The Problem
SolarPanelPrototype is great for entities spammed in bulk for power generation, but it currently only supports pictures. Animations are not supported.Current Workarounds Don’t Work
1) Tying LuaRender to an SolarPanelPrototype does not work. If the solar panel is invisible, then you can’t see it in ghosts, when placing, or visualizations (easily). If the solar panel is visible, you can’t make the sprite match, and then turn off the base sprite. So the appearance is wrong.2) ElectricEnergyInterfacePrototype works, but is UPS-intensive when spammed on the scale of solar panels.
Proposed Changes
Option 1) Give SolarPanelPrototype support for working visualization OR animation to allow solar panels to be animated.Option 2) Give electric energy interface an option (at runtime or prototype) to allow aggregation into an electric network (like solar panels) for low UPS. This would basically be telling factorio “This EEI is currently locked, and its values won’t be editted anymore. Allow it to combine.”
How Mods Would Benefit
I have a Wind Turbine (as do many mods). These get spammed to make massive wind farms. They could theoretically be UPS-friendly SolarPanelPrototype, except they really need to animate. Raiguard the Magnificent was toying around with this optimization before.This would benefit any mod that wants to make a simple entity that produces power, needs to be deployed in bulk, and animated.
———
Please.
