Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Non-electrical network poles for running signal wires to save UPS

What ?

Sometimes signal wires need to get across to entities in a short distance that don't need to be strung across on electrical wires. It would be nice to have a non-electrical entity to carry these signals around.

Why ?

Independent electric grids cause UPS issues and a player may not know the impact of just running signal wires on electric poles without electrical lines connected to the main grid, that this behavior will contribute to poor UPS on the electrical network.

This is actually quite an easy thing to mod. I've thought about doing it myself but haven't got around to it.

All you need is to create new poles, that's actually chests internally with a capacity of zero. They allow circuit wire connections, and won't spam anything on the circuit wires themselves. And then you simply make it look like a tiny pole or something.

Would be a tinnny but useful mod. Maybe it even exists already.

This looks like the closest thing to my suggestion

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/shortwave_fix

lol, somebody reads the forums

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/circuit-poles

Done, you can find it here. It would have been a lot faster if I took stringweasel at his word and didn't try the wall prototype first.

1WheelDude wrote: Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:55 pm lol, somebody reads the forums

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/circuit-poles

Hah, you're faster than me, even.

lyvgbfh wrote: Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:56 pm Done, you can find it here. It would have been a lot faster if I took stringweasel at his word and didn't try the wall prototype first.

nice! I've downloaded it and looking at it now. Gonna provide feedback on the mod page

lyvgbfh wrote: Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:56 pm Done, you can find it here. It would have been a lot faster if I took stringweasel at his word and didn't try the wall prototype first.

Nice! Another option would have been Constant Combinators, but if you click on them the GUI isn't as nice. Not sure what the UPS difference is between them.

Stringweasel wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 7:15 am Nice! Another option would have been Constant Combinators, but if you click on them the GUI isn't as nice. Not sure what the UPS difference is between them.

I considered that but opted to skip it since they take an energy source of some kind, even void, and I didn't want to spend time testing if that did any checks. If anyone knows what kind of effect void sources have for electric logic (i.e if they end up in their own sub network or something) I would be interested to hear.

TL;DR

A pole for circuit wires only (copper wire cannot be attached) that's optimized for the purpose.

What?

I think there's room in the game for a circuit wire-exclusive pole. I use power poles all the time to organize my wires in any setup with more than a couple of combinators, but there are drawbacks:

• The medium electric pole obstructs the view quite a bit, which is really not ideal in the middle of a dense clump of combinators.
• The small electric pole is nice and thin, but its wire range is short, and I really don't like having wood poles in my builds.
• All power poles auto-connect copper wires to other poles in range. It's not too hard to shift-click to remove them when adding a pole manually, but anytime I move/copy them I get new undesired connections.

Here is my vision for the circuit wire pole:

• It is about as tall as a medium electric pole, but sleek and very thin, not obstructing the view much at all. The graphic would be something that goes well with combinators, but is also very plain to avoid adding any visual confusion. I don't know quite what that would be, but I'm sure the Wube folks would knock it out of the park.
• Only red and green wires can be connected, copper wires cannot. Obviously this can't carry power, only logic.
• It has a very long reach, maybe equal to the large electric pole.
• And the BEST feature: it has at least two rotations that move the connection points a fair bit. This enables tapping on the R key to wiggle the wires that are directly connected to it--something I use all the time with combinators.

Why?

It ended up being "what AND why" in the section above, so instead here's a truly awful sketch that at least gives the idea. The connections are off to one side so that when the pole is rotated they move a good distance.

The best solution might be to mass-produce legendary wooden electric poles

As per-usual, there's a mod for that
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/circuit-poles

Thanks for the link! It doesn't seem like the author has been able to make their circuit pole show the signals in the tooltip, though, which is 90% of the reason for using one. I think there's still a need here.

myridium wrote: Wed Nov 06, 2024 5:52 am The best solution might be to mass-produce legendary wooden electric poles

I mean...dang. Maybe so. I can only do epic currently, but I think I'll try it.

EDIT: I have just built my first quality roller, and it's for small electric poles. I will be very disappointed if that's not a first.

Hold up, are you the TinyBoss that made the original Picker mod? Nice to meet you
https://alt-f4.blog/ALTF4-21/#the-picker-tool-the-q-key

Stringweasel wrote: Wed Nov 06, 2024 1:43 pm Hold up, are you the TinyBoss that made the original Picker mod? Nice to meet you
https://alt-f4.blog/ALTF4-21/#the-picker-tool-the-q-key

It's me, yes. Wow, I never saw that Alt-F4, thanks for the link! I don't think anyone would remember Picker if Nexela had not taken it over and extended it so...extensively. I was just in the fortunate position to do the small amount of work to kick it off.

Edit: I just noticed you're the Alt-F4 author...very nice to meet you, too!