TheSAguy wrote:Version 2.1.8 is out.
- Normal Rail now conducts electricity. Recipe updated
Let me know what you guys think....
at first i loved it to power distant parts of the factory without the need to build long power lines, but then i also found some disadvantages and problems ...
- to logically connect outposts with the central parts, i still need the old power pole lines. they no longer need to have copper wires, but i need them for green and red wires, and thus i really don't save on building those long power lines just like before.
- it is much more difficult now to build long power pole lines since the old copper connections could be built by dragging power poles and later adding green and red wires at the exct same distance that copper wires were built. now power connections already exist when building power poles near tracks and thus the poles for colored wires can no longer be placed automatically at the correct distances by dragging the poles.
- when i place poles, they sometimes connect, but quite often they no longer connect (see screenshot below). with a power pole on the cursor, a connection is first shown, but when placing it, there is no copper wire drawn. if the wire is parallel to the track this makes sense since the power connection exists anyways through the rails, but it also happened for connections that are (roughly? almost? exactly?) perpendicular to the track. to connect those new poles, i had to add more poles near the tracks: sometimes, a single large power pole would work, sometimes i needed several small poles to connect the track to a first large pole a few tiles distant and then could continue the power pole line as usual. this is especially annoying when creating blueprints for tracks, crossing, outposts, stations etc, and on placing them later they sometimes have missing power connections to roboports etc.
- it requires some discipline to sometimes build assemblers, power poles, etc a few tiles away from tracks so that they do NOT automatically connect, eg when i want to have separated areas that can be toggled on/off by using power switches.
- not only a single track of rail tiles has power connections, but also track tiles that are near each other (eg parallel to other tracks, touching only diagonally, etc; see screenshot below)
- when i build a "quad-track" (4 rails with the usual 2 tile gap between each of the tracks) or a station, the map shows a very tight net of connections which almost covers the whole space (see screenshot below). this also shows that there are lots of connections between parallel or even slightly distant tracks, unnecessarily many of those connections. maybe that is also the cause why some other connections to more distant poles are no longer possible when some max number of connections (in some specific direction) exists?
- the building costs: when i don't want or need powered rails i would like to still have cheaper and easier rails, than having to build all rails with medium power poles as ingredient
- having two different kinds of rails (unpowered old rails and new powered rails) would also allow building with more options, eg building normal tracks as usual, with only some tracks being powered, enabling people to easily build separate power grids on parallel tracks, have much less graphics clutter between parallel tracks, maybe also avoid or reduce the problem of missing connections, etc.
- all old rails are not migrated to the new rails, thus requiring to tear down the entire network and build it again. this would be no problem if the new powered rails would be in addition to the old rails, but on existing maps it's difficult to see which of the tracks are now completely (without gaps) powerd and which aren't.
my wishes:
- have normal rails and separate powered rails
- only have power connections for rail tiles that are directly connected (touching), probably even only along the track (not parallel etc)
- connect only items and other rail tiles to tracks when they are touching them or maybe even need a "connector tile" (similar to a special new power pole with reach 1.5 and area 3x3) to connect rail tiles to assemblers, roboports or normal power poles.
- since different behavior of rails is sometimes a real "game changer", should those powered rails be in a separate mod from bio industries (isn't there some such mod already for powered rails and/or powered trains?), or at least there should be an option in the mod settings to turn this off (or rather on with off being the default to make it easier on existing maps; but it's probably too late for the "default:off" now) ?
- when rails have copper wires automatically, also have red and/or green wires built into them (without additional costs since blueprints already build colored wires for free)
- when rails are powered anyway, why not introduce electric engines which get their power from the rails?
the following screenshot shows some of these problems, like the massive grid with too many cross connections, and the missing connections (marked red, resulting in unconnected roboports; all roboports are marked yellow)
having marked the missing connections, i see that most/all of them have one end "in the middle" of rails, thus probably causing lots of invisible connections from a big pole in one direction and no more space to have more copper connections in the same direction to a distant pole that is built later.
- powernet.PNG (25.49 KiB) Viewed 11230 times
That's why I want to give the trees a much longer grow time, but everyone was complaining that Bob's grows much faster...
