What?
An new energy source type that does not require fuel / a connection to the electricity network and instead runs entities for free.Why?
Mods often require the use of hidden entities such as assemblers, furnaces, beacons, inserters, etc, to implement new functionality. But all of these prototypes can not be used in a way that makes them function without some sort of energy source ("energy_usage = '0W'" doesn't work). The only current workaround is to specify a really low energy_usage and hide with connection icons, but this still has some major problems:1) The hidden entity shows up on the energy network page where it confuses the player.
2) The hidden entity has to have the exact same collision box and position as the visible parent entity to ensure that it is always connected when the parent is.
3) The hidden entity might stop due to energy shortage when it should still be running.
4) Usage of hidden entities is limited to usecases where the player connects the parent entity to the electricity network (unless one wants to spawn in an additional power pole + eei for everything outside the network).
Being able to simply specify that an entity does not require external energy would fix all of those three problems (and maybe as a side-effect some memory too?) :).
