Better Power Network Informations

[Factoruser]

There should be a calculated value somewhere, how much the power producers in the network can maximally produce. I.e. if you've got 480 steam engines "432 MW". Of course without checking whether you've got enough boilers and water.

Further there should be tooltips above the graphs showing the maximum value of the current scale. It's hard to estimate how much the laser defense is demanding during attacks, you can't read the peak values, just the basic drain.

[zOldBulldog]

It has been asked many times. I don't remember if I ever saw a developer response or only from other players.

Regardless, they almost certainly know how useless the current power information is for most players. So I would guess that they are having trouble coming up with a better solution or that they already have a plan for how to fix it.


In the meantime you can solve the problem a different way:

Get an accumulator, connect it to the powerline, connect it to the input of a decider combinator. Connect the output of the combinator to a programmable speaker. Set the whole thing to produce an alarm when accumulator charge drops below some percentage... like 60% or whatever you like. When the alarm rings run to fix your power situation.

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Personally and because of this problem I created a little blueprint that I use with each factory line:

- Lets me choose the % of power for the factory line and a message (like "power is at 40%, smelters shut down).
- Monitors the input power.
- If power drops below the desired % it ring an alarm *once* so that it is not annoying, displays the message and shuts down the power to that line.

That way as power drops my factory starts shutting down and alerts me. That buys me extra time to correct the cause without having a Cascade collapse.

If interested send me a PM to remind me and I will post the blueprint when I get home. I have been meaning to do it for a while but I keep forgetting.

[Factoruser]

Well, the even more simple solution is to use a calculator and maybe ruler/set square... It's just a bit annoying to estimate the consumption by rule of thumb instead of having the real numbers.

[Mylon]

The peak usage data is there. It would be interesting if the graph could be moused-over to display that data point with a tooltip.

[zOldBulldog]

I finally got around posting the blueprint to bypass the "bad power network information" issue.

You can get the full description and blueprint from Factorioprints at: https://factorioprints.com/view/-LOOQbz6NZoOI4hjPCtl

Or see the discussion thread in the forum at: viewtopic.php?f=193&t=62886

[Factoruser]

I think the ruler-and-calculator-method is still easier

[Ghoulish]

I sincerely hope that this will be addressed in 0.17 and is included in "Gui improvement. It is both improving the looks of the GUI and changing the way it works." Which is from the 0.17 roadmap thread.