[2.0.14] Bug with Ag Tower + Circuit network

[erronius]

When connecting an Agricultural Tower to the circuit network, this seems to cause an issue where the tower will stop working with an "item ingredient shortage" message. There are trees for it to harvest and room in its output space but it won't move, even when the circuit condition tells it that it should. Unfortunately even disconnecting it from the circuit network does not resolve the issue. Only picking it up and replacing it fixes the problem.

One note is that this may have some kind of interaction with the fact that I am not providing seeds - my intention is for planting to be done by a separate tower. I can't imagine that the tower is supposed to only be able to harvest if it has seeds.

This is a really frustrating situation and it would be great if we could get a fix soon. Thank you

Edit: Not 100% sure on repeatability. Not 100% sure this is related to circuit network, though that's what has triggered it.

[Rseding91]

Can you please provide a save file showing this issue?

[erronius]

Not sure this has anything to do with circuits actually. I have placed a fresh tower that I believe is never connected to the network. I had the brief thought that I was mistaken and just didn't recognize none of the trees were 100% ready but that's not the case. I'm looking at an ag tower refusing to do its job with 100% ready trees.

This is a pretty big issue that's basically stopping me from progressing on gleba. I'd really appreciate clarity and suggestions on a workaround. Is it just not workable to have an ag tower that doesn't plant?

[erronius]

I've tried giving my "harvesting tower" seeds. It planted trees just fine but then sits there refusing to harvest others that are available.

[erronius]

One more theory - is it possible this has something to do with having pollution turned off?

[Rseding91]

Ok, looking at the logic, it is designed that a given tree is only going to be harvested by the tower that planted it. So, as of now - that's how they work. To do otherwise would increase the performance cost of towers growing trees. It also works this way so one tower growing won't pollute another tower growing with trees it wasn't intended to grow/harvest.

[erronius]

OK, that's a really big gotcha that would seem buggish to me. Thanks for letting me know so at least I can work around it.

[SuicideJunkie]

Ok, looking at the logic, it is designed that a given tree is only going to be harvested by the tower that planted it. So, as of now - that's how they work. To do otherwise would increase the performance cost of towers growing trees. It also works this way so one tower growing won't pollute another tower growing with trees it wasn't intended to grow/harvest.

I was just trying directly to do this.
One tower to plant things so there would be a nice full field of 100% growth plants ready.
And the second tower to harvest them, but disabled until the plants are needed so they don't just rot on the belt.

As an alternative, would it be possible to allow circuit control enable/disable of planting and harvesting independently?
That would have been my first choice, and the two towers was my workaround attempt.

The tree pollution effect would be solved with a harvest filter. That would also allow you to tell it to not pick up wild plants for wood and spoilage instead of just your farmed ones.

[Deco]

I request this be reopened as a feature request, please

Regular Factorio factories, plus the other unique structures introduced for other planets in the DLC, have many different ways you can utilise and arrange them, leading to some very creative solutions. Some examples: diagonal smelting arrays, different vertical/horizontal/long-arm-inserter input/output configurations for assemblers, placing foundries where they're needed vs going for a typical bus design, etc etc. All of this is wonderful game design -- you guys have done an excellent job.

However, agricultural towers just feel boring. You plonk them down, give them seeds, and they go about and do their thing. There is very little creativity around them.

I'm guessing there was more to them, early in the design process. I can see an unused pipe input on the art for the tower -- I imagine this is from the old Gleba design, as touched on in the "Design journey" part of FFF 414 (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-414# ... the%20time).

I don't know what the towers were like earlier in the design process, but with a few minor behaviour changes, I think they could be much more interesting.

What I want, like any other thing in Factorio, is an optimization puzzle, and fixing the bug described in this thread would be a great start.

Tower A plants.

01-05-2025, 21-13-03.png (2.41 MiB) Viewed 165 times

Tower B harvests.

01-05-2025, 21-13-10.png (2.41 MiB) Viewed 165 times

Currently, this design does not work. There is no way (as far as I can tell), to have a farm plant seeds as much as it can without also having it harvest UNLESS you are OK sacrificing a few stacks of fruit (by leaving them in the outpost slots of the tower to halt further harvesting).

If Tower B could harvest trees planted by Tower A, we could make farming outposts that always plant as often as they can (leaving no free squares "unplanted") but only start harvesting once the train arrives, ready to be loaded up.

If this would cause too great of a performance hit, I request instead that the "Enable/disable" circuit control be broken into "Enable planting" and "Enable harvesting".

01-05-2025, 21-12-46.png (35.84 KiB) Viewed 165 times

Also, Rseding91, thanks for the explanation, but I think this part doesn't apply after the Gleba redesign from 10 to 2 plant types:
"It also works this way so one tower growing won't pollute another tower growing with trees it wasn't intended to grow/harvest."
As far as I can tell, the purple and green biomes never occur directly next to each other during normal map gen, so this shouldn't be a concern.

However, if I'm wrong and this is a concern, perhaps the circuit control enhancement could be to add filters, just like inserters have. Controlling this via circuits would allow stopping harvesting entirely, as we could set no filters.

[Loewchen]

Feature requests go here: viewforum.php?f=6.

[Muche]

Also see Give agricultural towers separate circuit toggles for planting and harvesting.