? All isolated networks get different colors and they cycle through the colors just as rail signal colors.
If two separated networks gets connected in any way the merge to the same color, just like the rails.

[Sad_Brother]

The five color theorem is a result from graph theory that given a plane separated into regions, such as a political map of the counties of a state, the regions may be colored using no more than five colors in such a way that no two adjacent regions receive the same color.

That theorem is about regions on the plane.
Rail network can be viewed like this (while no bridges or tunnels exist).
Electric network, fluids and many others are not regions on a plane.

Learn better.

[NotRexButCaesar]

Only five colors would work fine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_color_theorem

This actually does not work for electric networks because they can intersect one another without connecting.

[NotRexButCaesar]

Learn better.

That is kind of harsh.
All he did was make a mistake: you didn’t even explain what the mistake was.

[DanGio]

It shouldn't be that hard? All isolated networks get different colors and they cycle through the colors just as rail signal colors.
If two separated networks gets connected in any way the merge to the same color, just like the rails.

This would work sometimes, but occasionally, 2 networks that are very close on the map would get the same color, and someone would make a bug report because 2 disconnected networks appear to be the same network on map

[Antuanos]

This would work sometimes, but occasionally, 2 networks that are very close on the map would get the same color, and someone would make a bug report because 2 disconnected networks appear to be the same network on map

So we can't have QoL changes because someone might make a false bug report?
I don't understand what's so complicated about the suggestion? I made a mess with different power networks in paint (excuse my drawing skills).

You would instantly spot that the color of the power grid isn't uniform and go fix it. No one would actually have this many disjointed electric networks, I'm just showing that it wouldn't matter and that normally you would sit with maybe just one or two "accidents".