Add a hotkey to prevent electric poles from connecting *outside* of a blueprint

[Epp]

I see some very old chatter about this in the forum but this seems like a no-brainer for QoL. Here's my use case: I have an expandable rail loop system designed to extend through a roboport grid, like so:

05-27-2025, 09-39-18.png (2.23 MiB) Viewed 157 times

It needs to be modular so I can place station blueprints inside the rail loops based on where I want provider/requester/fluid/item stations. Depending on where I place stations inside these loops, the electric poles reach out and connect to some of the surrounding poles, which I absolutely do not want - they are supposed to get all their connections through the poles by the stations, which is better both aesthetically and allows independent grids that can be controlled by power switches. As far as I know, I'm just stuck with this as-is for now.

I also need to implement this system with N different rail loop blueprints for N supported loops (instead of a single starting loop bp and then an extension loop bp) because of the same problem - placing the big electric poles down in the loops causes them to reach out to neighboring poles on the grid.

In addition, it seems like a general oversight that you can use power switches to create independent grids but have no explicit way to prevent those grids from auto-connecting to each other if their poles are placed too close.

In my ideal world, I would have a hotkey that, when held as placing a blueprint, would just prevent the electric poles from connecting to anything outside of the blueprint. This could then be layered onto shift+build or ctrl+shift+build seamlessly.

[quigonquinn0]

Not exactly a solution, and you might already know this. But you can manually delete connections using alt+c, and disconnect the copper wires between the poles.

Not ideal, as it's not automatic, but it's at least an option for now

[Epp]

Thank you but, yes, I'm aware - it's actually impossible to build that^ exact blueprint without knowing how to manipulate the wires. Factorio is generally so good about removing mental papercuts that this one really stands out - having to hunt for and fix errant wires every time I place a blueprint really sucks and seems to go against their general philosophies.