Factorio Forums

If you look at the "used in" of the CircuitConnectorDefinition, you see a long list of individual entities implementing the ability to connect a circuit to it.

My hope is to promote that to some baser entity type (probably EntityWithOwner) so you can make just about any entity connectable to circuits.
I'm not asking to add functionality to connections that don't already have them, just be wire carriers.

Maybe add a field on the individual entities to disable their connection functionality to reduce them to "dumb" connections.
I have no problems with entities explicitly opting out of this (like what does it mean for a movable entity to have a connector...), it just feels like more of an intrinsic ability with so many entities implementing it.

+1

No.

Circuit connectors are only available on entities that have control behavior (exception here being an electric pole), and if they have a circuit connector, they have exactly one circuit connector (exception here being decider/arithmetic/selector combinators). Some entities (like accumulator) use single circuit connector definition since they have no direction, some entities (like pumps or mining drills) use 4 circuit connector definition since they have direction, some entities have 8 circuit connector definition (like furnaces and assembling machines) since they have direction and mirroring, some entities have arbitrary amount of circuit connector definitions (like electric poles due to their orientation logic). Some entities have extra bit of logic of when a wire can be connected (like walls only being connectable when gate is nearby).

There is nothing to be generalized here.