Factorio Forums

Currently, the normal big electric pole only offers 10 additional wire reach at legendary quality over normal quality. That is a completely insubstantial amount, especially compared to what medium poles get. Below is the comparison between legendary and normal wire reach, its only 10 tiles, approximately 20% more:
https://imgur.com/a/QABi0MT

Similarly, substations scale identically to medium power poles, gaining a 2x2 increase in coverage the first three levels and 4x4 at legendary. With each quality level, substations lose more and more of their potential edge over the poles, given their bigger footprint.

In my opinion, the big power poles should end up around 80 wire reach at legendary.
Substations should get a 3x3 or 4x4 increase in coverage each level, with a respective jump to 6x6 or 8x8 at legendary. In both these cases by the way, that would still make them scale slightly worse from their base values than medium poles.

Legendary substations are plenty big enough in terms of the area they cover. Remember: area is the width squared. So they go from 324 tiles to 784 tiles, a pretty substantial bonus. I don't see people making legendary medium pole grids, while I see plenty of people making legendary substation grids. I don't do "grids" for power, but I have never made a legendary medium pole. I have made plenty of legendary substations.

The legendary substation is still doing its job, and people seem to prefer it over legendary medium poles. So the issue you cite seems to be purely theoretical.

As for big poles... meh. I start the game with a reasonable block size, and I'm not going to go back at the end-game to rip out most of the poles just to replace them with legendaries. Base quality poles are just not expensive enough to care. And people making substation grids probably also don't care even if legendary big poles had longer reaches.

Also, past a certain point, wire reach becomes unwieldy. Power poles start running wires across things that are already connected, leading to more unsightly wires running across everything.

Im not up to date with the "meta" or how people generally prefer to do things but I see your point with the substations and the exponential area increase. I set up a legendary medium pole gambling machine just now and im loving them

I dont get the point about the big poles. First of all, they are by far the least used as they are just long range transmitters. So unless you are constantly redesigning your base you will not be replacing those either way and thus there will be no wires running everywhere either. The main thing I use them for is along rail and the legendary ones could be so much more convenient to use with a range upgrade, enabling you to use less per rail section blueprint etc.

unkst4ck3r wrote: Wed Sep 09, 2026 6:11 pm I dont get the point about the big poles. First of all, they are by far the least used as they are just long range transmitters. So unless you are constantly redesigning your base you will not be replacing those either way and thus there will be no wires running everywhere either. The main thing I use them for is along rail and the legendary ones could be so much more convenient to use with a range upgrade, enabling you to use less per rail section blueprint etc.

I don't see the advantage though. You use fewer poles around your blocks, but that's only available when you hit the bottom of the tech tree. Before then, you have 4-5 planets that are built up using different poles. Unless you delay deploying a rail system entirely until after you research legendary, you're going to have multiple sets of blueprints, one with the old poles and one with the new.

Furthermore, what does it matter if your rails have slightly fewer big poles on them? They're not especially expensive (just iron and copper), so it's not like you're saving precious resources. And you can make them even cheaper by producing them in an EMP. And they don't even take up that much room in the blueprint.

Giving substations a larger range means something: it means you have fewer power distribution buildings in the middle of your build, thus giving you more room for the actually useful parts. This is of particular importance on Aquilo, where weaving heat pipes requires having a lot of room close to buildings.

But being able to use fewer big poles to bridge a gap just doesn't mean much. You're not saving much in the middle of a build because you generally don't put big poles in the middle of a build. And even if a big pole is in the way of a build that needs to break out of a block, you can generally re-route the flow of power or just rely on other blocks to go around the break.

One place where this might actually matter is in mid-game Fulgora, as it'd be easier for a pair of uncommon or rare poles to bridge a gap between Fulgoran islands. But by the time legendary is on the table, you have Foundation, so that problem solves itself.

You might say the same about inserters, better chests, the quality mechanic in general etc. It all messes with existing blueprints. If that bothers someone then you can just keep tiered blueprints for different stages.

Then you might as well just scrap quality for big poles entirely. Theyre meant to bridge big gaps and that is what the quality is supposed to improve, but does so miserably. Id like them to firmly retain their role and have a clear use case. If it doesnt have such a big impact then there is even more reason to just buff them to give them more of a use case, especially since its a simple number adjustment. If they spanned cleanly between two Roboports for example, they could be a simple means to connect Roboports where you only need port coverage or between Fulgoran lightning collectors.

unkst4ck3r wrote: Wed Sep 09, 2026 1:45 pm Below is the comparison between legendary and normal wire reach, its only 10 tiles, approximately 20% more:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 10 out of 32 is 31.25%, not what I would call "approximately 20%"?
Allso they get an increase in supply area of 180 tiles (from 16 tiles to 196 tiles), if I'm mathing correctly (perfeclty possible I'm not) that is a woping 1125% increase!